fender rumble 40 just wonderin ??

[2F/2F]

The best upgrade for a Rumble 40 is called a Rumble 100.

2.5X the power.

1.5X the cost.

1.2X the weight (i.e. still weighs nothing).

The same width, 2 inches taller, 2 inches deeper (i.e. practically the same size).

And they make a $20 slip cover for it, which is really nice to have on an amp with top-facing knobs.

I own the 40, and I love it inside the house, especially for playing along with records (has a stock headphone jack and 1/8" auxiliary input, so I can pipe music into it, and practice along with it, through headphones – the amp's greatest feature).

But I regret not getting the 100 instead. It was only $100 more, and it can do significantly more than the 40 can do, while adding practically no weight and no size, and having an affordable dust cover readily available.

Alternately, the second best upgrade is to get a second 40, and run them both at once. But that's a downgrade in the convenience department, which is what the Rumble series is all about.

I thought about the various options, and even bought a speaker for the 40. But in the end, I decided to leave the amp bone stock, and use it for what it's good for. I did adapt a Rumble 100 slip cover to the 40, however. I hemmed the cover up a bit, neatly folded the excess material inward, and tack stitched the folds in place. Voila: $20 Rumble 40 cover.

 

[el murdoque]

There are different vectors from where one can tackle the problem(s).

First of all: The speaker you listed on ebay wants 62 Liters of cabinet volume if I read that correctly. The rumble 40 is not that big. Secondly, it is a Woofer. It does go up to 3kHz. You want at least something like 5k for bass.
Thirdly, while they do not list the weight of the total speaker, they list the weight of the magnet at 40oz. A neo speaker magnet has a weight of around 5oz.
Nothing, I repeat nothing suggests, that putting that into a Rumble 40 could improve ANYTHING over the stock speaker. Best case scenario is it will be heavier and sounding a bit more muffled.

Fender Rumbles do have a reputation for being outstanding in terms of cheap, light and loud. In that price bracket, there is no competition. The Rumble 100 is only a bit heavier, but much louder - selling the Rumble 40 plus the money for a replacement speaker would get you enough funds to get a Rumble 100.

Swapping the speaker of the Rumble 40 will only lead to a better result if you use a better one.
It will be hard finding a better one, because, as stated numerous times before, while a guitar cabinet mostly is a device that keeps the speakers upright and protected from bumping into the membranes, a bass cabinet is something else. The speaker in a bass cabinet can be viewed as a piston and the cab directs the airflow.
The box and the speaker are a unit. On guitar cabinets you often see the same cabinet with a choice of different speakers and it is common practice to swap them out for different ones. On bass that is not common practice.
When you blow a speaker you go out of your way to find the exact same model to replace it.
So you have a tiny box that is married to a certain speaker that Fender gets in bulk from (I'm guessing) one of the big brands. The results they yield are phenomenal. An amp that small and that light should not be that loud - at least not at that price. This is why people are happy with what they have in the Rumble 40 and this is why people are not tinkering with the innards to push more out of it. It is a cheap practice amp. A solid 10" speaker with a good reputation and a neo magnet will cost about as much as the amp itself.
If you want to upgrade it with consumer priced speakers, you will have to dig deep.
Fender spending 20 bucks on a single 10" speaker is something else than the end customer spending 20 bucks on a speaker, because they order 40 thousand and the end customer orders one.


This is the general consensus here on TB. People think that what you're planning is a bad idea.

If you want positive affirmation, try somewhere else. A guitar forum might be better suited.

Regarding Watts:
For your ears, 16 tube watts might equal 40 solid state watts (even though that is not true on bass, I tried).

A speaker however sees only watts. It does not care what drives the output transformer. From the speakers viewpoint one tube watt equals one solid state watt equals one class-D watt.
It gets a bit tricky when it comes to power handling, because some companies are very conservative when writing down numbers. They will put a 200W label on something that can consistently output 200W.
Other companies will rather go with peak numbers because they are bigger and label the exact same thing with 350W.
The same goes for speakers. The max that is printed on speakers often tells you how much it can take before the voice coil melts. In most cases, the speaker will die because the mechanical forces driving it are too big way before the coil melts. If you're not sure about those numbers, you should play it safe and assume that the amp is labeled conservative (and therefore able to put out peak levels of twice that much) and the speaker is labeled for 'big numbers' - so it is good to have a certain gap between what the amp is said to put out and what the speaker is said to be able to do.

 

[cb56]

I have the R40 and a R200.
I use the R40 at home, Church and smaller gigs. Remember it has an XLR out so you can have PA support.
I use the R200 for regular gigging. Don't see a reason for anything bigger but I could always add another 15 under the R200.

My suggestion I'd keep the R40 and start saving up for an upgrade. R100,R200 ETC...

 

[hollowman]

Saving up for a 100 is a bad idea.
The 40 sounds way better. The 100 has an ugly bump around 125k that can't be eq'd out.
I have a 40 and a 100.
The tone quality is night and day to my ears.
The over all volume difference is not nearly as much as I expected.
I just did a side by side comparison today. The 100 does have a bit more headroom, but not a lot.
I am considering getting the Eminence s2010 just to see if it will be louder without sacrificing tone .
If it does, the 40 becomes a pocket rocket worthy of small pub gigs.
I'll post results if I go for it.
Anybody tried this upgrade yet?

 

[agedhorse]

just curious but where did you get those specs from about the speaker ?? i couldn't find anything about it other than its a fender special design

It was a made up number that’s just an uneducated guess.

 

[agedhorse]

well..maybe i didn't explain this well enough ..i said both posts so far that i really don't wanna replace the speaker ..BUT IF I HAD TO FOR SOME REASON .. then what would you guys reccomend for an amp thats about 16 watts output ?? yeah i know it says 40 but thats solid state watts .. not the same as tube watts .. i'm sure most of you guys know that .. so if i look at the major speaker makers like eminence they don't really cater to them low watt bass amps .. they'll sell me some kinda delta speaker that will handle 300 watts for 89 bucks ..i'd say that was just a bit of overkill .. yeah the sensitivity would be better at up around 95db and thats good .i'm not sure what this fender special design is but if it was anywhere near that i'm pretty sure fender would give us them specs .. but their silence leads me to believe they ain't even close .. and if any ofyou are usin 4x10 cabs and they came from the maker are they puttin 4 300 watt eminece speakers in there for a 300 watt head ?? i doubt it .. why would they ?? so i hear ya when you say do't do it . but i already said i wasn't planin on it so that was not what i was askin .. i was askin if i had to what lower wattage decent speaker would you be leanin towards if you had one of these an the speaker just went pfffft one day?? if you couldn't get the same fender speaker unless you paid almost the same price or close to the amps price ?? i did find this speaker on ebay and the sensitivty is good ..probably more power than i need but the price is within reason .. 4 of these in an svt 4x10 would probably do the job .. hopefully you can follow me here now .. we're speculatin here . not reinvintin the wheel ..
NEW 10" Woofer Guitar Speaker.8 ohm.250w.ten inch PA.Replacement Bass Driver | eBay

I know this is an old post, but there’s some misconceptions going on here.

From my experience with the Rumble project, the average sensitivity is going to be around 96-97dB/1W/1M from about 60Hz up. It’s a very hard speaker to beat because the engineer at Fender (who I know) optimized the speaker’s parameters for lower powered applications.

Fender’s silence says nothing, they don’t publish proprietary specs. The police is effectively “try the amp, if you like it then buy it” without getting into the weeds with customers who think they understand something they don’t.

 

[audiorep2]

Operating Bandwidth: 38Hz ~ 3KHz

Stupid spec without knowing + or - how many db .

 

[Ggaa]

Well, just put a Basslite in my 100 combo- sounded like it was wrapped in a blanket before(not a thick blanket, but still...), probably won't need the bright switch much anymore. Good bottom, and more of all other freqs. Sounds different, more presence. Easy job, drilled new holes and reused the t nuts(metric, Lowes doesn't have them), 1/4" dowel in the old holes. Recommended...