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I'm looking around for a new amp and wondering what size speaker to look for. I'm no weightlifter and prefer not to go above about 25lb for the whole combo. I'm guessing that restricts me to 10" speakers. Am I missing a lot of tone by making that choice?
I don't want to go for 8" or less. That's what I've used recently and I want a little more "breadth" to the sound.
I want reverb (preferably spring) and NO digital modelling/master volume/channel switching/stomp box distractions - just a simple amp for playing straightahead jazz. Tube or solid state - although I guess my weight requirement restricts the tube wattage ...
tia
BillLast edited by Bill C; 09-18-2009 at 05:26 AM.
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09-18-2009 05:22 AM
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I also don´t like to lift heavy, so I feel your pain.
For that and other reasons (money) i´ve bought a Blackstar HT5 combo, which is an (almost) all tube 5W amp with a 10´´ speaker.
It´s got 2 channels for clean and distorted sounds.
Although this amp is said (by the manufacturer) to be an amp perfect for rock and heavier stuff i realy like it for playing jazz and fusion.
I would even say that for the money it costs its hard to beat, unless you need more wattage. Which i don´t even need on most gigs, since the stages are tiny and the band rather quiet
This doesn´t mean that this amp is only quiet, but it overdrives faster at higher levels, which I personally enjoy a little crunch.
Back to your question about speaker size:
Although the 10´´ is realy not so bad I sometimes hook up this amp to my friends marshall 4x12 and have to say that this is much more fullfilling. Its the lowend thats not very present with a single 10´´ speaker, which is due to the physics of sound in general. With a 12´´ speaker you definately get more lowend and I also believe more stabile lower mids.
Since this is a frequency area that alot of root-tones touch, you might feel like I do: Its totally fine for most soloing but lacks during comping.
Any bigger than 12" is not made for me realy. The speaker can produce so much lowend that the bassplayer will definately decapitate you for being in oncurrence frequencywise. And yes it´s tempting to have that lowend. In a duett with e.g. a saxophone this could be an advantage though.
So I am actually very happy with my 10", because its very small and lightweight. If I need more e.g. a gig, I´ll plug it into an external 2x12" or similar, but I found myself too lazy to do that a lot of times
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I have a couple of 1-12s (Blues Jr NOS, Jazzmaster Ultralight) and they work fine. Being an inveterate tinkerer, I just ordered a Weber 1-15 cabinet (and a speaker to go in it) to mate with a Fender Band-Master VM that I like the sound of. I've been using it with a bass cab, and think it's ready for a real speaker cabinet. I'm interested in hearing my 335 through it.
Back to the original question, though: 15" combos are hard to find, unless you want to pay a little more, and they are typically fairly heavy.
Before I hit upon the idea of a head/'cab combo, I looked at Fenders: the Jazz-King (discontinued, and hard to find), the Steel-King, and the Custom 15 Twin. Peavey also makes some fifteen combos (Delta Blues?) but I've not played them and, anyway, I'm pretty much a Fender guy.
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my polytone MB III has a 15" speaker, and comes in just under 30 lbs, just a little over your limit. I'm pretty sure the MB II (12") is a few lbs lighter, even though it has the reverb tank inside as well...
of course, if you want really light, why get a combo?
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That's good to know.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
As to your question, that's how I ended up with a head (and soon, a cabinet). After horsing an Ampeg combo amp in and out of dance halls (I played bass in a honky tonk band) I finally got smart and replaced the Ampeg with a 22 lb head and a 30 lb cab -- sure, the total's over 50, but individually they are easily manageable. I have another cab I can add for larger venues, and no single piece is over 50 lb.
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One of the industry standards is the Raezor's Edge line. Here are some models. Note the weight and speaker size.
http://www.greensquare.net/RaezersEdge/framesetprod.asp
Another is Redstone cabs
Redstone Audio
These are often paired with an Acoustic Image amp or similar. Many pros use this set up, and in fact, may be the most popular set up today.
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I just ordered a Henriksen JazzAmp 112 (combo)! It weighs 32 lbs, which is the same as my Cube 60, so I know it will be manageable to carry. (I don’t do subway gigs.) Henriksen has a number of configurations available, and the 10” models’ compact size and portability was very alluring. But I know from experience that I much prefer a single 12” to a single 10”. (I do like 2-10’s, but then there’s that ugly size and weight issue again.) I ordered the outboard tweeter as well, but that weighs almost nothing and should fit in an old camera bag I’ve already commandeered for that purpose. That being said, if price had been no object, I would have ordered the ‘Convertible’ – a separate head and 10” speaker cabinet that fit together in a single bag with a total weight of 25 lbs – and a separate 12” speaker cabinet (24 lbs), plus (again) the external tweeter (2.5 lbs). I don’t mind lugging a few extra things; I just don’t want to lug one really heavy thing.
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I know a lot of guitarists pair an Acoustic Image head with one of those cabinets, but I'm curious about trying some of the AI combos, like the Corus+: 800 watts and 20 lbs! Originally Posted by derek
Acoustic Image | Corus | Features
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And if I really need to travel light, I've also got a VOX DA10 (10w, 2x6.5" speakers, 16.5 lbs, and can run on batteries). I normally use it just for practice and teaching, but it works quite satisfactorily for low volume solo and duo live performances in smallish rooms (and it's diminutive size doesn't scare away the participants at acoustic jams when I want to play electric).
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And don't forget the Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight: 26 lb, 250 watts. I love mine.
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I like 2×10" very mutch.
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I'm always singing the praises of the Evans RE200, I got the one with the tube pre-amp & the SS power amp. 200 watts, 1x10, under 25 lbs. For my applications, it has all the tone & power I need in a very manageable package. Originally Posted by Bill C
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... yes, the RE200 is top of my list at the moment. Small, lots of power, looks great. How's the build quality - it looks excellent from pictures. Any mains hum or hiss? Originally Posted by riovine
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Is there any advantage to a 15" speaker over the 12" speaker for a guitarist?
If you are interested in clean headroom, would a bass amp or acoustic amp work for the guitarist?
Thanks!
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The build quality is rock solid. This is my 3rd Evans. While they all sounded great, my first JE200 was very feedback prone, and a little on the heavy & bulky side. My second JE200 was much better with feedback, and they made the cabinet smaller, but it was still almost 40 lbs. My RE200 is the best feedback wise. It is also the smallest & lightest. The JE200 might have a little bigger sound due to the 12" speaker. But I think the RE200 has a more balanced sound overall. Originally Posted by Bill C
As for noisiness, they are dead quiet. Probably the quietest amp I've ever played. I literally can discern no difference when the amp is on and when it is off, and I usually run my volume & master both at 5, which provides plenty of volume for the kind of gigs I play.
Some people have complained about the non-standard EQ section, but after you play around with it and dial in your sound, you get used to it.
They also have some nice small touches. They typically have a very long chord which wraps around the guides and tucks away very nicely. They also have a nice beefy leather handle, which makes carrying it very comfortable.
Good luck.
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thanks - sounds like the amp for me - just got to sell a couple of guitars ...
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I hope that I'll have a definitive answer in about three weeks, when my Weber 15" is due in. Originally Posted by rhh7
An acoustic amp is designed to be higher fidelity than the typical electric guitar amp, and this is not necessarily a good thing. Many guitarists prefer the amp to color the sound (if you ever try recording a solid body guitar through DI, without an amp, you'll hear why this is true).
The converse is true, that some players like to plug their acoustic-electrics into electric guitar amps (a good friend loves the sound of his Fishman Aura equipped Martin through my Fender Jazzmaster Ultralight).
Bass speakers typically have limited upper frequency extension, and may be voiced in ways that don't sound good to a guitarist, although I used to play my '63 Chet Atkins Country Gent through my '63 Ampeg B15N -- but that was a remarkable amp in a lot of ways. Recently -- as I may have noted above -- I've been playing my 335 into a Fender Band-Master VM head into a Hartke 1-15 cabinet, which sounds a bit on the lifeless side, although that cabinet works fine for bass. The bass box trades bass frequency extension for other considerations by using a sealed or ported cabinet; a proper guitar speaker, since cone extension is not a problem, often use an open-back that doesn't dampen the cone so much. In other words, what you lose at the bottom, you gain on top.
Another strategy is to use multiple, smaller speaker for the requisite cone area without losing the quicker transient response. My favorite examples of this are the Fender Super Reverb and my late lamented Hartke 410XL cabinet, both of which feature four 10" speakers. This comes at the expense of weight, which is why I don't have a Super and why I traded off the 410XL.
All the above is the roughly theoretical framework for my ordering the Weber: I wanted the rounder, bottom-heavy sound of the larger speaker without losing sparkle. Whether my reasoning is correct will be determined by the end of the month. Naturally, I reserve the right to claim that the combination "sounds just the way I planned" regardless of the actual sonic result.
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Any plans to rent out that phrase ? I may be interested if the price is right ... Originally Posted by lpdeluxe
Naturally, I reserve the right to claim that the combination "sounds just the way I planned" regardless of the actual sonic result.
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I'm afraid it would not withstand a court case if I tried to protect its exclusiveness: it, or its equivalent, has had common currency as long as I've been alive (it's not true, by the way, that I'm older than dirt, but I knew him when he was a boy and quite a trial to his mother). Originally Posted by randyc
So it's public domain -- feel free to use it, if you haven't already, in the past (your secret is safe with me).
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As long as we're talking speaker size, what about frequency response? I was looking at the specs of some 15" speakers (Eminence Legends and some others -- not subwoofers) and their frequency response topped out at 4K or 5K. I'm getting a Phil Jones Ag-100 and it's little 5" speakers top out at 15K -- that's a three octave difference. But I've heard guitar amps with 15" speakers and they sound great (polytones and the Fender Jazz King).
What should you look for in an upper limit? Are there 15 inchers with more of a hi0fi output? What's the Weber rated at?
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I've looked into this before and it can be confusing ... for example, looking at the sound pressure level curves (SPL) for various speakers and trying intuitively to imagine how they would sound, even in something as simple as an open-backed cabinet. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
But the SPL curves can give you a clue, compare the curves of the speakers that interest you to see which gives more peaking in the 6 or 7 kHz range, for example.
Speaking strictly as an amateur at speaker/cabinet design, I just don't think the upper frequency response is all that important unless it's REALLY bad - like 20 or 30 dB bad - as the frequency approaches that 6 - 7 kHz region.
The reason I feel this way is that almost any amplifier tone control circuit has excessive cut/boost built into the circuit. If you like 15's, most amplifiers can accomodate them simply by boosting the treble control to offset the roll-off of the speakers.
Not to say that real-life amplifier/speaker/cabinet situations are always this simple. If there is excessive phase shift in the speaker/cabinet system, it can negatively affect vacuum tube amplifiers especially. This is because they depend on negative feedback from the speaker to maintain amplitude flatness. Too much phase shift and you have big-time feedback issues.
One can always install a crossover/tweeter to get better high frequency response, these things are almost as cheap as dirt. Mostly though, they are not needed - even if a large speaker has limited high frequency response, it usually has enough non-linearity to produce harmonically-related components that may give a satisfying sound.
Back in the day, I played in rock bands always using my Bassman driving a pair of D-130s. I had no problem at all getting "the sound", even in the sealed Bassman enclosure. This is just another way of repeating the statement above about tone control circuits having lots of variation to compensate for other shortcomings in the amplifier/speaker/enclosure system.
Getting back to SPL curves for a moment, the thing that troubles me about modern speakers is that they become less and less efficient, compared to the old JBL's, Altec/Lansings and the like. My speculation is that, because amplifier output power is now cheap, there is no emphasis on maintaining loudspeaker efficiency.
It's sort of like writing software; no matter how much memory the CPU manufacturer gives a programmer, he/she will use it all and ask for more. It's just simpler for them to ask for more memory instead of writing more efficient code.
As has been stated by several forum contributors, guitar amplifiers are not high-fidelity devices. Curiously, a good bass amplifier/speaker system is usually a better reproducer of sound than most guitar systems. Bass players love to have the high frequency response that allows them to use the enhanced transient reproduction to "snap, crackle and pop".
Postscript:
As I mentioned in an earlier post, speaker displacement determines low frequency response ... here's the fundamental expression that describes that behavior:
a = d*f^2*[(2*PI)^2]/g where a is the acceleration of the object (speaker cone in this discussion), d is the distance moved by the cone, f is frequency in Hz, PI = 3.14159 and g is acceleration due to gravity or 386 inches/sec/sec
keeping the acceleration level constant at, say ten g's, and changing the frequency from 100 Hz to 10 Khz, one can find that the speaker cone moves .010 inch at 100 Hz but only has to move .000001 inch at 10 KHz, to produce the same acceleration (or sound pressure level, in a perfect speaker), a ratio of 10,000:1Last edited by randyc; 10-03-2009 at 07:50 PM. Reason: added postscript
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Thanks, Raney: my cat jumped on the keyboard while I was typing an elaborate response that wasn't as clear as yours.
Last edited by lpdeluxe; 10-03-2009 at 07:56 PM. Reason: see above
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I get the feeling it's less science and more just listening to see what sounds you like. But Weber is a good example. They make quite a few 15's: the vintage series which I guess is lower wattage and early break up (tweedy) and the high power series (California, Chicago, Thames, Texas...) AlNiCo or Ceramic, etc... How does one begin to choose?
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The only thing you can do is to make an informed guess. As Randy pointed out, it's not the raw frequency response, but the peaks that determine the "personality" of a speaker. And beware of hype: every speaker maker makes at least one "D130F" clone, whether they do or not. Experience with a variety of speaker configurations, wedded to a lot of pious hope, works best. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
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John, you're right, it can go on and on and ... Big D, you too, there's a lot more trial and error in this process than "design".
This is an illustration of that, something I just recalled. When I replaced the tiny speaker that came in my 70's Fender Champ with a Jenson 10 inch speaker, I was still unhappy with the sound.
I did some measurements, lots of listening, clamped various sized boards over the back of the amplifier and finally ended up with this piece of cedar. Seemed to give the smoothest response across the frequency of interest. One of these days I'll paint it black ...
The point is that there are variables involved in combining a speaker with an enclosure that may work to one's advantage in "tuning" the combination to your liking. (You can just see the "Jenson" label through the port hole.)
Last edited by randyc; 10-03-2009 at 08:11 PM.
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