Review: Änäkäinen Rumble 1 x 12

Puuverstas Änäkäinen’s Rumble 1 x 12 -cabinet (prices in Finland start around 580 €) offers a few fresh ideas on how to come up with a cracking guitar tone.

The fathers of the Rumble-concept are cabinet maker Kari Änäkäinen (try saying: Curry ANNA-kay-nun), who is also gigging as a guitarist and bassist, and Kuusankoski’s very own tube amp guru, Triodipaja’s proprietor Lassi Ukkonen (LUSS-cee OO-cow-nun). The guys hit upon the basic idea for the Rumble cabinet, when Kari asked Lassi to calculate the correct cubic content for a lightweight bass cabinet he was building for himself. The bass cabinet turned out very well and set the duo on the path to coming up with the Rumble.

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When it comes to the cosmetics of his Rumble cabinets, Kari Änäkäinen is a dyed-in-the-wool vintage fan.

We received two different Rumble 1 x 12 cabinets for this review – one comes in a fetching ”Fender Blonde” look…

…while the other clearly points in the direction of moody Marshall-ness.

The Rumbles sport metal corner protectors.

Here you can see the impedance sticker affixed to the sturdy jack plate.

Currently, Kari Änäkäinen gives you a choice of five different speaker models for your personal cabinet.

The cream-coloured Rumble came equipped with an Eminence Private Jack -speaker (50 W/8 Ω).

A WGS:n Reaper (30 W/8 Ω) was chosen for the black counterpart.

As you can see in these pictures, one of the special features of all Rumbles is the large rectangular port on one side of the cabinet. The basic idea has been borrowed from bass-reflex speaker, which are often used in Hifi- and bass (amp) cabinet designs. In the Rumble the opening is mainly used for sound dispersion, as the speaker doesn’t feature any internal reflectors, tunnels or a ”tuned” bass port.

The details of the cabinet build is also a little bit different to your run-of-the-mill guitar cab. The cabinet itself is crafted from Finnish conifer plywood with a thickness of 15 millimetres.

The advantages of conifer plywood are its quality, abundance and light weight. Most other cabinet makers will claim that this type of plywood is too soft and pliable for cabinet-making, but Kari has found his own solution to this problem: He uses internal struts and supports made from the same material.

The speaker baffle, on the other hand, is made from very sturdy, 18 millimetre thick Finnish birch plywood.

The whole speaker cabinet is constructed using only glue joints and wood dowels. The only screws in an Änäkäinen Rumble are those keeping the speaker, the jack plate and the corner protectors in place.

The Rumble’s low weight of approximately 12 kilos is easy to lift by the cab’s top handle.

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The first – completely subjective – impression I got from using the Rumble 1 x 12 was of a ”loud”, ”big” and ”musical” sounding cab. The Änäkäinen even made my tiny Blackstar HT-1R sound like a full-size tube amp.

The Rumble gets across a healthy shot of warmth and transparency – just like many other quality cabinets – but its special, front-ported construction adds an amazing amount of spread and directivity to the sound that is all its own. The sound dispersion is neither too narrowly focussed, nor is there any sound getting ”lost” behind the cab. Thanks to its front port, the Rumble delivers a larger-than-life, Cinemascope-style sound.

The Eminence-loaded blonde Rumble sings beautifully with a warm and creamy voice:

Thanks to the WGS Reaper -speaker inside the black-clad Rumble 1 x 12, this cab has a somewhat more aggressive British accent. This added bite isn’t quite as pronounced when you stick to clean amp settings, but it will help your Rock riffs to cut through more easily:

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I must say I really like these Änäkäinen Rumbles a lot! They deliver excellent, boutique-class tones at a very fair price. If you need a relatively compact guitar cab with a big sound, you should really consider going for a Rumble!

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Änäkäinen Rumble 1 x 12

Finnish prices starting around 580 €

Made by Puuverstas Änäkäinen

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Pros:

+ workmanship

+ a functional, non-mainstream concept

+ wide, yet focussed sound

+ rich bottom end

+ different speaker options