I have an Acoustic Image Upshot. It's great...I love it. I'm not having any issues with it. Today, I received an email from a vendor that reports that they have a limited amount of replacement woofers. Once they are sold out, there will be no other woofers available, permanently. How often to woofers go bad? Is it common? What causes that to happen? I don't blast my amp. I use it mostly as a monitor when on stage. Do they sometimes just stop working?
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Double Bass Need For A Replacement Woofer?
- Thread starter banjoboy
- Start date
I had one go bad in my Coda R. It became buzzy.
I have both the Upshot and the DoubleShot so I've thought about buying a spare but haven't yet.
**Leigh
Any speaker can wear out mechanically but it takes many years….decades.
The only exception is when the design was flawed in the first place. Some people have found particular speakers had the surrounds rot away in a short time. The original Bag End woofers in the SWR Baby Blue are an example, SWR switched over to woofers from Celestion for the BB II.
I had the surround reglued (not replaced) once on a speaker I bought used and then gigged it for 15 years.
As far as your Upshot, the problem is that like many amp companies, AI had custom designed speakers built for them. Once spares that Gollihur Music has are gone, that’s it, because Eminence is not going to keep making them. I own two combos and one extension cab, so if any single speaker fails I can swap it out. That should keep me going until I’m pushing up daisies.
The only exception is when the design was flawed in the first place. Some people have found particular speakers had the surrounds rot away in a short time. The original Bag End woofers in the SWR Baby Blue are an example, SWR switched over to woofers from Celestion for the BB II.
I had the surround reglued (not replaced) once on a speaker I bought used and then gigged it for 15 years.
As far as your Upshot, the problem is that like many amp companies, AI had custom designed speakers built for them. Once spares that Gollihur Music has are gone, that’s it, because Eminence is not going to keep making them. I own two combos and one extension cab, so if any single speaker fails I can swap it out. That should keep me going until I’m pushing up daisies.
I've fried a few woofers, mostly by trying to make a smaller cab do the work of a larger cab. The one in my combo got all dried out & the paper disintegrated.
I might consider buying a spare woofer for a "lifetime" cab. (Or not - think of it as an opportunity to try something completely new.)
I re-woofered my combo and enjoyed that for a few years. Then the amp board went kablooey. It's always a crapshoot...
I might consider buying a spare woofer for a "lifetime" cab. (Or not - think of it as an opportunity to try something completely new.)
I re-woofered my combo and enjoyed that for a few years. Then the amp board went kablooey. It's always a crapshoot...
I don't really have any experience in this area, but speakers can be re-coned, can they not? I guess that might be just as costly as a replacement speaker with the cost of labour being what it is though...
Greg Clinkingbeard
Commercial User
I had the woofer on a newer Coda have the rubber surround come loose from the cone and Rick told me they had a bad batch. Of course, he sent a replacement free of charge.
Only if recone kits are available. In this case, I believe the answer will be no.
Another exception is if the driver is pushed beyond it's limit.
AI cabs sound great IMHO, but they have a very low sensitivity rating. This means feeding them lot's of power does not make them play loud. So if you have a big amp and need lot's of volume, the chances of blowing an AI woofer increases drastically. Fatal damage can occur in an instant.
One way around the risk is to recognize and respect the cab's volume limits and only use it when it is appropriate for the job.
Sure, but if you don't abuse them, speakers don’t just “go bad". I’ve got a 1959 Silvertone guitar amp that still has it’s original Jensen. I’ve had home stereo speakers last over four decades before I finally gave them away.
Abuse is not necessarily intentional and you may not even be aware that it's happening.
Like the night my upright suddenly fed back on stage and took out the mid driver on my Baby Blue
Or the time I was bench testing an amp and there was a bad cable connected to the signal generator. As I started wiggling cables to see where the problem was suddenly there was the signal but way too loud. The test speaker I kept on my my bench literally caught on fire, burned the cone to ash and and left a hole in the middle of the grille. I kept it around for a few years as a reminder to myself
Don’t try this at home, kids.
The dilemma is that speakers used to be standardized to some extent. So, if you bought a JBL-D140 it could replace that particular speaker in any ones cabinet whether it be Fender, Sunn, Ampeg, or Kustom.
More recently Eminence has offered customization for Acoustic Image, Euphonic Audio, Audiokinesis, Gallien Krueger, MAS and a host of other bass cabinet builders. Pyle originally designed the speakers for
the GK 200MB combos. When they quit making them, GK had to find another manufacture because the sealed cabinet required a speaker that would work in that box. Same for Dukes TC-112,
That said I have a JBL-D130 F that's inside my B-15N and doing just fine so as other's have said "treat your speakers well" and they will last a long time.
More recently Eminence has offered customization for Acoustic Image, Euphonic Audio, Audiokinesis, Gallien Krueger, MAS and a host of other bass cabinet builders. Pyle originally designed the speakers for
the GK 200MB combos. When they quit making them, GK had to find another manufacture because the sealed cabinet required a speaker that would work in that box. Same for Dukes TC-112,
That said I have a JBL-D130 F that's inside my B-15N and doing just fine so as other's have said "treat your speakers well" and they will last a long time.
