Do all cabs exhibit Tweeter hiss?

[Ward B]

I was trying out a used Avatar 410 with an old GK 800RB the other day and was struck by the sound coming out of the cab even with no input (all strings muted and the tweeter turned very low). It was like the cab was 'exhaling' non-stop for lack of a better word.

Was that tweeter hiss and is it unavoidable... or was it indicative of a problem with either the head or the cab. It was louder than tweeter hiss I have heard from other cabs in stores but I am looking for my first rig and really am not sure if I should expect to be able to find a set up that is dead quiet when I am not providing any kind of input.

The seller told me all cabs exhibit tweeter hiss. What do you think?

[JimmyM]

all amps have a certain degree of hiss on the very high freqs and the tweeter will amplify them, and the louder the highs are, the more hiss you'll get. it's not the tweeter itself, although the cheap piezos in bass cabs don't exactly make it better.

[Ward B]

Does that mean that the degree of hiss you hear is more about the amp than the cab or am I over generalizing?

[bongomania]

Tweeters do not hiss. They only broadcast a sound generated by your amp. If you get hiss, it is 100% caused by your amp (and signals feeding into the amp).

[Ward B]

Got it... thanks for the response.

[seamonkey]

Not much comes out of a bass that would go through a tweeter.
Some bass heads never expected to be plugged into a cabinet with a tweeter.
Try covering the tweeter up with a piece of cardboard and see if the change in sound really matters to you.

I don't have tweeter hiss. Good power amp, clean signal chain - and all is quiet.

[Fuzzbass]

"Exhaling", to my mind, doesn't refer to the sibilant hiss that would come from a tweeter, but the point is that you're getting too much noise from your rig. Noise can come from any part of the signal chain: bass, cables, FX, amplifier. For starters, unplug the bass and all other signal processing such as FX... just leave the amp on, and observe how much hiss comes thru the speakers. If it gets noticeably worse as you plug in other stuff, then you'll want to track down the cause. It always helps to have decent cables (by that I mean average quality, not necessarily spendy stuff like Monster). And hiss frequently comes from basses if they 1) aren't properly shielded, or 2) have poor quality pickups/electronics. Also, if you're using a standard Jazz bass with single coil pickups, you can get a lot of hiss if you favor one pickup or the other rather than blending them 50-50 (both pickups on full).

[Sartori]

I don't have tweeter hiss because my cabs don't have tweeters.

[johnk_10]

Originally Posted by Fuzzbass

............. And hiss frequently comes from basses if they 1) aren't properly shielded, or 2) have poor quality pickups/electronics. Also, if you're using a standard Jazz bass with single coil pickups, you can get a lot of hiss if you favor one pickup or the other rather than blending them 50-50 (both pickups on full).

i think that you're referring to 'hum' and not 'hiss' coming from basses. active basses can his, but it really doesn't have anything to do with shielding, its has to do with their preamp's circuit noise. and passive jazz basses do not hiss at all (there's no preamp circuit). there's not much coming out of a jazz bass pickup at those freqs. and poor quality pickups do not hiss either, unless they're really cheap active ones.

[will33]

To quote Bill F. "tweeters don't hiss, amps do."

The tweeter is just picking up more of the hiss frequencies than a typical woofer will. The noise could be coming from the amp, bad or un-shielded cable on the input, noisy electronics in the instrument, a bad ground somewhere, a cheap/poorly designed crossover in the cabinet, dirty power in the outlet you're plugged into, or any number of things but it's not the tweeter that causing the hiss, it's just reproducing noise created somewhere earlier upstream.

[billfitzmaurice]

Originally Posted by Ward B

The seller told me all cabs exhibit tweeter hiss. What do you think?

No tweeters hiss. Amps hiss, tweeters reproduce it. The highest quality amps don't hiss.

[Johnny Crab]

Seller is wrong, Bill's right.

[hall1k]

Originally Posted by seamonkey

Not much comes out of a bass that would go through a tweeter.
Some bass heads never expected to be plugged into a cabinet with a tweeter.
Try covering the tweeter up with a piece of cardboard and see if the change in sound really matters to you.

I don't have tweeter hiss. Good power amp, clean signal chain - and all is quiet.

And if it sounds alright with the cardboard over the tweeter, just do a little snip-snip on it. No sense wasting power that could be going to the woofer(s).

[lbwdog]

I've always found my 1987 800RB to be a little hissy, way before tweeters. Now, it it's latter years, it seems to be a little more hissy, but still not enough to matter on a gig.

Those Avatar cabs have been said to have an annoying tweeter anyway, so combined with the 800RB, it's possibly more noticeable. I've gigged and recorded with my 800 for years and never was a problem.....Great Amp!
I'd just turn the tweeter level down on the cab and rock on.

[Ward B]

Thanks for all the input guys. For what it is worth, the GK head was made in 1990 and my bass is a Spector Classic 5 (active pre-amp).

I just got back from looking at a brand new Hartke LH500 with a Hartke VX410 that I can get for $200 less than the GK 800RB Avatar 410 set up. Definately no lack of lows on that set up and it just might be the best set up that I am going to find around here for the money ($666 Canadian).

[Foz]

I've always found my 1987 800RB to be a little hissy

+1

But since I had GK rebuild it, it a church mouse.... though it does still make that "ssschoooape" sound when i turn it off.

[naturalkinds]

Originally Posted by billfitzmaurice

The highest quality amps don't hiss.

For example? All of my amps (Glockenklang Heart-Rock, Aguilar DB 750, Markbass F1) exhibit hiss.

[johnk_10]

Originally Posted by billfitzmaurice

................The highest quality amps don't hiss.

every amp has hiss, including the very highest of quality ones, generally, the best ones have less noise/hiss, but even my high end channel strip/preamps have it, just not very much.

[JimmyM]

i think people worry too much about hiss. the second the band starts, the hiss is gone.

[Ward B]

I worry about hiss with regards to what the system is going to sound like when I am practicing at low volume at home. On the rig that I brought this whole issue up about, the hiss was very noticeable. I was concerned that it meant that there was a problem with either the head or the cab.

From the responses that I have gotten here I now beleive that it may just have been a combination that was simply more noisy than some other rigs that I have listened too and that the noise could have been caused by a bunch of different things from the house wiring on up.

I just want to end up with something that won't be distracting when I practice... that's all.