do effects damege the speaker?

[Flounder102Bass]

lets just say everyone use effects ofcouse. but i been thinking can it damege the speaker. i need to know if its true?

[guroove]

no

[walker rosewood]

no they don't.

unless you get your distortion buy slashing the speaker cones with a knife.

[Bajosintrastos]

Sometimes, when using envelope filters, or synth kind effects, the speakers look like they are going to broke. If they are good quality speakers, go ahead, push them if you want, but I've got the thumpinator from sfx site a month ago and it's just great. It works perfectly and nobody gets hurt (PA guy or Amp) with some peak levels coming from my mxr envelope, or EBS wha, Oct, boss synth, Distortion Multiwave....

[sfx]:micro-thumpinator

[NashKat]

Depends how much GAIN they have and/or how many +db below 40hz.

[Eric!]

But they can damege your spelling

[warwick.hoy]

Originally Posted by Eric!

But they can damege your speling

You dumby you mispelt spelling.

[crguti]

I have read some stupid question, but this one is at least top 5

[Bob C]

I think it's a good question. Can't a large bass boost via an octaver blow a speaker? How about a volume "spike" caused by an envelope filter?

I supposed this is in the same realm as "Guns don't kill people; people kill people". Anyway, it is often stated on Talkbass that certain effects should be used with caution for this reason.

[Bryan R. Tyler]

Originally Posted by Bob C

How about a volume "spike" caused by an envelope filter?

That's the first thing I thought of. A large whump from a really resonant filter has speaker damaging potential. I still haven't used a Frostwave Funk-a-Duck, but apparently that one can put out some serious spikes.

[odie]

Originally Posted by warwick.hoy

You dumby you mispelt spelling.

Awsomie LOL

[guroove]

Originally Posted by Bob C

I think it's a good question. Can't a large bass boost via an octaver blow a speaker? How about a volume "spike" caused by an envelope filter?

I supposed this is in the same realm as "Guns don't kill people; people kill people". Anyway, it is often stated on Talkbass that certain effects should be used with caution for this reason.

I thought of those too, but if your amp and speaker are matched, then almost anything that the amp puts out should not be a problem for the speaker. If it is a problem, isn't it the power amp blowing the speaker and not the effect?

[jaywa]

A sub-octaver... maybe... otherwise I'm not really seeing it.

[jwr]

Has anyone out there actually experience any speaker damage to their amps from any effects???? I haven't and I've ran a lot of **** through my amp.

Seems like a legitimate concern, but I don't think you have to worry unless you're purposely trying to damage the speaker.

[JimmyM]

only thing i'd caution you about is that tweeters usually don't like fuzz or hard overdrive. other than that, as long as you don't crank any gains to ridiculous levels, you should be fine.

[Sav'nBass]

Originally Posted by crguti

I have read some stupid question, but this one is at least top 5

I don't think it is a stupid question at all. I have oftewn wondered that myself when it comes to bass in particular.

Originally Posted by Bob C

I think it's a good question. Can't a large bass boost via an octaver blow a speaker? How about a volume "spike" caused by an envelope filter?

I supposed this is in the same realm as "Guns don't kill people; people kill people". Anyway, it is often stated on Talkbass that certain effects should be used with caution for this reason.

+1

[GHI]

I think when turning the resonance of my moog mf101 lowpass filter up until oscillation it can damage speakers if the frequensy is not swept (atleast it said so in the manual). I tend to be more conserned with damaging ears tho.

[walker rosewood]

From Bongomania's site, http://www.ovnilab.com/articles/clipping.shtml

No squares there. The reason I point this out is because many people think square waves will burn out their speakers--but even in the rare cases where the clipped wave does sort of resemble a square, if square waves really damaged speakers then how would we ever be able to listen to a recording of a synthesizer or a pipe organ? The "overheating piston" action that people claim occurs with a square wave simply does not happen in reality, at least not to any degree more than other big signal peaks; and again in reality clipping audio doesn't result in square waves anyway. The burnt-out coils that amp repair techs regularly deal with all resulted from too much power being sent into the speaker, completely regardless of whatever wave shapes were sent through it. You will hear lots of people--even senior audio professionals--recite the claim that clipping and square waves damage speakers as if it was "gospel truth", but it's really just a long-established myth that will not die. Here's how that myth got started, and maybe why it continues:

When you crank an amplifier to its maximum, and feed it a strong, spiky input signal, it can actually put out much more power than it is rated for--sometimes as much as double the amp's stated wattage. So for example when a bassist has a 200 W amplifier, and a speaker cab rated for 300 W, he might suppose that there's no way the amp could overpower the speakers; but if he dimes the amp's output, and plays aggressively, he certainly could blow those speakers, because he will be sending spikes much higher than 300 W into that cab, all night long. Yes, the amp will have been clipping like crazy, so he (and his amp repair tech) will usually assume it was the clipping that blew the cones--but it was the excess power that actually did the damage. On top of all that, tweeters (high-frequency drivers) are usually rated for a lot less power handling ability than larger speakers are; and the harmonics of clipped waves can mean a lot of extra energy up in the high frequency ranges that typically get sent into a tweeter; so it's fairly common for clipping at high volume to result in way too much power being sent into the tweeter, causing it to burn out. Just remember that the same wave shape, at a lower volume level, would not have done any harm.

[Eric!]

The Subdecay Prometheus has some pretty big volume spikes too

[warwick.hoy]

This is why I use cabs rated at 1000watts RMS.