15 or not 15? What do you think?

[Chienmortbb]

Alex from Batrfaced has a video on three 15” cabs on YouTube . Thoughts? 
 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:10 by Chienmortbb

[joel406]

I'll take IEM's for the win.

[Steve Browning]

15's are the future! 🙂

 

When Barefaced first appeared, it was 15's all the way. The website went to great lengths to extol their virtues. 

 

I agree with Alex that the TE cab sounds best (to me). Of course I'm biased, having been a 15's fanboi since starting playing about 50 years ago. The only non 15 unit I have is the passive radiator in the bottom of the Walkabout cabinet.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Dispersion, dispersion, dispersion. It's inversely proportional to the size of the source. The main reason for larger drivers is they can move more air than smaller drivers. If you use multiple smaller drivers you can move just as much air with higher efficiency and wider dispersion so long as they're vertically aligned. Fifteens work best where dispersion isn't a concern, which means either in sub or in 2 way or 3 way cabs where the fifteen is only run to 800Hz or so.

[gjones]

I have a 2nd generation Barefaced Compact with a 15 inch driver, it's very good.

 

In that video I prefer the sound of the Markbass as it sounds punchier with more low mids.

[aniki]

I used to like the 810 due to having drivers up closer to your ears. My back of course no longer likes this solution!
Nowadays I prefer 15's to anything. I run either two 15's stacked vertically or if with the 'two amp band', 4x 15's. They're all neo's so simple to move around.

The cabs are fairly efficient and I use tube heads so volume is never an issue (except being too loud)

Tonally I get everything from my basses rather than pedals and don't find 15's lacking in any way...

[neepheid]

15" cabs don't fit in my car.  12" cabs do.  So purely from a practicality point of view, I'll stick with the 12s, thanks.

[Beer of the Bass]

My takeaway from the video was less about them being 15s, and more about how some of those older driver designs have a really pleasing thing going on in the mids and highs, if they're used without pushing their limits too hard. The others have portability and overall volume advantages, but that Trace cab is an immediately likeable bass sound for me.

[chris_b]

Between the 70's and the mid 80's I used Fender, Ampeg and Peavey 15" cabs. Then 20 years of EV15's in Dynacord and Mesa Boogie cabs (IMO the best of the lot).

 

But with the advent of "properly" designed 12" cabs I don't see the need for anything larger.

[fretmeister]

The best bit about the video is showing that 15 inch cones do not have "a sound" and that they can be very very different.

 

As much as I am a Mark Bass fan, their 15 inch cabs have always been a bit flubby. I did the common 151HF with the CSM 102p combo for quite a while and I never could et the EQ to work well with the 10 inch cones and the 15. Sounded much better with one or the other. Eventually I got a pair of MB 121 Club cabs instead and used them for a while. Two identical cabs = dead easy to EQ without a problem.

[DGBass]

I'm still unsure what the point of the comparison is other than 15" speakers are perhaps still a viable option, and depending on any feedback or demand for them BF recieve they may build 15" cabs again. But as Mr. BF mentioned it would likely be a 2x15 only they would be interested in building. That's still going to be a physically large cab even if they apply the same sonics and design philosophy as they do to their smaller driver cabs. It would also likely have a pro crossover and tweeter adding to size and complexity, and i'll guess a potential £2k plus price tag. Personally I like 15'' speakers, always have done, still use them, and for a particular sound they make and how they feel in use. The 1518 cab in the video sounded the best overall imho and reminded me of the 1518 I owned which was an early 90s grey tolex with the Celestion C15J-300. It really could handle a lot of bottom end but also had that extra mid/brightness the older cab with the Fane has. The cab in the video is an 80s version and ten years is a sizeable gap in speaker design that imho made the 90s grey tolex TE cabs much more useable. 

 

Still, it's nice to see and hear a near 40 year old cab still has something to give tonally, as long as you are using an amp from the same era ,eg. something like an AH150/200/250. And of course if you are happy to lug it about. Well designed high output 15" cabs that can deliver prodigous low end , have meaty mids, and sparkling highs are never going to be compact, cheap, or ultra lightweight. Thats one reason it would be difficult to persuade players to exchange their lightweight ten and twelve cabs for a 'decent' modern well designed 15" cab.  I'll be the first to applaud if BF could work their magic on such a cab that doesn't end up costing a king's ransom. So, thumbs up from me for any development into modern 15" cabs, especially single 15 inch cabs.     

[Bagman]

3 hours ago, chris_b said:

Between the 70's and the mid 80's I used Fender, Ampeg and Peavey 15" cabs. Then 20 years of EV15's in Dynacord and Mesa Boogie cabs (IMO the best of the lot).

 

But with the advent of "properly" designed 12" cabs I don't see the need for anything larger.

I used the Black Widow 15" from Peavey cabinet for many years - hundreds of gigs

[Bagman]

8 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Dispersion, dispersion, dispersion. It's inversely proportional to the size of the source. The main reason for larger drivers is they can move more air than smaller drivers. If you use multiple smaller drivers you can move just as much air with higher efficiency and wider dispersion so long as they're vertically aligned. Fifteens work best where dispersion isn't a concern, which means either in sub or in 2 way or 3 way cabs where the fifteen is only run to 800Hz or so.

i still use an Ashdown ABM 1510HX from 1998

I am unsure why I like tis cabinet so much 

[Lozz196]

21 minutes ago, Bagman said:

I used the Black Widow 15" from Peavey cabinet for many years - hundreds of gigs

I had one of those, great sounding cab.

[Bagman]

5 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

I had one of those, great sounding cab.

I preferred the 1x15 more than the 1x18 + 2x10 

[SimonK]

I've got back into 15s and 18s this last year following about ten years of only playing 10s. Indeed I'm beginning to like the combination of 10s and 15s/18s in some of the following cabs. Yes I get that there can be cancellation when you do that however move slightly and it's not a problem! The combination just seems to give an interesting dimension to the sound for me.

 

Current rig of favour:

 

Two other fun options:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bagman]

hey the  greenish colour stingray is nice

 

TE cabs ? 15/10 at top photo? I vaguely remember a 15 + 2x8  in the early 90's but might have been Laney 

[Chimike]

My recently built Greenboy 12/6 , and  15/6, although on the 15/6 I had to move the port to the rear

of the cab, and add a false floor to get the "Vox" look ! I still LOVE 15's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SimonK]

1 minute ago, Bagman said:

hey the  greenish colour stingray is nice

 

TE cabs ? 15/10 at top photo? I vaguely remember a 15 + 2x8  in the early 90's but might have been Laney 

 

If you are referring to my picture the top two cabs are the Trace Elliot compact 1153 and 2103X (I just took the badges off as I don't like them sideways)! And yes the 2103x had two 5 inch and two 10 inch drivers.

 

Stingray is a translucent blue/green colour - possible my favourite colour for instruments!

[ajkula66]

Nothing to bring back since - as far as I'm concerned - the 15" cabs never went away.

 

I don't mind a nice 4x10" setup - or even the monstrous EV1803 - but my preference were always 15" loaded cabs, be it single. double or a quad...

 

Many harvests ago I played a festival with a Marshall Major head and two matching 4x15" cabinets...a *lot* of air got moved that night by silly old me...

 

Ahh to be young again...and playing through 15" speakers makes me at least feel young(er)...

 

Obviously, YMMV and then some...

 

[SimonK]

5 hours ago, ajkula66 said:

Nothing to bring back since - as far as I'm concerned - the 15" cabs never went away.

 

I don't mind a nice 4x10" setup - or even the monstrous EV1803 - but my preference were always 15" loaded cabs, be it single. double or a quad...

 

Many harvests ago I played a festival with a Marshall Major head and two matching 4x15" cabinets...a *lot* of air got moved that night by silly old me...

 

Ahh to be young again...and playing through 15" speakers makes me at least feel young(er)...

 

Obviously, YMMV and then some...

 

 

I think I got scared off by people saying you shouldn's mix speaker sizes, and given I prefer the sound of 2 or 4x10s over 1x15, kind of went down that route for the last ten years or so. But then when I hooked a 15 up again a few months back I realised that actually regardless of what people say online, the combination of speaker sizes do sound really good. As such I am returning to the 20th century view of a stack with one big 15/18 and some 10s regardless of cancellation or whatever else scaremongers might say...

[warwickhunt]

8 minutes ago, SimonK said:

 

I think I got scared off by people saying you shouldn's mix speaker sizes, and given I prefer the sound of 2 or 4x10s over 1x15, kind of went down that route for the last ten years or so. But then when I hooked a 15 up again a few months back I realised that actually regardless of what people say online, the combination of speaker sizes do sound really good. As such I am returning to the 20th century view of a stack with one big 15/18 and some 10s regardless of cancellation or whatever else scaremongers might say...

 

I think the argument is that mixing random speakers (by manufacturer or size/shape et al) can produce random/unanticipated outcomes.  

 

It isn't to say that it can't/won't be pleasing but there is an element of unpredictability in the resulting sound.  If someone loves a particular sound and just wants more of it, then another identical cab will give the same resulting sound... just more of it.  However, if you pair an alternative cab that wasn't initially designed to be paired (full range cabs rarely IF EVER are, even when we were throwing 4x10s on top of 1x15s), you could get results that aren't as pleasing.  

 

It should also be stressed that not all 5/6/8/10/12/15/18 inch drivers produce the same sound/tone.  Speaking of real world experience not science, I've owned enough cabs and played through more, to know that when someone says that a 10/12/15 is their thing, what they are voicing is that they like the sound of that speaker (irrespective of diameter) in that size/ported cab and many similar cabs sound... similar.  What you tend to find is that many 1x15 cabs actually have more internal volume/space.  I'd surmise that cab builders make them standard width/height/depth and the speaker has more air, whereas 4x10" drivers crammed in the same box hasn't sufficient volume.  Look at the 1x15" TE cab in Alex's video, it is massive and nobody these days is making that size cab.  Also a 2x10 cab will almost certainly be built 'down' to a size as opposed to using the same volume as a 1x15.  I did a recording of multiple cabs in a real world situation (mic placed a set distance from cabs etc) and nobody could correctly identify the 2x10, 1x12, 2x12 or 1x15 cabs.  In fact the 1x15 in question was missed by everyone who had a guess and ALL said it was a 2x10 cab (experiment on BC somewhere).

 

Saying all of that, if you put 2 (or more) cabs together and you like what you hear, then that is an absolute result which nobody can argue with because it is what YOU are wanting to achieve/hear.  

[SimonK]

28 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

I think the argument is that mixing random speakers (by manufacturer or size/shape et al) can produce random/unanticipated outcomes.  

 

It isn't to say that it can't/won't be pleasing but there is an element of unpredictability in the resulting sound.  If someone loves a particular sound and just wants more of it, then another identical cab will give the same resulting sound... just more of it.  However, if you pair an alternative cab that wasn't initially designed to be paired (full range cabs rarely IF EVER are, even when we were throwing 4x10s on top of 1x15s), you could get results that aren't as pleasing.  

 

Maybe ☝️ is the important thing. Mixing different speakers is a bit random but if it sounds good go for it. BUT trying to get more of a sound you already like by adding additional speakers is actually quite hard if you are not just adding more of the same.

 

Thus said there is a caveman side of me that does think more is more.... 😈 🤘

[BigRedX]

37 minutes ago, warwickhunt said:

Saying all of that, if you put 2 (or more) cabs together and you like what you hear, then that is an absolute result which nobody can argue with because it is what YOU are wanting to achieve/hear.  

 

But that only works if your rig is a stage prop or just for personal monitoring (with the FoH supplied via the PA).

 

However, if you rely on your rig to project your bass sound into the whole venue, then what sounds awesome when you are stood next to it may well sound entirely different out in the audience and not necessarily in a good way due to the different dispersal characteristics and the drivers and the cabs they are contained in.

[warwickhunt]

2 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

But that only works if your rig is a stage prop or just for personal monitoring (with the FoH supplied via the PA).

 

However, if you rely on your rig to project your bass sound into the whole venue, then what sounds awesome when you are stood next to it may well sound entirely different out in the audience and not necessarily in a good way due to the different dispersal characteristics and the drivers and the cabs they are contained in.

 

There is/could be an argument that the sound you are creating is 'your' sound and it is what you want the audience to hear, they have no say in how it should be... good or bad.    

 

I suppose it's a bit like your Helix generated tone that is sculpted by you, to your exacting spec.  The audience don't get to choose how that sounds, indeed you are reliant on the FOH for the final tone and I've seen many PA set ups that are a dog's dinner (hired in pub/club); we've all read that subs need to be placed 'x' distance apart or located next/on top of each other... yet I see more 15" mid/tops mounted on poles above 15" subs 20 feet apart.    However, we digress back to another BC favourite!  LOL