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Speakers for Steve Harris type tone

S

Saber4

Oct 29, 2013
13
0
Gatineau/Ottawa Canada
#1
I have an empty 4x12 Marshall cab that I'll be using to build up a bass cab.

I'm looking at different options for speakers, notably the EVM12L but those things are way too heavy and pricey for me. Something Neo and high sensitivity would be ideal.

The Celestion BN12-300S seems like a nice speaker on paper. Any opinions/ideas/suggestions?

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#2
I would suggest to look at this the other way around, what speakers will work in the cab you have. Figure out the internal volume, porting, etc. Then select a speaker that will work in that environment.

Guitar is easy, pretty much anything works. Bass is a different story.
 
#6
Saber4 said:
Ummmm... that's exactly what I'm trying to do. What speakers will work in that cab and give me the general tone I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

I think what people are saying is that you need to get specific with the cab (sorry, 4x12 Marshall isn't specific enough) and at some point someone would need to do some modeling. Otherwise it's a wild guess.

I could just say, yeah put in some 12" EV speakers. That wouldn't be very helpful or specific.
 
#7
DigitalMan said:
I think what people are saying is that you need to get specific with the cab (sorry, 4x12 Marshall isn't specific enough) and at some point someone would need to do some modeling. Otherwise it's a wild guess.

I could just say, yeah put in some 12" EV speakers. That wouldn't be very helpful or specific.
Click to expand...

Its a 4x12 1960a cabinet all birch plywood cab.
There's no porting or whatsoever. Its completely sealed.
 
#8
Saber4 said:
Ummmm... that's exactly what I'm trying to do. What speakers will work in that cab and give me the general tone I'm looking for.
Click to expand...

Just trying to give you the tools to start figuring this out yourself. There is a lot of information in the FAQ on what you need to do. I don't think you are going to get very many suggestions as most bassists wouldn't be using a Marshall 1960 cab for bass. The best you can do is model in the cab in WinISD and start messing with speaker choice in there.
 
#9
bassgod0dmw said:
Just trying to give you the tools to start figuring this out yourself. There is a lot of information in the FAQ on what you need to do. I don't think you are going to get very many suggestions as most bassists wouldn't be using a Marshall 1960 cab for bass. The best you can do is model in the cab in WinISD and start messing with speaker choice in there.
Click to expand...

precisely, in order to get a good idea for speakers, you need to figure out the internal volume of your cabinet, get out your tape measure, and measure the inside of that thing, figure out that area in cubic feet, and conveniently most eminence speakers have ratings of recommended sizes of cabinets by internal volume for most of their speakers, and since it's a non-ported cabinet, you don't need to worry about tuning. Lucky you, eh? From there you can look at what to stuff into the cabinet, which will help with standing waves and such. I would imagine with a guitar cabinet, you might be best off with 2x12" drivers using up that internal volume instead of 4 - I'm just pulling it out of my ass though. most of those cabs are fairly tiny, in order to make real low end, you'd need more internal volume for the speakers to breathe, of course, maybe four alpha 12s might work, you could check that out in WinISD and see if it looks good.
 
#10
He supposedly uses EVM 12L speakers, but the problem for you is that he also uses custom Marshall cabs. I would be willing to guess that the dimensions are different between the bass cabinet and the 1960a. From what I could find the Marshall VBC 412s are an inch deeper than the 1960a. I don't know how much a difference that would make but that is also assuming that Steve uses the same dimension cabs as the VBC.

So even using the same speakers as Harris the cab may not give you a similar tone, because the speakers are not going to be reacting the same way.
 
#11
You could probably cram four Beta 12A's in there and to produce a clean, punchy monster with 104 dB average sensitivity. *Insert another speaker suggestion here.*

^ That's as good as any advice we can give without knowing more. Why don't you measure the internal volume for us? Or look it up on google?

There's a lot of information in the sticky at the top of the forum, really. Like WinISD, modeling software that lets you model your cabinet and any number of speakers based on their T/S parameters. We could give suggestions but you only know what you like... If you put the work into the research, you can often come quite close to your ideal cab.
 
#12
I gotta say this. Back in the 80's I used a Marshall bottom cab and loaded it with Gauss speakers. Holy crap! That thing was incredible. Also it was heavy. I think people are too caught up in trying to match speakers perfectly to cabinets on here. Take chances and sometimes you win big. Think Reeses chocolate peanut butter mix. Also I am a speaker reconer and a cabinet builder. Screw the stupid rules. Make your own and you might start something new.
 
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#13
gene beauchamp said:
I gotta say this. Back in the 80's I used a Marshall bottom cab and loaded it with Gauss speakers. Holy crap! That thing was incredible. Also it was heavy. I think people are too caught up in trying to match speakers perfectly to cabinets on here. Take chances and sometimes you win big. Think Reeses chocolate peanut butter mix. Also I am a speaker reconer and a cabinet builder. Screw the stupid rules. Make your own and you might start something new.
Click to expand...

Hehehe. Yeah, I'm surprised to see that the approach is so scientific. Years ago, I would have ben totally into that but now, I know that its not all about specs.
What I'm looking for is people that have experience with this kind of setup.

So I have one suggestion for Eminence Beta 12s but those things are pretty heavy and I'm not sure that the frequency response is quite where I'd need it and I'd be worried about boomyness compared to the EVM @ 80Hz to 7KHz.
The price is right though.

What are these Gauss speakers? Sounds like they are out of business.

Looking at other options from eminence, the BASSLITE™ S2012 looks interesting.
 
#14
I tried some beta 12as recently in a sealed box, but found they lacked a bit in the mid/low frequencies for my tastes. I do remember reading a while back that Johnk really liked the eminence delatlite 2512 IIs he loaded into his sealed ampeg v4 412 cab. These would also be lighter, and should be pretty efficient with the 4 of them.
 
#16
gene beauchamp said:
Take chances and sometimes you win big.
Click to expand...

The issue with that approach in this scenario is the rest of the time you fail...hard. It's very easy to waste money.

OP: You can do whatever you want, just understand that bass cabs are generally not that simple to work with. I.E. just slap a driver in it and go. It's a crap shoot if you go that route on what will work and what will not. It is fairly simple to figure out something that will work well though, you just have to do a little homework.
 
#19
Saber4 said:
Hehehe. Yeah, I'm surprised to see that the approach is so scientific. Years ago, I would have ben totally into that but now, I know that its not all about specs.
What I'm looking for is people that have experience with this kind of setup.

So I have one suggestion for Eminence Beta 12s but those things are pretty heavy and I'm not sure that the frequency response is quite where I'd need it and I'd be worried about boomyness compared to the EVM @ 80Hz to 7KHz.
The price is right though.

What are these Gauss speakers? Sounds like they are out of business.

Looking at other options from eminence, the BASSLITE™ S2012 looks interesting.
Click to expand...

You are asking about trying to reproduce a particular sound. If you want that particular sound then just guessing is not going to get you there. As was pointed out, most of Steve's sound comes from his technique and a P bass. I know this is an overused response but for Steve it is true because to my ears there isn't a lot of tone from his amp. You were the one who said that the speakers will make a difference. The speakers are only going to sound a certain way in a certain enclosure. If you put the same speakers in two different sized cabs they will sound different.
 
#20
Some of this is not going to be the usual, "find speakers with good bass in that cab".

Part of the sound is pushing the speakere in non-linear territory "breakup". WinISD isn't going to tell you that. It's only good south of 200hz or so where the box and speaker combine to give bass response.

Best I could say to do is start with the EV, and compare it to others looking for similar frequency response with peaks and dips coming in similar frequencies throughout the entire bandwidth, and look for less xmax but more xlim, so it can handle being pushed into breakup without blowing.

That should at least help get you in the ballpark, but I still couldn't predict it close enough to tell anybody to buy something without hearing it first.
 

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