2x10/12 query

[bertie]

So 10" guitar cabs are not good, luckily SRV wasn't told or Roy Buchanan with their 4x10" and 2x10 amps!

thats the point isnt it. They're not single 10" cabs................

it's because of their characteristics when "driven"not clean.

no its not.

[koneguitarist]

thats the point isnt it. They're not single 10" cabs................

I was referring to ICBM post.



no its not.

Oh well, I bow to your superior knowledge then !

[ICBM]

Seems like I am not allowed an opinion here but that's what this is, my opinion.

You're certainly allowed an opinion, but what you stated as near enough fact is plain wrong - in particular that you need a certain amount of power to "drive" a speaker. You can run a 5W amp into a 400W-rated 4x12" and it can sound great, far better than the same amp into a 15W-rated 6" speaker, as already said.

Couple of points though to all, speaker enclosures are extremely important, and a 10" can give a better bass response than a 12" if cab is designed well.

Yes, and dependent on the driver as well. For *specifically designed bass drivers in specifically designed bass cabs for that driver*, you're right. For guitar speakers in guitar cabs, you're not.

So 10" guitar cabs are not good, luckily SRV wasn't told or Roy Buchanan with their 4x10" and 2x10 amps!

Check what speakers SRV actually used in his Super Reverbs .

Digital scream, No one is setting themselves up as arbitrator of tone, but if speakers don't matter so much, why use celestions instead of fane, jensons or Alnico instead of ceramic or neodynium , it's because of their characteristics when "driven"not clean.

No it isn't, it's because of their characteristics period. Which in almost *all* cases is clean - just the amp distorting. A 50W Marshall into a 4x12" with Greenbacks is not overdriving the speakers. A 50W Marshall into the same 4x12" with EVs is no more or less overdriven and will sound completely different.

Speaker overdrive is largely a myth and usually doesn't sound that good anyway - usually farty, or with odd resonances. Pushing the speakers into thermal compression can, but that's a different thing and still doesn't happen until at least 50% to 75% or the speaker's power rating, so for that to happen with a 5W amp you'll need at most a 7.5-10W speaker.

Hearing a big amp cranked up into multiple speakers sounds great, there's no doubt about it. Half the reason for that is the psycho-acoustic thrill of the vibration and air movement. You cannot get that sort of sound with a small amp through small speakers. But you can get closer to it with a small amp into big speakers than the other way round.

[digitalscream]

Digital scream, No one is setting themselves up as arbitrator of tone, but if speakers don't matter so much, why use celestions instead of fane, jensons or Alnico instead of ceramic or neodynium , it's because of their characteristics when "driven"not clean.

Actually, that's exactly what you were saying - you were telling us when speakers sound "best", and what speakers are better than others.

But here's the thing...those speakers don't just sound different when they're pushed right up to (and past) their rated power handling; they sound different across the entire frequency and power range. For example...my amp has 20W of output power. My 2x12" with a G12T-75 and a V30 in it has a maximum power handling of well over 100W (Celestion are well-known for their conservative speaker ratings), yet it sounds very different when it's using a set of Eminence speakers with a combined power handling of 150W, both using that same 20W amp. Now, according to your statement in the quote above, that would only happen if they were at the point of breakup.

Now consider the fact that just about nobody will push a V30-equipped 4x12" anywhere near its maximum power rating in normal use - that's 240W at the rated power, and likely in excess of 300W in reality. Even somebody with a 100W Marshall is likely to be using about 40W - 50W of the available power at the average gig. That's not pushing the speakers either - it's a tiny fraction of what they're capable of handing. That must sound crap, eh?

The thing is...put that 4x12" rig next to one with the same amp and a 10" speaker with an outside rating of somewhere between 50W and 75W, so that they have a fighting chance of pushing it to its limit, then play them both at gig volume. I will guarantee two things:

- The 1x10" will sound small, boxy and very much devoid of bass by comparison, no matter how well-designed the cab is
- The 1x10" sound fuzzy and undefined, because of the speaker breakup (which also robs it of whatever bass response it had)

How do I know this? I'm extrapolating up down to the 1x10" based on the evidence gathered by comparing a Trace Elliot 2x10" (with low-rated guitar speakers) to a Marshall 4x12" and a Jet City 2x12".

Now, granted...there are times when this is exactly the sound that you might want. However, those times are pretty rare as compared with the number of times that most people don't want that sound.

EDIT: ICBM is a ninja, it seems.

[ICBM]

EDIT: ICBM is a ninja, it seems.

ICBM is ill and is bored and is sitting next to his computer for many hours a day.

[koneguitarist]

speaker breakup a myth ? Eminence have a guide to their speaker breakup.
http://www.eminence.com/support/tone-guide/
Do I need a higher power speaker for less cone break up?
Generally speaking, the power rating of the speaker does not determine the break-up mode. Break-up is most influenced by the cone. It commonly occurs quicker in thinner, lighter weight cones. However, higher power speakers often have heavier cones with slower break up, but not always. This is why we have a column on our Guitar Speaker Tonal Characteristics and Application Guide for break-up modes. With that guide, you can compare how the speakers break-up in relationship to one another (slow, medium, fast).


Ian White, also disagrees with everyone here but me for some strange reason, but maybe its because he is Development Director for British speaker manufacturers Celestion (www.celestion.com).
this is what he says,
“You can look at the frequency response curve for a speaker, but that will only give you a broad-brush account
of what it sounds like. You can see how loud it is, roughly what the bandwidth is and whether there’s more emphasis on the high or low frequencies, but the subtle tonal effects are solely down to the break-up.
You can see artifacts on the response curve — little wiggles — that are the result of break-up, and we might be
able to say what a few of those are doing tonally. But if you showed us the response curve of a speaker we’d never heard before, we wouldn’t have a clue how it was really going to sound. Yet within a few milliseconds of listening to it we’d be able to give you chapter and verse on its construction.”

Eminence also says what configuration their 10`s are best used in, 1x10, 2x10 and 4 by10.
Fender, who also makes amps() have used 10s in a lot of them over the years,
such as Champ, Concert, Princeton, Deluxe, super, vibroverb, vibrolux, Bandmaster (had 3x10 !), Bassman, Tremolux, all in various combinations, But they were wrong also!
Sorry ICBM but you are wrong when you say 10`s are for bass cabs !

For what its worth most of my amps have used 12`s I like them , a few have used 15`s I like those also, In fact I am now using a 13w Excelsior with a 15", but I also like 10`s, as they seem to me a tighter faster speaker for certain sounds, and the cab IS important to how that speaker behaves, That is FACT not my opinion

We have gone off topic a bit here, but the original poster asked a question, I answered what I thought was my opinion, If I have to qualify each statement with this is my opinion not fact, then the rest of you also need to do that.

[ICBM]

Ian White is not agreeing with you. He is not referring to 'overdriven' breakup - when the speaker is driven past it's power limit - he's referring to simple cone breakup (ie cone distortion) which occurs at all volumes. This is obviously true because the speaker response graphs refer to 1W input. Here is Celestion's graph for the Greenback:



The sensitivity is quoted as 96dB@1W,1m - which is an average figure across the audio range. Since the average of that graph is right around the 96dB mark, it must have been measured at 1W input... and you see all those little wiggles that differentiate one speaker from another? That's the cone breakup. At 1W. It's a 25W speaker - hence is completely clean at this point.

Where did I ever say that 10s were for bass? What I said was that specifically designed 10" bass speakers in cabinets designed specially for them, can have more bass than 12s. This is true. I also said that for guitar speakers, it is not true - because it isn't. 12s have more bass than 10s if all other factors are the same.

Basically what you've quoted as facts - that speakers "need to be driven" and that 12s don't have more bass than 10s (talking about guitar speakers) are plain and simple wrong... not really a matter of opinion, you can demonstrate both things to be so quite easily.

[koneguitarist]

I said
Couple of points though to all, speaker enclosures are extremely important, and a 10" can give a better bass response than a 12" if cab is designed well.

You said
Yes, and dependent on the driver as well. For *specifically designed bass drivers in specifically designed bass cabs for that driver*, you're right. For guitar speakers in guitar cabs, you're not.

So let me get this straight, A 12 is better than a 10 for bass response for guitar but not for bass ?


you also said
Basically what you've quoted as facts - that speakers "need to be driven" and that 12s don't have more bass than 10s (talking about guitar speakers) are plain and simple wrong... not really a matter of opinion, you can demonstrate both things to be so quite easily.

Where did i say it was fact that speakers had to be driven, and 12`s don`t have more bass than 10`s ?
I said 10`s can produce as much bass s a 12 with a bigger cab.
You put two 12" in a small narow cab and 2x10`s in a big deep cab ! The Showman cabs were legendary for how much bass they could put out.
the only thing I have said is fact, is that the cab design is important to how that speaker behaves or sounds.

[digitalscream]

I was wondering when we'd get the "No, I didn't say that. I just mean that if you specifically design a 10" cab for lots of bass and a 12" cab for no bass at all, you'd end up with more bass from the 10" speaker" :P

Where did i say it was fact that speakers had to be driven, and 12`s don`t have more bass than 10`s ?

Let me clear that up for you:

A 12 will not give more bass than a 10, it will just not produce the high end so well, making it sound fatter or more mid heavy.

...which is, quite clearly, bollocks.

My point is, it will not "drive" the speakers. Great tone is about a combination of speakers being driven, valves being driven and the total effect of that combination.

...and also bollocks. From the same post, in fact.

Hope that helps.

[ICBM]

You said
Yes, and dependent on the driver as well. For *specifically designed bass drivers in specifically designed bass cabs for that driver*, you're right. For guitar speakers in guitar cabs, you're not.

So let me get this straight, A 12 is better than a 10 for bass response for guitar but not for bass ?

For guitar in a typical guitar speaker enclosure, absolutely. If you think not, why did my Marshall 12W combo develop a *lot* more bass when I removed the G10D-25, routed out the baffle, and fitted a G12H-30? Particularly as relatively speaking, the 12" speaker is actually in a *smaller* space - the box is the same size with a bigger speaker, and the speaker actually displaces more air from it, so it's doubly so.

For bass, the tuning of the cabinet matters much more, because to get decent bass response, particularly from small speakers, you need a more tuned cabinet design than the typical plain box with a speaker in it that you find in guitar cabs.

Where did i say it was fact that speakers had to be driven, and 12`s don`t have more bass than 10`s ?

Here:

5w is not great to drive a 2x12", but it will drive a single 10"

And here:

A 12 will not give more bass than a 10, it will just not produce the high end so well, making it sound fatter or more mid heavy.

Both these statements are flat-out wrong.

The Showman cabs were legendary for how much bass they could put out.

Yes they were. Showman cabs are 1x15" or 2x15" (Single or Dual Showman).

the only thing I have said is fact, is that the cab design is important to how that speaker behaves or sounds.

Which is absolutely true, but for a *guitar* cabinet - what we're talking about in this thread - the cabinet design is less important than the speaker, by quite a margin. We are not talking about tuned bass enclosures.

The reason everyone is disagreeing with you is because we all have simple, repeated practical experience that shows you're wrong.