Bassic Review – Sequis Motherload Elemental

If there were ever a bridge between the aural excitement and feel of a vintage non-master volume amplifier cranked up to eardrum-splitting levels and the tranquillity of suburban home studio life, this has got to be it.

In a world of top-tier, multi-core, studio-quality audio processors, there is still plenty of love for the rich and wonderful tones that permeate the soul when standing in front of a vintage valve amplifier stack.

Indeed, in my video review to demonstrate the Motherload Elemental, I used my very own 68/69 Marshall Super Bass, a non-master volume model amplifier that just sounds luscious with the volume wound up. For me, the tonal sweet spot of this beast is just on the edge of saturation. The huge problem with wanting to enjoy the organic sounds (and smells) of a hot valve amplifier at home or in more modest studio set-ups is that at least with this amplifier, it produces beautiful sounds when it is at full-tilt, window-rattling volume. It reminds me of that meme, “My neighbours are listening to my favourite band right now … if they like it or not!”

Elemental is the solution. An amplifier load box means we can run a valve amplifier without a cabinet if we so wish, without fear of causing damage to the expensive (and sometimes irreplaceable) internals. Very handy, if you really want to take just the amplifier head with you for silent rehearsal, recording, or indeed use on stage with IEMs alone!

Richard Cawley, designer of the Elemental, has been building reactive-load boxes for over twenty years, and the Elemental is the latest in a line of products that came about because guitarists want the tone and feel of their vintage valve amplifiers, at a less ear-splitting volume. The internal electronic components are selected carefully to filter and attenuate the high output, but keep the low-end thump and rounded top end of an amplifier and speaker cabinet combination up loud.

In communications with Richard, he shared with me that this product has been a long love affair with guitars and equipment sound, something I am certainly au fait with!

In the First Place

In use, Elemental to my mind has two main sections. There’s the section that receives the full power signal from your amplifier. The Elemental must be impedance-matched, thus you buy either the 4, 8 or 16-ohm version to suit your needs. Today, I have the 4-ohm for my Marshall, and also an Ampeg SVT 2 Pro I have in my rack in the studio. Elemental has speaker outputs that send the amplifier signal straight out to your cabinets, but with the addition of a master volume attenuator control. Very handy for my Marshall that only has a gain control (you can think of this style of amplifier as having its master fixed on maximum all the time). Turning up the gain makes the amplifier growl, like any other, but with that, we get lots of volume increase, as there is no “master” to balance it. So, Elemental’s Output Range switch and Speaker Volume control means that I can keep that input saturation, but dial the amplifier output right back.

Second Level Stuff

In the second section of Elemental, we have what I would call the “line level” functions. The internal electronics take the high-power signal from your amp head, and it is lowered to levels that outboard processors can handle. For example, you could place effects units into the effects loop of Elemental and add post-processing to your sound. The sound at this point is only fed to the low-level outputs, and not back to the main speaker outputs, as you’d require additional amplification to do this.

The Motherload Elemental offers line outputs in balanced XLR format with a level control or 1/4” socket for feeding to, say, a powered stage monitor.

Should you wish to receive a signal that does not include the speaker emulation, then the Thru output will take care of this; ideal if you are using cabinet emulations or are planning to “re-amp” a signal later on. You could also see this output as a “line out” that includes the sound of the power amplifier’s tonal characteristics – something you will rarely find on another amplifier!

Elemental’s powerful features include attenuation in two main ranges of signal: 0 – 12% in the low and 12 – 50% in the high range of incoming power. Signal indicators show green for normal operation and red for overload conditions. Of course, this is useful, visually, from across the stage.

The two speaker emulation dials offer subtle tone changes based on microphone position and cabinet frequency curves. At one end of the dial, based on Celestion Blue Backs (as used by Vox), and at the other, the deeper sound of a 4×12 / bass cabinet. The top-end roll-off is sweet to my ears, and still keeps top-end clarity. Let’s just view that from a different angle: the top-end clarity of a classic guitar speaker, yet keeping the low-end depth of a bass cabinet. This is an absolute tone win-win, and no tweeter in sight.