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Separate Tweeter / Horn Cabinet?

M

mlauritsen

Sep 21, 2013
28
19
#1
Hello,

The vast majority of Cabs that I have seen come without a horn /
tweeter.

I currently have a cab without a horn, and mostly I'm happy with the
sound, but for some (slap...) styles, it would be great to have the
option of turning up the (high mids and) treble.

I don't really want to buy another bass cab just for the horn, so...

Does anybody know of a separate tweeter / horn cab which could be
paired up with a "traditional" (1/2/4 x 10/12/15), bass cab? Obviously, this cab would be useless on it's own, but it would be a great addition to many bass cabs, no?

Curiously, guitar cabs seem to often come without tweeters / horns as
well, and I'd expect guitar players to need higher frequencies than we
in the bass range?

All my google "research" give me the feeling I am asking a silly
question with an obvious answer, but since I haven't been able to find
that answer anywhere, I thought I'd give it a whirl here.

Regards
Morten
 
#3
Kelly Lee one of the moderators here uses one of these bright box bad boys.
He says the following:
OK, on to sharing my latest addition to my rig, the Trace Elliot 4052H "Bright Box". I must say I really love this little box. It adds the sparkle of highs without the noise or harshness of a traditional horn/tweeter. It did shock me at how heavy it is though. It checks in at a whopping 22 lbs! Here are a couple of pics:
TraceElliot4052HBrightBox.jpg

:bassist:
 
#4
I'm not sure if any such thing exists commercially, but it wouldn't be a difficult thing to do yourself if you had even the most basic electronics experience and perhaps rudimentary woodworking skills to make some kind of casing, if you so desired.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f15/how-add-piezo-869006/

That's a good thread with advice from Bill Fitzmaurice, who knows his stuff. You could in theory just run a speaker cable directly to a piezo and leave it at that, it would on paper work and it's not far off what many budget builders do. Piezo drivers have an inherent hipass quality that allows them to survive, at least in a somewhat compromised way, in a context like this. As explained in the thread though, the addition of a few components, and ideally running two or more in series would be better.

This is all concerned with piezos though. If you wanted to use a more expensive dome or cone tweeter, you'd have to use a traditional crossover setup and I can't really tell you off the top of my head what you'd have to do. IMO you'd probably be mad to want to do that though, they cost orders of magnitude more for the most part and as far as I can see piezos do damn well in bass cabinets for the most part.

Good luck though, hope you sort something out.
 
#5
nps3uh.jpg


i've had this little guy for a while.

it was built by Brickhouse Cabinets, i think it's the only one they made..

i too hate tweeters. this is a "titanium bullet," whatever that means, all i know is that it opens up the treble side of things without sounding harsh or ugly, just nice and clear and glassy.

it's amazingly useful to bring on the road, and add it to backline rigs- you'd be amazed at the difference this little thing can make.

i always liked using it in a separate box because then i can point it in different directions / adjust to the room. sometimes turning it backwards would give some clarity of my notes to a drummer behind me, if you're not in a fully-equiped venue with monitors and such (we've all had those gigs..)

nowadays i dont normally carry this thing around, but for a long time it was with me at every gig. if there will be a cabinet with a "normal" tweeter at a gig i bring this and it improves everything quite a bit.

does anyone else use these "bullet" style horn/tweeters/whatever? they really do sound amazing.
 
#7
groooooove said:
nps3uh.jpg


i've had this little guy for a while.

it was built by Brickhouse Cabinets, i think it's the only one they made..

i too hate tweeters. this is a "titanium bullet," whatever that means, all i know is that it opens up the treble side of things without sounding harsh or ugly, just nice and clear and glassy.

it's amazingly useful to bring on the road, and add it to backline rigs- you'd be amazed at the difference this little thing can make.

i always liked using it in a separate box because then i can point it in different directions / adjust to the room. sometimes turning it backwards would give some clarity of my notes to a drummer behind me, if you're not in a fully-equiped venue with monitors and such (we've all had those gigs..)

nowadays i dont normally carry this thing around, but for a long time it was with me at every gig. if there will be a cabinet with a "normal" tweeter at a gig i bring this and it improves everything quite a bit.

does anyone else use these "bullet" style horn/tweeters/whatever? they really do sound amazing.
Click to expand...
Looks like a JBL 075 or 2402 ring radiator to me, but it might be a copy, they are fantastic quality if original, but only used from 7khz and up so actually that's a super tweeter.
1970's JBL active concert series floor monitors had 075's crossed in passively at 7Khz above the 2" 2441 midrange horn:
YVCHF9q58ZVvxC6VMj35_sIbihgm5UyTpN3xUKtXg4c=.jpg

Believe it or not with the dual K120 12" drivers although very very heavy these old cabs are far better in every way than the new light weight ones.
 

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