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Does anybody else dislike Neo speakers?

#182
I just replaced 2 Neo 12" for ceramic.

While neo's may sound the same while lighter they do not have the same power handling characteristics. 2 12" Neos 250Watts each, 500 watt cabinet. 2 Ceramic 12" 500 watts each, 1000 watt cab.
I should have bought ceramic first and saved $225.
 
#183
bluedyna said:
I just replaced 2 Neo 12" for ceramic.

While neo's may sound the same while lighter they do not have the same power handling characteristics. 2 12" Neos 250Watts each, 500 watt cabinet. 2 Ceramic 12" 500 watts each, 1000 watt cab.
I should have bought ceramic first and saved $225.
Click to expand...

What are you replacing with what? I'm wondering how you just generalized that speakers using neodymium can handle less power when we have stunning exceptions with designs such as the fEARfuls that make use of the 3012/3015LF.
 
#184
Well, back to the topic... No. Nobody with ears, a brain capable of independant thought and honest evaluation plus a cabinet designed for a good neo driver will dislike it. They might have a ceramic based personal fav, but they won't be able to deny that the neo cab was darned good. It truly isn't about the freakin' magnet ya morons... It's the freakin cab design!

For those of you stuck on the D140. Fuhgeddaboddit...
 
#185
bluedyna said:
I just replaced 2 Neo 12" for ceramic.

While neo's may sound the same while lighter they do not have the same power handling characteristics. 2 12" Neos 250Watts each, 500 watt cabinet. 2 Ceramic 12" 500 watts each, 1000 watt cab.
Click to expand...
Thermal power handling is moot. What limits output is driver displacement. Most neo drivers have as much displacement as older ceramic designs with at least twice the power capacity. For instance, the Delta 12LF was a high displacement driver when introduced some 12 years ago, and its 500 watt rating is impressive, if you don't know how speakers work. The Basslite 2012 is only rated at 150 watts, but with higher displacement than the D12LF and higher sensitivity throughout its bandwidth it has higher output capability.
 
#187
allexcosta said:
Interesting...

Any reason why a cab manufacturer would NOT choose to design a NEO loaded cab that would sound JUST LIKE a cab that they have been selling for 15 years and been a customer's favorite all this time?
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Why spend the time and money to design a new cab when you already have a perfectly good box that was poorly designed for ceramic speakers ready to go? MI companies know that players shop with their eyes anyway...
 
#189
NEO’s are brighter because of the built-in NEON lights, hence the term. The immortal Iggy Pop described the NEO’s glowing effect in his classic rocker, “The Neon Forest”.
“The NEON Forest, is lighting up….. MY BRAIN!!!!!”.

:bassist:
 
#190
powellmacaque said:
Maybe it's because I've only played them in noisy guitar shops. Maybe I haven't played the right brand, I don't know. But I can't really find a neo cab that I can "warm up" to.

I'm a fan of the "middle ages" of bass tone, the 80s and 90s tones, so I don't really like anything ultra hi-fi, nor do I like anything super warm and pillowy. It seems to me that the Neo speakers are considerably brighter, but it could just be me. To me, there isn't much of a weight benefit (I'm a young guy) compared to the tone.

Not knocking you guys who like the Neo cabs, please don't take this as trolling. I'm just wondering if people here still prefer the traditional speakers.
Click to expand...

Try the Genz Benz UB line or the Bergantino AE410.
 
#191
I get good results with my epifiani UL212 cabinet. In that cab the neo works fine, although I tried to do a gig with Sanborn in Seattle with essentially the 4x10 version of the same cab and just simply couldn't do it. The cab couldn't do it. I had to mate it with a 115 then it was ok. Did the same gig the next year with the same band, same everything else, but used a single UL212 and it was all I needed.

My experience with the epifani 410 ceramic speakers (though it's been a while) has been that just one of them KILLED. That's empirical...not at all scientific. But it's my experience.
 
#192
BTW, also had similar results in a "test" situation with Berg IP cabs. I played through the 112, the 410, and the 212. The 212 was by FAR superior in terms of evenness and low end extension. Too bad he was discontinuing it as of that time.
 
#193
thepontif said:
BTW, also had similar results in a "test" situation with Berg IP cabs. I played through the 112, the 410, and the 212. The 212 was by FAR superior in terms of evenness and low end extension. Too bad he was discontinuing it as of that time.
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Jim never made an IP410. Maybe it was the IP310?

I have an IP310 and it has more low end extension than darn near any other cab I've ever heard, FWIW.

Personally, I love some neo cabs. Mainly the ones from Bergantino. The AE 410 is by far my favorite gigging cab, although I like my AE212 a lot as well.
 
#194
Must have been a 310 then. Either way, the 12's seem to be more amenable to being EQ'd than the 10's. And I can say without any fear at all of being wrong that the epi 12's are FAR more extended than any 10 cab I've heard including the berg IP. They don't have that tubby thickness in the 80-100Hz range that 10's do, which gives the impression of MORE bass, but it's not extension. It sounds like doubling to me. When they're driven hard and trying to reproduce a 40Hz fundamental they "double up" and wind up reproducing more of 80Hz. It sounds muddy to me, and it doesn't make good bottom for a band without just being loud and overbearing.
 
#195
Oh, and I'm not saying I don't like neo cabs. But they do NOT sound the same as ceramic-based speaker systems at all. You can't just say the magnetism is magnetism, because of the reactive nature of speakers. How a magentic field reacts to the movement of the coil with current flowing has a lot to do with how it sounds. More to it than just gauss in a static measurement.

I'm willing to deal with the shortcomings of neo cabs because the alternative is to carry an 80 or 90 lb cab around and I'm not doing that.

I recently did a gig out in Colorado and used an SWR goliath III stack with an SWR head. I really know what I'm doing when it comes to getting a sound, but I can tell you the results were crap no matter how I sliced it. It was really frustrating. Although, I've used thost cabs with my MPP-2 and my WW with better results...though still a little crude to my ears.
 
#200
dog1 said:
I don't use anything but Neo's. Less weight, sound great. After all, it's not always about the speaker, it's more about cabinet design.
Click to expand...

Two of the most well received new cabs in recent memory are Duke's Thunderchild and the Baer 112. Both are well engineered, both use neo drivers. It ain't so much what you make it out of, it's how you make it. :smug:
 

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