speaker literacy

[BrianVengeance]

So it may just be me, but I feel like when it comes to gear, guitarists tend to be a good deal more literate about speakers. Almost every cabinet conversation invariably hits on that point - V30s vs greenbacks vs cream backs vs G12T-75s. On the bass side of the world this seems to be far less of a topic unless you’re specifically doing build or repair work.

I feel like I’m far more willing to accept a bass cabinet and its speakers as a unit rather than as a set of components, as opposed to how I view my guitar cabinets. Anyone else like this or see things differently?

 

[Wasnex]

I think your worrying for no reason.

guitarists tend to be a good deal more literate about speakers

Some guitar players have an idea about what driver they like and why. But most of them don't actually know all that much about how speakers work.

I feel like I’m far more willing to accept a bass cabinet and its speakers as a unit rather than as a set of components

This is probably a good thing. With bass cabs the driver and cabinet are essentially a system...I.E. both of these components must be chosen/designed to work together. If you just throw a random driver in a random cab, there is a good chance the cab won't work very well, and you may blow it up with way less than the driver's RMS power rating.

 

[ardgedee]

Like @Wasnex says, guitarists are more conversant in speaker driver folklore. This is not the same thing as having better technical knowledge.

Anecdotally when people come on here to ask about upgrading speakers in their bass cabinets, they often are guitarists who have done so with their guitar speakers, and don't understand why they can't do the same thing with their bass speakers.

It's good to understand the how and why speakers work -- even if only at a relatively shallow level, as long as you also understand the limits of what you already know, and that you might need to learn more if you have a specific goal in mind.

 

[agedhorse]

Part of this is because there's way less physics involved in designing guitar speakers.

Bass speakers, especially well designed bass speakers involve a lot of science and good design chops to insure a good sounding, efficient and especially reliable product. It's less about woo-woo and way more about science. (cue Thomas Dolby here...)

 

[BrianVengeance]

I think your worrying for no reason.

Some guitar players have an idea about what driver they like and why. But most of them don't actually know all that much about how speakers work.

This is probably a good thing. With bass cabs the driver and cabinet are essentially a system...I.E. both of these components must be chosen/designed to work together. If you just throw a random driver in a random cab, there is a good chance the cab won't work very well, and you may blow it up with way less than the driver's RMS power rating.

Eh, not worried... just observing. And I think you're spot on about liking a driver but not understanding the math behind it. Seems more of a folklore thing than anything - so and so used these speakers in this cab and it sounded great. Definitely hear more technical conversation on the bass side of things. I think its a bit more well understood that you can't just drop in a driver and go.

Like @Wasnex says, guitarists are more conversant in speaker driver folklore. This is not the same thing as having better technical knowledge.

Anecdotally when people come on here to ask about upgrading speakers in their bass cabinets, they often are guitarists who have done so with their guitar speakers, and don't understand why they can't do the same thing with their bass speakers.

It's good to understand the how and why speakers work -- even if only at a relatively shallow level, as long as you also understand the limits of what you already know, and that you might need to learn more if you have a specific goal in mind.

That tracks. I definitely came into playing bass after playing guitar for a few years (many, many years ago) and its a much different mind set. As a guitarist, an upgrade is a speaker swap.

 

[BrianVengeance]

Part of this is because there's way less physics involved in designing guitar speakers.

Bass speakers, especially well designed bass speakers involve a lot of science and good design chops to insure a good sounding, efficient and especially reliable product. It's less about woo-woo and way more about science. (cue Thomas Dolby here...)

I will be using "woo-woo" as a technical term with my guitarists from now on... And yeah, I think that even playing bass beyond a certain (relatively early) level involves stepping into the science a bit more.

 

[agedhorse]

I will be using "woo-woo" as a technical term with my guitarists from now on... And yeah, I think that even playing bass beyond a certain (relatively early) level involves stepping into the science a bit more.

Be careful, I got slapped pretty hard for using that term in a guitar meeting a couple of weeks ago... probably won't stop me from using it again though

There's plenty of science on the design side, especially around voicing and some thermal design. No having to worry about mechanical power handling (much) makes it a lot easier.

 

[SactoBass]

I've always looked at it this way.....the lower you go in frequency, the smarter the designer has to be in regards to the science of speaker and cab design.

And I agree with the other posters who stated that the speaker itself is just one piece of the cab design puzzle as the speaker and cab design work together as a functioning unit, which is why it is a total crapshoot when shoving any non-stock speaker(s) into a cab simply because it happens to fit the hole(s) in the baffle. The only thing speaker diameter tells you is how big around the speaker is. For example, two different ten inch bass speakers can have wildly different Thiele/Small parameters.

 

[H Nighttrain]

So it may just be me,... guitarists tend to be a good deal more literate....

It's just you.

 

[BrianVengeance]

It's just you.

Truly thoughtful feedback, thank you!

 

[baxter_x]

Bass speakers, especially well designed bass speakers involve a lot of science and good design chops to insure a good sounding, efficient and especially reliable product. It's less about woo-woo and way more about science. (cue Thomas Dolby here...)

Why so? Is it because producing low frequencies the human ear can easily hear requires more knowledge?

 

[lug]

It's been my experience with most guitarists that they are great a parroting "what they've heard" about most things technical. I've yet to meet one that actually had more real technical knowledge on sound re-enforcement than I do. I often feel like I should aplogize for actually learning stuff.

 

[Guitalia]

Why so? Is it because producing low frequencies the human ear can easily hear requires more knowledge?

The human ear is far less sensitive to low frequencies than it is to the (upper) mid-range. That's one reason it can often take 10 times more power for a bass amp to match an overdriven 30-watt combo guitar amp in perceived volume. From this page:

 

[Lo-E]

Why so? Is it because producing low frequencies the human ear can easily hear requires more knowledge?

I’m hardly qualified to answer for Andy but producing lower frequencies is harder on the materials themselves. Designers have to make a lot more design compromises when developing a bass cabinet than they do for a guitar cabinet. Knowing where to compromise is what requires the design chops.

If all you want is to produce clean low frequencies, that’s somewhat easy. …as long as size, weight and power requirements are no object!

Once you decide that the cabinet has to weigh less than a certain amount, be of a certain size, be drivable with an amplifier with only moderate power and fall within a specific price point, well, it’s time to get the smart people involved.

 

[JamesGrant]

Many guitarists know what ‘orange drop’ means but have no idea what a capacitor is
Folklore is a great description!

Bass players have ‘hi-mass bridges’ as their blind spot so we can’t be too mean!!

 

[el murdoque]

In guitar playing, a cabinet is a box that mainly serves two purposes:
1. To keep your speaker(s) upright
2. To put your amp on.

In bass playing, the cabinet and speaker form a complex unit, where the cabinet directs the airflow.

Swapping speakers in a guitar cab is not only an easy and quick thing, it's also almost always guaranteed to work.
Swapping speakers in a bass cab is dropping speaker A into an ecosystem that was designed to host speaker B and therefore you'll need an obscene amount of luck to get a result that's better, or at least on par with the old one.

 

[jthisdell]

There are a lot more guitarists and they talk about gear a lot. But if you try to talk to them about a bass cab they absolutely do not want to hear it.

 

[ctmullins]

Lol

Guitarists talk a lot. Mostly it involves parroting whatever misinformation they’ve picked up from other guitarists. Actual physics isn’t usually considered. The whole “Orange Drop” and “PIO” nonsense, for example.

As has already been stated, bass cabs need to be designed as a system. The Build-A-Bear approach doesn’t really work.

 

[J Wilson]

When I consider how many players lack any inkling of the basics technically . . . just remember this the next time we get a speaker question wondering why he couldn't use car subwoofer speakers in a bass guitar cab.

 

[agedhorse]

Why so? Is it because producing low frequencies the human ear can easily hear requires more knowledge?

It’s kind of all of the above, the physics becomes more complicated and the tradeoffs more impactful as the frequency decreases below 200Hz.