It's 15s it's is!

[Lozz196]

I’m in general not that concerned with speaker sizes but a few years back used an Ashdown 2x15 and it was really good, in fact it was using that cab that made me switch to Ashdown gear.

[Rosie C]

22 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

I enjoyed playing around with my 15 and the Bash coincided with a couple of people asking for a 15" design. So... I've quietly adapted the design I have to be an 'Easy Build' project and when the drawings are ready it will be good to go. It weighs in at around 14kg at the moment which for me is a one handed carry. 

 

14kg? That's fantastic. I believe my current 15" cab is 37kg which is why it's just for my practice space. But a portable 15" would be interesting...

 

We were just talking about winning the lottery last night and I said one of the 'life changing' things I'd do was hire a roadie with a van to arrange for my gear to be ready for me at every gig, bass tuned, etc. so I just have to turn up and walk on stage. 

[itu]

38 minutes ago, Beedster said:

Exactly 😆

 

There's Dylan. 

Fixed. 

[Rosie C]

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Edited 11 hours ago by Rosie C

[Rosie C]

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Edited 11 hours ago by Rosie C

[Lozz196]

3 minutes ago, Rosie C said:

We were just talking about winning the lottery last night and I said one of the 'life changing' things I'd do was hire a roadie with a van to arrange for my gear to be ready for me at every gig, bass tuned, etc. so I just have to turn up and walk on stage. 

That would be the ideal gig.

[uk_lefty]

I can't begin to understand the science, maybe it's down to coincidence... When I had an Ashdown Routmaster set up I preferred their 15" cabs over their 2x10s. I had both at the same time. So for me I've just sort of stuck to 15s, though a Trace Elliot 2x10 combo sounds stunning. This morning I just picked up a 4x10 cab because I like the idea of having only one cab in my office rather than 2x 15s...

 

Now someone is going to tell me that will make no difference whatsoever... But it will, one box takes up less space than two.

[BigRedX]

Most of the time the second cab only takes up additional vertical space. It also has the advantage of raising the upper cab closer to your ears where it is doing some good for being heard rather than your knees.

Edited 11 hours ago by BigRedX

[Muzz]

It's not the speaker size alone, it's the speaker plus enclosure which sounds the way it does; I had a Schroeder 1515L for years, and while I loved it (very honky soloed, on a stage very present; not tons of low bass, but then that's my taste), I'm gonna say it sounded like no other 2 x 15 I'd heard before or since, and that was down to the enclosure design.

 

Technology has moved on a lot in the last few years, and a wide range of drivers can sound any way the designer wants without relying on/starting with cone size, so cone size itself is moving into the personally-observable and personally-preferential areas of things like, erm, tonewoods...

 

Sorry about the t-word...

[warwickhunt]

46 minutes ago, Rosie C said:

14kg? That's fantastic. I believe my current 15" cab is 37kg which is why it's just for my practice space. But a portable 15" would be interesting...

 

We were just talking about winning the lottery last night and I said one of the 'life changing' things I'd do was hire a roadie with a van to arrange for my gear to be ready for me at every gig, bass tuned, etc. so I just have to turn up and walk on stage. 

 

My 15" cab... but it doesn't 'sound' like most people expect a 15" to sound!   

 

[la bam]

So... If I played 16th notes with a fat bass sound would the speed and size of a driver matter? I'm sure it does. That was the old argument for 10s being (perceived) as a tighter sound as they move quicker? 

[snorkie635]

Moi brain 'urts!

 

 

[Musicman20]

2 hours ago, Beedster said:

Exactly 😆

 

There's a song by Dylan, I forget which one, and it has the most awful dissonance at one point - it's in a sax solo - to the point that it makes my teeth hurt! My bandmate's can't hear it, or more to the point, it isn't dissonant to them. Brains are funny things  

It's a bit like how I LOVE the treble/bite/zing of a bridge Telecaster pickup, but in my old band, the other guitarist wasn't keen at all. The frequencies did not gel with him, whereas I knew it was overly aggressive in the treble but liked it for that reason. 

 

I did what every person should do, if it works in the mix, carry on.

[Steve Browning]

1 hour ago, la bam said:

So... If I played 16th notes with a fat bass sound would the speed and size of a driver matter? I'm sure it does. That was the old argument for 10s being (perceived) as a tighter sound as they move quicker? 

 

This was the exact reason (I recall) Mark King saying why he used 10s, back in the day.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

1 hour ago, la bam said:

So... If I played 16th notes with a fat bass sound would the speed and size of a driver matter? I'm sure it does. That was the old argument for 10s being (perceived) as a tighter sound as they move quicker? 

Myth. It would be true if voice coils reacted to electron waves within the realm of the speed of sound. They don't. They react within the realm of the speed of light. It's a good thing too, because the frequencies of the notes played are determined by how fast the cone moves. If larger cones moved more slowly you might play a C but it could be heard as a B. 😒

[EliasMooseblaster]

4 hours ago, chris_b said:

Even after it's been explained, people are still saying they prefer something which has no bearing on the sound. . . . a speaker size!!!

The devil on my shoulder is telling me to post something about how a good 12" speaker really helps bring out the difference the flamed maple cap is making to my core tone...

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Wood species, and therefore density, makes a lot of difference in tone, as it directly impacts the resonant properties of an instrument. Speaker size alone doesn't. Interestingly I've noticed that a high percentage of those who think that wood density doesn't matter also think that the cone size does. 🤔

[BigRedX]

4 minutes ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Wood species, and therefore density, makes a lot of difference in tone, as it directly impacts the resonant properties of an instrument. Speaker size alone doesn't. Interestingly I've noticed that a high percentage of those who think that wood density doesn't matter also think that the cone size does. 🤔

 

But species alone doesn't completely define wood density, it's also dependent on the climactic conditions where the tree was growing and to a certain degree what has happened to the wood after the tree was cut down. On top of that very few solid electric instruments are made out of a single piece of wood for the body or neck so therefore construction methods are also massively important.

 

In the same way that the sound of a speaker cab is dependant on not only the technical specifications of the driver(s) housed in it but also, the size, rigidity and porting. 

 

In both cases trying to assign a sonic characteristic to a single attribute is foolish and pointless.

[itu]

...and as long as we talk about tonewoods, we should talk about toneshapes. Every shape has a resonance, where frequency is affected by density, and stiffness among other features. Neck is one long and moving object when hit. 

 

I hate this tonewood discussion because it is always and every time simplified to the wood species and the manufacturer. Physical specs and features do not interest anyone. Lame. 

[Muzz]

Y'see, I did apologise for mentioning the t-word...it was only as a comparitive example, yer Honour... 😐😀

[Dan Dare]

I like 5" drivers. Lots of 'em.

[Steve Browning]

9 minutes ago, Dan Dare said:

I like 5" drivers. Lots of 'em.

Blasphemer!!!!!! 🙂

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

But species alone doesn't completely define wood density, it's also dependent on the climactic conditions where the tree was growing and to a certain degree what has happened to the wood after the tree was cut down. 

Of course. But one need not be an arborealist to know that maple and walnut will have higher density than poplar and spruce, while luthiers know which species give them what they, or their customers, want. 

Quote

On top of that very few solid electric instruments are made out of a single piece of wood for the body or neck so therefore construction methods are also massively important.

Also of course. One disadvantage to high density wood is weight, so to keep the weight down you need to go with some measure of hollowing out the body. Mine I made of all rosewood, neck through, with the bouts made in two pieces, each hollowed out to about 6mm thick. This gives the high density advantages of bright tone, tremendous tuning stability and almost endless sustain without being too heavy. I like the looks of it too. 

 

[LawrenceH]

I believe there are some nuances that tend to get ignored or downplayed when it comes to people's subjective preferences, despite the subject being done to death in other ways.

Especially when standing right next to a cab, dispersion matters, and related to that, comb filtering (from multiple drivers) matters. Multiple stacked 10s only sum to a coherent point source well below 1kHz. Above that you're going to start to get lobing. Everyone's heard this when adding a second cab. It doesn't just get universally louder, it gets bassier.

 

Cab shape, especially height, matters. A generic single 15 mounted low down is going to sound smoother than a generic 410 (limited HF dispersal, no comb filtering). The filtering aspect isn't necessarily obvious in a single listening test - but put that cab into different acoustic spaces and you're going to get greater apparent inconsistencies between spaces. I suspect one of several reasons an 810 is favoured is that the comb filtering gets smeared out at a given listening position due to the complexity of the summing pattern.

 

Add to that the use of similar/same drivers across multiple manufacturers and you could easily develop a 'sound' you associate with a particular speaker size. Especially drivers like Eminence with characteristic breakup peaks for particular models.

 

TLDR I believe there are some practical differences in how different size drivers might be perceived standing up close.