why 10s for bass?

[behemecoytl]

it seems like 10inch speakers are the most popular size for bass speakers right now, while it 12inch speakers are among the most popular for guitar... this seems counterintuitive to me, although I know that bigger is not necessarily better for bass.

what is it about 10inch speakers that makes them good for the low end?

[naturalkinds]

Curious to see how some of the regulars chime in. This is an interesting trend in speaker size to me.

[chroma601]

As I see it, the 10s are punchier. Decades ago I had 2 18" folded horn cabinets, and I felt that they tended to lag a little. The 2x10 combo I have now seems so much more supple than the behemoths, and it appears to output oodles of low end. The idea is to move air, and in addition to size, there is excursion - the distance the cones can move in and out. So a well designed cabinet with a bunch of 10s can theoretically sound better than a less well designed humongous speaker cabinet.

[panaran]

I asked the same question when I converted from guitar to bass (still play guitar tho). Part of the reason is sound, as you can always add a 212 or 115 or something to get lower end.

But a big reason, IMO anyway, is the weight of the cabs. I had a GK 410 and it was around 103lbs give or take a few. a 412 would be considerably more. However with the Neo drivers out there now, i dont think a 412 would be all that bad. My Avatar 410 Neo is around 55 lbs and very easy to move around. Relatively

[T.O.Bass]

Originally Posted by behemecoytl

it seems like 10inch speakers are the most popular size for bass speakers right now, while it 12inch speakers are among the most popular for guitar... this seems counterintuitive to me, although I know that bigger is not necessarily better for bass.

what is it about 10inch speakers that makes them good for the low end?

I have always wondered this as well. My guitard plays through a 412 and claims he "likes his 12's" and believes they give him a "fuller" sound.

[billfitzmaurice]

Originally Posted by behemecoytl

what is it about 10inch speakers that makes them good for the low end?

Nothing. Size in and of itself doesn't affect response, only dispersion. In a single driver system, as opposed to a woofer/midrange system, tens are a good compromise when it comes to response and dispersion, though most of what is gained by using tens is negated by placing them horizontally in the cab. As for why guitar players favor twelves, habit. They made sense when 30 watt Greenbacks were state of the art and real PA systems didn't exist, but since about 1974, not so much.

[Thunderthumbs73]

Originally Posted by behemecoytl

it seems like 10inch speakers are the most popular size for bass speakers right now, while it 12inch speakers are among the most popular for guitar... this seems counterintuitive to me, although I know that bigger is not necessarily better for bass.

what is it about 10inch speakers that makes them good for the low end?

I get plenty of low end out of mine, negating the need to go with bigger speakers. I get quick response from the speakers. I get a tone that is not overly bassy.

You hear the bass in someone's voice over the telephone. And you hear bass in a stereo that has puny 3 inch speakers. Your ear and properties of sound do a lot to help your ears fill in frequencies. And on the flipside, monitors with 15s, can have frequencies which can shatter glass and make dogs howl.

[MooseLumps]

Subscribed. waiting for a flame war

[JTE]

Go back to the start and middle of the '70s. It started with one of the first two serious big honkin' bass amps. When Ampeg first made the SVT bass cabinet, they went for mulitple small drivers to provide projection, move a lot of air somewhat more efficiently, and to tailor the frequency response. The other big player at that time was Acoustic Control who went with a single 15" in a folded horn. That threw the bass further, but on stage it was hard to hear. It took a good distance for the waves from the two sides of the W box in a folded horn to focus and be heard.

But even after those two were popular, a lot of bar-band bass rigs were still based on 15 inch speakers based on the (erroneous) assumption that you need bigger speakers for bass. Then Larry Hartke made a bunch of 10" aluminium speakers and stuffed 'em into an SVT cabinet for some has-been nut case named Jaco. When Jaco hooked up with Guild to endorse the Pilot bass, he talked to Guild about the Hartke speakers. Guild and Hartke got together and made the first popular and good sounding 4x10 cabinet because they thought an 8x10 would be limiting the potential market. Between the sound of the 4x10 configuration and the very visible look of the Guild/Hartke, 4x10's got to be really hip. So lots of others started making 4x10s. David Nordschow (The Founder of Eden) was marketing PA gear when he kept hearing about the Hartkes. He figured there was a better way than what Hartke did, so he designed a speaker and cabinet which became SWR's original Goliath. From there the 4x10 configuration took off like crazy.

You can put four 10" speakers into a box that's the same size as a single 15, get a different sound (in my opinion it's a much better sound). Multiple 10" speakers tend to have a punchier sound, without the problem of flabby sounding lows. They tend to sound tighter and more focused, especially on stage.

Guitarists like 12" speakers because that's the typical guitar amp sound. Until SRV and all his miserable clones got popular, the most common amps guitarist aspired to were a Fender Twin Reverb (a pair of 12's), a Fende Deluxe Reverb (a single 12- a VERY popular studio amp), and the Marshall-style 4x12 boxes. BTW, the Marshall 4x12 started as an 8x12 for Pete Townsend. His roadies threatened to kill him because the cabinets were so big, so he had Jim Marshall cut them down in half.

While there were guitarist using Super Reverbs, and old tweed Bassman combos (both were 4x10 configurations) as well as Princetons (1x10), it wasn't until SRV did for blues what Kenny G did for jazz that we started seeing lots of folks wanting 10"s for guitar.

So, like most things in this screwy business, it starts with someone (designer and/or musician) coming up with something that sounds good to them, then it moves into being a fashion thing when lots of people start emulating their heros, then it moves into either remaining popular (4x10, 1x15, etc.) or falling by the wayside (folded horns, brass hardware) depending on how it actually works.

jte

[coreyfyfe]

Originally Posted by billfitzmaurice

habit.

Nailed it.

[Blake Bass]

Nailed it except for comparing SRV to Kenny G.

[naturalkinds]

Nice history JTE!

[kosmicwizard]

+1 to what JTE said ... except, Cerwin-Vega had an 18" sub in Acoustics 361 Cab not a 15, and they project much better than an 8x10 ... Ampeg went with 8 10" subs because of how fast they responded and because they knew that bass frequencies didn't need to go below 40 Hz (low E is 41.2 Hz). Traditionally, bass was to sit in the mix between the bass drum and the guitar/s, with the addition of a B string (and drop tuning) everything changed. Cheers.

[bgavin]

10" drivers have a lower inductance voice coil as a general rule. The higher inductance coils have a longer saturation time, meaning they store energy before it starts to move the cone. Voltage leads current in an inductive circuit.

Most commercial 15" drivers are acoustically large, and stuffed into too-small boxes. As a result, they produce the booming asociated with poorly designed vented boxes. This is the fault of the box designer, not the driver.

15" drivers have a larger radiating diameter, meaning they become directional (beam) at a lower frequency than a 10" driver. Unless your ears are directly on-axis, you will not hear a lot of the higher signal. This is verified by a polar plot measurement.

Most 10" drivers have a much higher frequency response than the larger 15". This results in more sparkle, snap, punch and all the other adjectives associated with higher frequency production. Some 10s, such as the BP102, have very limited upper frequency response, and sound thuddy without a midrange driver and tweeter.

15" drivers such as the 3015LF move a whole lot more air than the 10". Compare the 207cc for BP102 to the 846cc of the 3015LF. The BP102 moves much more air than the other Eminence 10s, but pales next to the 3015LF. This is a 4:1 ratio in favor of the 15.

[Ric5]

Why do bass players like 10s?

They sound good!

[JTE]

The idea of a poorly designed box coloring people's conception of the speaker is right on. Fender's 2x15 cabinet for the Bassman 50 (later Bassman 70) was about the size of a typical modern 4x10 or 1x15- except it was substantially more shallow front-to-back. It was an AWFUL sounding cabinet. This is not the old Dual Showman 2x15, it's a much smaller box to make it easier to move.

But you have to make sure your comparisons are not a single 15 to a single 10, but the common configurations of a 1x15 and a 4x10. And stuff happens when you start talking multiple drivers and how they interact. Bottom line is that neither is better, but that they do different things. What do YOU want to hear when YOU play? That's the ultimate answer.

jte

PS- SRV made a watered down, instrument-centric version of blues popular with people who had no real interest in Albert King, Wolf, etc. Just as Kenny G made a watered-down, instrument-centeric version of jazz popular with people who had no real interest in Louis Armstrong, Miles, etc. But that's not germaine to this topic, I guess.

j

[JimmyM]

Originally Posted by JTE

PS- SRV made a watered down, instrument-centric version of blues popular with people who had no real interest in Albert King, Wolf, etc. Just as Kenny G made a watered-down, instrument-centeric version of jazz popular with people who had no real interest in Louis Armstrong, Miles, etc. But that's not germaine to this topic, I guess.

Not correct when it comes to SRV, either.

[WRXbase]

"The GERMANS got NOTHIN to do with it!"
-c wut I did thar?

[Thunderthumbs73]

Originally Posted by MooseLumps

waiting for a flame war

Hoping not.

[Easy8]

Originally Posted by JimmyM

Not correct when it comes to SRV, either.

Not even close. For years, SRV favored Vibroverbs with a single 15.