Mills Acoustics Afterburner 412B

The Mills Acoustics Afterburner 412B is an oversized cabinet loaded with a quad of Celestion Vintage 30s. Seems like a fairly standard set of features for your modern 4x12 cabinet, but the Mills cabinet is anything but just another quad box.

First off, the construction and attention to detail with the cabinet is second to none. Dave Mills works hard on his cabinets, and it really comes through. They are built to survive just about any sort of abuse, though with how much the cabinet weighs, I would worry about what it will do to the ‘contender’ should you get in a tussle with one. Hit up the gym or bring a friend to get these in and out of the gig van.

Sound wise, the cabinet speaks for itself. The Mesa Boogie Oversized 4x12 has been a big contender in the high gain market for a long time, but many complain of ice pick treble, and a loose, muddy low end, especially when turned up high. The Mills takes what we love about the oversized design, and perfects it. The Afterburner 4x12 sounds HUGE and CLEAR. It makes your standard 4x12 cabinet honestly sound small in comparison, no matter what style of music you are playing. The cabinet handles and throws low end like I never thought was possible from my previous experiences with guitar cabinets. I am a big advocate of the Mesa Rectifier series, which is well known to have a ridiculous amount of lows. The Mills cab can take the most bass heavy setting of the amp, and not break up or flub out. Though these extremities are not always necessary, it is nice to have the additional range in the amplifier’s knobs. The same can be said for the highs. The Mills cab, though very present, allows me to run more treble without getting an obscene ice pick or fizz. This extended range really helps with dialing in your specific amount of clarity/cut.

Getting my first Mills cab made me replace numerous Mesa and Marshall cabs without hesitation. It really opens up a whole new tone and level of performance in each and every one of my amplifiers. Those that don’t like Vintage 30’s…you may want to give this cab a shot before you judge. The Mills design optimizes these speakers and makes them run better than I’ve ever heard!

When gearing up to have a more modern tone to add to my recordings one name that kept popping up in my search and that was the “Mills Acoustics Afterburner”. Let me just say dealing with this company was top notch. The communication with Mills was great and the cab that was delivered was, in my humble opinion, one of the best I’ve had. You can tell it was made by people who truly care about what they do. Words can only convey so much so I will try to describe what I heard when I ran this cabinet through it’s paces but it's so hard to put into words anything that will do this cabinet justice because this cab quite frankly sounds massive in person.

When compared to a more classic style cab the Mills has its own sound going on but in a very good way. The more classic style cabs are well, more classic in tone and focus which is good for certain tones. In this day and age when you think “modern” sounding guitar cabinets you think more bass and bottom end. The Mills doesn’t focus on emphasizing or adding more bottom end, it quite frankly a fills the whole room with tone. I ran a Plexi style head, a JCM 800 style head ,and a VHT Deliverance head for the more modern flavor when I was auditioning the cab. With the classic style heads like the Plexi and JCM 800 you just get more “dimension” and more “presence” in the room as compared to the regular 4×12 I had. The VHT was the same experience, so to me this cab works well for modern sounding heads as well as classic sounding heads.

Construction wise it was built like a tank. The quality of the materials used were very nice and the tolex was flawless. The screws on the inside for the bracing were screwed in straight and clean.

Overall I like both classic cabinets and the Mills for different reasons but if I were to have to pick just one to live with it would be the Mills. It just does it for me.