Swapping horn tweeter for dome

Keep the horn and turn the treble down.

 

I don't see how a tweeter or any other speaker can add artificial high end to the signal.

 

This is a semantic distinction. Increasing the tweeter L-Pad (or using EQ) will enhance the existing high frequencies, but won't create information that isn't there. Even with an L-Pad, it isn't the tweeter that is adding anything, but rather the L-Pad is interacting with the amplifier to send more signal to the tweeter, which you hear as being brighter.

Timbre is complex, and neither dome tweeters nor horn tweeters are perfectly accurate. If you prefer the imperfection of dome tweeters to the imperfection of horn tweeters, then changing them may make you happy. But you can probably do the same thing with EQ.

If you're worrying about balancing the timbre from your bass rig with that of the F.O.H. then you have even more complexity to deal with.

 

Have you compared the efficiency, impedance, power handling, and response graphs?

 

The tweeter in an engineered cab is not adding artificial highs. It's just reproducing what is already in the signal chain.

Regarding the matching the tweeters output to the rest of the cab, it all depends on how the tweeter's efficiency rating matches the rest of the drivers, IE, if the woofer is 98dB, and the tweet is 105dB, the tweeter has to be padded back 7dB to be flat (Padding is the term used for resistive circuitry used in a crossover to attenuate the signal). In our illustration, running the tweet full out with no padding will render the frequency spectrum covered by the tweeter 7dB to high. A properly designed crossover will have that padding done via fixed resistors in the crossover circuitry. Then the L Pad (variable resistor) on the back of the cab is an added bonus. It takes it from that flat position down to off.

Putting in a dome is more than a plug and play situation. The new tweeter has to be spec'd properly, and the crossover has to be designed for it. You will have to gain some knowledge in speaker building if you want your endeavor to be successful.

 

Most cab manufacturers are like that. Why make it easy for someone to steal their designs. Even the components like the drivers may be custom variants not available for purchase by the public.

6k sounds high. I can see the 10" rolling off naturally at 2.5~3Khz with no low pass. That is known as an acoustic crossover. The the tweet can be high passed at 3kHz or if the designer wants overlap, he can bring it down a bit, alter the slope, do whatever he wants given the tweeters specs and how it interacts with the woofer. But no woofs I know go up to 6kHz, so if that number is true, it is an incredibly scooped sounding cab (which is not unheard of).

 

410's have things going on that make for uneven dispersion, all unrelated to the tweeter. Small woofers and beaming for one. Also, side by side woofers going up to 3kHz create comb filtering. There are some recent threads on .5 aligning 410s that have lots of good info on them.

BTW, my GB 410 Uber is crossed at 3kHz and has no honkiness. In fact, that cab is reported to have the least amount of honk of all 410's. But it's more than just the tweeter. It's the entire design.

 

Based on the lack of info you have, I'd say the odds of a successful swap from the existing tweeter to a different dome tweeter are not in your favor.

 

Knowing that now, sell your 410 and buy or build a fEARful 15/6.

 

Good cab. Four ohms, and will outperform a 410. Consider building it as a pair of 12/6 cabs as an option.
I built a pair of 15/6s, but I never needed that much, so I sold one. The smarter build for me would have been a pair of 12/6 cabs. Lighter to carry, and the option to use one for small gigs, and then bring both for the big gigs.

 

Better yet, a 12.6 and 12.sub. To my ear the one mid keeps up just fine, with a 6 db pad at that. ...and I used the Alphalite.... I like it solid, round, defined but not bright...