SVT shredding Edens!!

Cone Excursion with tube amps and sealed cabs....I have heard so much talk about this and I have physically tried it myself - Tube amps sound good on ported and sealed cabs. That's how I feel about it. Tube amps don't push ported cabs to the brink of destruction unless your tone dictate's that. Over excursion may be true in the scientific sense, but I have yet to witness it.

Anyway, the XLT cabs have a specific growl to them even at the cleanest settings. The growl/punch is why they are so popular - along with their devastating volume - they cut through in a band situation in seconds. What are your EQ settings? If you have the bass maxed out, then there is a problem. What you may hear as cone overexcursion may just be the Eden cabs growling majorly at you. You are using a tube amp - they growl and coupled with 2 growly cabs - it's going to sound mean, no doubt!

 

When I had my Eden cabs, I often worried that I was going to make them explode. They sounded as good when I sold them as the day I bought them. I think if the sound is good to you, keep them and keep gigging them and you'll get used to it. Frankly, though, I sold mine because the weight difference between my stack and an SVT wasn't that huge. I recently bought an Epifani 212 from latinbass which is working out extremely well. It's funny that many of the same tonal characteristics I loved about the big, heavy tube setup are obtainable through the use of pedals for me.

 

1 i'll bet that svt is punchier than the stewie, which IMO has to do with staying power.
2 keep in mind your SVT was designed to operate 16 10inch speakers, hence the
oversize transformers inside.
....gives you speaker wrenching torque.

my svtII can hammer my 800w whappo jr if i up the lows too much. but by then,
its extremely loud. the bass knob increases volume greatly, check it out.
i have a feeling it could easily hammer 2 of those 800w cabs...

 

those tubes add a lot of harmonics to your tone and thicken it up quite substantially. This also makes the bottom end less "tight" or "bloom" as some refer to it (IME) and that combined with a very sensitive cab like the 410XLT makes your speakers jump out more than your demeter stewart combination will.

Tube amps have less "damping" than SS amps, what this means is that they aren't as quick to pull the speaker back after they've pushed them out (in laymans terms) and this is why people recommend using sealed cabs with tube amps, as sealed cabs create a vacuum in the box when the speaker is pushed out, which helps to "suck" the speaker back in and thereby helps control the speaker excursion with a tube amp

Thats not to say that you can't use ported cabs with tube amps, it just means that you might possibly wear the speakers in a ported cab faster and with fast consecutive notes, your speakers might not respond as fast as with a sealed cab - the same way suspension on a car or bike will get overloaded if it doesn't have a fast enough rebound over consecutive bumps

 

artiseasy, Gearhead 17,

I shredded the cone on a 15" with a solid state amp, SWR power 750. I was running a bi amped setup, and playing an Alembic Epic 5 str. The cab was a ported 2 x15. The cone spit out the front in 5 or 6 pieces. It was on outdoor show, about 2500 people, and the adrenaline was running wild. I took the whole cab to the maker, and they said the cab was tuned to 40hz, not 30hz, and that may explain the excess excursion. They replaced the speaker for free anyway! This was the only time I have seen it happen.

 

the cab is tuned to 40hz and that is their reason for the speaker blowing? Sounds like a case of: "if I talk really technical, this guy will think I know what I'm talking about..." to me...

 

Recently de-bunked yet again...... it's not true. Damping in tube amps is sufficient to behave normally and as expected. The idea that tubes inherently have not enough damping is a "legend".

But tube amps CAN cause larger transients at low frequencies, and if the amp has good LF performance, like the SVT, it may cause more speaker movement.

Also, it is possible, with various EQ settings, to get more "action" in response to the picking transients. to see that, just press the strings in and release at normal volume settings. If the speakers flap, consider rolling out some lows.

Sealed cabs DO tend to prevent as much cone movement and flap, and unlike a ported cab, they do not totally release all cone control at low frequencies.

If cab was tuned to 40 hz, that should have been the frequency of LEAST cone movement....... but if you pushed LOWER freqs, it may well have let the speaker flap freely down there. So it is NOT BS techietalk.

 

It is true that with ported cabinets the cone excursion for frequencies below the tuning frequency skyrockets. This is because the driver is unloaded and behaves like a driver operating outside of a cabinet.

Whether that's what's happening here is unclear.

 

FWIW I've experienced the exact same thing with both of my early 70's SVT's and my Eden 410XLT's. Furthermore, I creased all four cones in one of the Edens using an ABM500 at a really loud volume. I just don't think the 410XLT likes any amp that produces a lot of really low frequency content.

 

FWIW, low frequency damping in tube amps depends a combination of several factors such as the amount of negative feedback, power supply capacitance, transformers, and chokes - all design paramaters - you can design a tube amp with very high or very low damping, or anywhere in between, and it does vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.

JR

 

*cough* NV215 *cough*

 

Double NV215 Cough

 

I have used and continue to use the similar combinations-

70's SVT and 90's SVT-II into
single Eden 210XLT
2 Eden 210XLT's
fridge
single BE 15
two BE 15's
BE 15 with BE 210

I have noted larger cone excursions in the Eden cabs with my SVTs. And I use no bass boost, just pretty much flat settings.

 

I saw he same with a V4B and a couple of different potred cab's. Into a sealed cab - no wild excursion. I really think this has something to do with the design of the amp.

In my case the cab's were a reflex horn designed Music man 115 RH, Music Man HD2x12 and a home brew sealed 1x15 with a JBL in it. Only the home brew box sounded good with the V4B. The cone flapping thing was pretty alarming... I stopped before damaging anything. I was pretty sure that I'd be picking up pieces of speaker if I continued to play ...

An SVT VR on an NV610 sounded awfully good last Sunday ...

 

I have ran a svt classic into eden cabs and observed the massive cone movement. Jerrold covered the explanation why. Just roll your low end off a bit.

 

Eden's tone is designed around speakers designed to work with open ported cabs. SVT810's are designed with sealed cabs. Speakers must be designed to work for either kind of cab design, to properly work with them.

The speakers in a ported cab are designed to handle greater cone movement. That's how they work. Because to get the tone that ported cab was designed to project, the low end requires lots of cone movement.

An Ampeg Fridge is not designed for extreme low-end reproduction. They're rock-n-roll cabinets. Not designed for really low end like 5-string basses and such. They're great cabs for old-school rockin' tone. NOT for subwoofer lows like modern ported cabinets.

The Edens are designed to breathe. Don't worry. I'm always listening to my 212 and 210, thinking they're distorting. Nope, it's the Eden growl. I've even watched my cones when I have the master volume light blinking like a sumbitch. It was a heavenly tone. And nope, no cone destruction.

Your Eden cones are designed to have greater excursion because ported cabs need more cone movement for their low end tone. Ampeg Fridge drivers aren't designed for a cab that can drop down to 40hz, so a sealed cab only needs a little excursion compared to the Eden.


You'll be fine.