New bass cabs w/o tweets.

[bassix]

I'm sure this topic has already been discussed ad nauseam on TB but I'm beginning to 'discover' bass cabs w/o tweeters or hf horns. At Namm in January I came across two different manufacturers - Baer and Jaguar - who had (great sounding!) cabs with cone speakers only. The Baer cabs with 12's and 6's were very punchy and smooth sounding with PLENTY of hf content. The Jaguar Bass 200 all tube bass head coupled with a 4 x 10" cabs - sans tweets - again had plenty of glassy highs, very present (almost too present) mids, and a nice punchy low end.

I remember the first time I played through a spankin' new SWR Redhead and had that experience of fnally hearing my bass in total. My impression was that it was like taking a blanket off the sound. However, over the years I've grown sick of brittle high end, overemphasized string (non musical) noise, and just plain honky, bad sounding cabs. Granted a lot of this is from cheap poorly designed cabs, but it is very encouraging to hear what can be accomplished with good properly voiced components in good cabinets.

[James Hart]

Originally Posted by bassix

However, over the years I've grown sick of brittle high end, overemphasized string (non musical) noise, and just plain honky, bad sounding cabs.

Part of the reason I went back to Bag End and lost all cabinet GAS!

I am glad to hear other builders are joining in the 'no tweeter/horn' game.

[Mulebagger]

+many for Bag End! I do prefer the series with the Coaxial speakers though. D10BX-D probably one of my favorite cabinets ever.

[Calaverasgrande]

why I ripped the wires out of my crossover and wired the 15 direct on my mesa 15".
HATE that above 4k treble on bass.
When I am president, all bass amps will be required to have 6db per octave lowpass at 4k.

[Double Agent]

In the spirit of feeling extremely unhelpful today, I have a question...can't you just turn the tweeter off on just about ANY cab on the market? Does just having it there make a difference (i.e. suck tone, even when turned off)?

[MooseLumps]

not all tweeters have a control to interface with, but they all respond the same way to a pair of wire cutters

[JimmyM]

there are also some cabs that when you turn the tweeter off, you expose a giant hole in the response. there are also cabs that cross the tweeter over at too low a spot, and the woofers don't have enough brightness. so it really all depends on the cab.

[mrkreuzschlitz]

Originally Posted by MooseLumps

not all tweeters have a control to interface with, but they all respond the same way to a pair of wire cutters

HAHAHAHAHAH +1!!!

[bassix]

Originally Posted by Calaverasgrande

why I ripped the wires out of my crossover and wired the 15 direct on my mesa 15".
HATE that above 4k treble on bass.
When I am president, all bass amps will be required to have 6db per octave lowpass at 4k.

Crazy thing is, that is exactly why I went for tweets in the first place. I personally don't like woolly sound of everything below 4k rolled off. But with the current crop of cone drivers, it's possible to get the extra high end to hear the strings breathing w/o all the extra junk.

[rpsands]

No, it is not possible to get a serious response above 4khz with conventional bass drivers (15-10, even 8) because the sacrifices you have to make to get decent low end preclude putting out much above 3-4khz on the top (at the best).

Almost every bass cab on the market without tweeters falls off on-axis or has a jagged nasty response curve. Those that don't are gone off-axis by 2khz worst-case, so only people standing right in line with your speakers hear the string noise and similar.

If you want good highs on and off-axis, a line array of 10s is pretty much the only conventional direct radiating setup you can use, and even then you're losing off-axis above 2khz anyway.

The only real answer is a cone midrange or a high quality horn crossed over by ~2khz with the 10s, or ~1500hz for 12s, or 1200hz for 15s. It gets progressively harder to use a horn there the lower you go, so a cone midrange makes great sense for anything larger than a 10.

If you're not using a horn loaded alignment, a smaller midrange or HF driver, any output above 2khz is going to be touchy at best in a room. Maybe you'll hear it on stage, but probably not.

[Washishimi]

[rpsands]

MMm, random drivers in a box. Yeaaah.

[Jaco who?]

Oh boy another "I hate tweeters" thread, how unique.

Off axis, unless you're talking about possibly 8" woofers w/maybe a 2khz compression driver, most cabs with tweeters have a giant hole in the response anyway.

When you play everything from SRV to Anita Baker, it's hard to give up on tweeters altogether, and with my darker sounding jazz fretless w/model J's, the tweeter doesn't really reproduce any brash sounding highs anyway, so I guess it's a non issue for me.

[Spinal Tapper]

Orange - hands down the best IMO.

[jastacey]

Redstar Audio makes a 4x10 without tweeters, it's a nice punchy sounding cabinet

[Bmorefoozler]

Originally Posted by rpsands

No, it is not possible to get a serious response above 4khz with conventional bass drivers (15-10, even 8) because the sacrifices you have to make to get decent low end preclude putting out much above 3-4khz on the top (at the best).

Almost every bass cab on the market without tweeters falls off on-axis or has a jagged nasty response curve. Those that don't are gone off-axis by 2khz worst-case, so only people standing right in line with your speakers hear the string noise and similar.

If you want good highs on and off-axis, a line array of 10s is pretty much the only conventional direct radiating setup you can use, and even then you're losing off-axis above 2khz anyway.

The only real answer is a cone midrange or a high quality horn crossed over by ~2khz with the 10s, or ~1500hz for 12s, or 1200hz for 15s. It gets progressively harder to use a horn there the lower you go, so a cone midrange makes great sense for anything larger than a 10.

If you're not using a horn loaded alignment, a smaller midrange or HF driver, any output above 2khz is going to be touchy at best in a room. Maybe you'll hear it on stage, but probably not.

Baer's cabs seem to be very similar to a 12/6... Appears to be a true two way without tweeter.

[rpsands]

Originally Posted by Bmorefoozler

Baer's cabs seem to be very similar to a 12/6... Appears to be a true two way without tweeter.

Totally legit. I haven't seen his stuff

My cab is a 15/6 with no tweeter so I am not like pro tweeter necessarily. Just anti-deluding yourself into thinking because a speaker goes to 4khz it's actually achieving it in a useful pattern.

[Bmorefoozler]

Originally Posted by rpsands

Totally legit. I haven't seen his stuff

My cab is a 15/6 with no tweeter so I am not like pro tweeter necessarily. Just anti-deluding yourself into thinking because a speaker goes to 4khz it's actually achieving it in a useful pattern.

http://baeramplification.com/cabs.html

Looks like nice stuff, and he's a TB'er.

[Calaverasgrande]

When I am president, there will be an exception made for fretless bass players they will be allowed to retain tweeters.
About cutting tweeters out, yes, the crossover will affect the sound of the 15 by itself.
At the least it will have a kind of eq-ing effect on the upper mid, worst case it will cut the upper mid entirely out because it expects a tweet to be doing that.
My mesa is one of the older ones that only has 1/4 jacks and the player control network which changes the crossover from 2,3 and 4k. no level.
If tweete work on your rigs great, to me thats cutting into the drummers freq response.

[rpsands]

Originally Posted by Bmorefoozler

http://baeramplification.com/cabs.html

Looks like nice stuff, and he's a TB'er.

Mm, good starting point but a bit heavy. 3/4" plywood is a thing of the past dernit