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Turning down your cabs horn/tweeter

M

morewattsplease

Apr 29, 2012
123
0
libertyville, chicago
#1
Looked for a thread on this. Didn't find one. tell me if I missed one.

I ordered an Emperor 4x12 today, and in preparing for a horn-less cab as well as some noise issues with my bass (I'm pretty sure I need to get it grounded or shielded or something) I have been turning the horn attenuator on my warwick 411 (4x10 with horn)all the way down.

Don't get me wrong, I love the high fi open and clear tone of my cab with the horn open, and I may customize my custom cab with a horn or get another with a horn in it, but for now I am loving the attenuator all the way down, and am looking forward to having a cab without one.

What I did was roll up the treble a little bit, roll down my high mids (my amp is a Warwick Quad VI, and it can get very mid heavy) and I've got a tone that is so nice and mellow, but can still respond to slap nuances. Its definitely not hi-fi, but I like how the highs are more gentle now.

I think its modulus' website that claims the have "the sound thats in your head." For now this^ is the tone that is in my head. My ten year old hartke practice amp gave it to me and I feel like an idiot for not figuring out how to do this on my larger amp earlier, but I'm loving that biting deep tone with enough under the hood to change playing styles without touching anything (okay, maybe I touch my active system a little).

IDK, I'm not deluding myself thinking that I'm the only or first person to do this, just wanted to throw this out there and see what people have to say about doing this themselves.
 
#2
The L-pad absorbs some of the power that was headed for the tweeter and burns it off as heat. When you turn it all the way down, it has to burn all of it off as heat. This risks burning up the L-pad. You should cut some treble at the amp first, then use the L-pad to sort of fine tune the cab response.

In your case, your noise may've been at a frequency a little lower than you thought it was and not in high tweeter territory. Cutting some uppermids and leaving a little highs in fixed it. By boosting treble and turning the L-pad all the way down, you're making it work even harder.
 
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#4
Yep. A lot of these bass amps have treble knobs set at a frequency higher than the typical 3k-5k pass frequency of the typical bass cab tweeter, so, some cooperative tweaking of the two might be needed to get the desired sound, but turning up the treble while shutting down the L-pad is indeed the wrong approach. Basically sending it more juice, making it burn off more juice in an effort to get to the same place you could get while being a whole lot easier on the equipment. Throw an active bass in the mix with treble boost going in the front of the amp and everything works even harder.
 
#5
well the treble on the amp/bass does not have the same audible effect as cutting the horn on the back of the amp. I'll keep your warning in mind, but i'm also not running at particularly high wattage or for very long periods of time. This attenuator adjustment is more for me to start easing into a no-horn environment.
BTW its not a tweeter its a horn, and I'm inclined to believe that the horn is working with higher frequencies than the treble. This is just to my ear though. I HAVE started by cutting the treble on the amp, the high mids on the amp, and the treble on the bass, believe me, they don't produce my desired effect. With the horn even slightly on I get a lot of super high frequencies, not noise, just frequencies I don't want. IDK if youv'e ever used a Warwick 411, but maybe the crossover is different than what you have used.

Advice duly noted, and I 'll try some other ways about getting the same sound, rather I'll try them again, but unless I start seeing a problem I'll probably keep doing it in a practice environment.

Also I'm not really pushing too much treble into it after turning down the attenuator, just barely over the detent at 12 o'clock. I've been very mindful of all the little things I don;t usually pay attention to since joining talkbass, and this is no exception. I didn't just do this and crank it.
 
#6
by super high treble I mean that sparkly treble, not like the treble I get out of my eq's. Truth be told I hear close to the sparkle using the treble boost button, but the treble and bass boosts I think effect freqs higher/lower than the corresponding knobs. I have the manual download somewhere, its easy to find if you wanna prove me wrong.
But I'm sure bill as well as others can always find something i'm doing wrong, this was more of a discussion of moving away from hifi tones that I had been using, wondering if others do the same after lusting after Marcus milleresque tone, not me trying to say I do everything right.
(BTW bill, I ended up taking your advice on speaker size, ordered a 4x12 for me. While I would enjoy experimenting on my own with a mix cab/stack, I don;t have the expendable income right now to do so, rather do it "right" for now.)
 
#7
I'll also add that while I realize its possible to damage a cabinet with much less than its power rating, I'm using 600 watts @ 4 (amp) into 600 watts @8 (cab) handling.
So at full volume (which I am not at) i would only be putting...350...450 (? a little more than half the 4 ohm wattage, right?) into the cabinet. Am I wrong thinking that what I put into the cab has something to do with how much heat the thing takes?
 
#8
Prolly a combination of a few things. The bass treble setting, amp treble setting, cab tweeter/horn's general tone and "loud region" or "sweet spot", all in interaction with your ear.

BTW, in general terms, tweeter and horn are sort of the same thing. There's a driver "round metal thing", that mounts on the back of the horn, "trumpet looking thing", that together make the tweeter. Not being a smartass, just might be a vocabulary thing there.

L-pad controls the output of the tweeter, all information sent to it. Various treble controls affect various parts of the bandwidth, all of which are mostly being reproduced by the tweeter.


"If it sounds good, it is good" applies in all cases, but, you should know what's being asked of your equipment to make that.
 
#9
Just My 2 cents worth I don't know why any one would want a Horn in a Bass Cabinet I have Been Playing for over 40 years and the cabs worth there salt Don't have Horns In a bass Cabinet i have 2 cabs with them and when the horns are switched on It makes A Horrible Hissing Sound which annoys the Heck out of me so I took them completely out now i have a nice Port Hole for my Bass cabs Sounds Better and I get Better Response out of my cabs So If you have a 2-15 cab and a 4-10 cab the 15 will take care of the the lows and the 10 will take care of the highs and also If you get a Amp Head that Splits these two signals with a crossover then you have a winning combination
 
#10
I too have been playing many decades.
When there were only flats I wanted a wider frequency possibility.
I had a two way Cerwin Vega but my first cab with a horn was an SWR GII jr with Eden speakers.
First thing I did was turn the tweeter to just barely on. All my subsequent SWR cabs were set this way. (I often wonder if this is part of their negative criticism? That salespeople crank the tweet so they lose all warmth)
Then all the little accents had that finish on them that made them distinct. I like that. Half way up you do get that hissy thing we both deplore.
I love a B-15 yet that little extra clarity is what I want available. I can always dial it back or lose it by technique.
My experience with Bergs is that the tweeter is so integrated in the design that you don't have the hiss at half way and there's no gap in sound between the cones and tweeter.
 
#11
rstob911 said:
Just My 2 cents worth I don't know why any one would want a Horn in a Bass Cabinet I have Been Playing for over 40 years and the cabs worth there salt Don't have Horns In a bass Cabinet i have 2 cabs with them and when the horns are switched on It makes A Horrible Hissing Sound which annoys the Heck out of me so I took them completely out now i have a nice Port Hole for my Bass cabs Sounds Better and I get Better Response out of my cabs So If you have a 2-15 cab and a 4-10 cab the 15 will take care of the the lows and the 10 will take care of the highs and also If you get a Amp Head that Splits these two signals with a crossover then you have a winning combination
Click to expand...


There's so much wrong info in this post that it's comical...


- georgestrings
 
#12
rstob911 said:
Just My 2 cents worth I don't know why any one would want a Horn in a Bass Cabinet I have Been Playing for over 40 years and the cabs worth there salt Don't have Horns In a bass Cabinet i have 2 cabs with them and when the horns are switched on It makes A Horrible Hissing Sound which annoys the Heck out of me so I took them completely out now i have a nice Port Hole for my Bass cabs Sounds Better and I get Better Response out of my cabs So If you have a 2-15 cab and a 4-10 cab the 15 will take care of the the lows and the 10 will take care of the highs and also If you get a Amp Head that Splits these two signals with a crossover then you have a winning combination
Click to expand...

And painted on flames will make cars go down the track faster. :D

I have been using punctuation for 20+ years. :scowl:

georgestrings said:
There's so much wrong info in this post that it's comical...


- georgestrings
Click to expand...

+1
 
#14
chadds said:
I too have been playing many decades.
When there were only flats I wanted a wider frequency possibility.
I had a two way Cerwin Vega but my first cab with a horn was an SWR GII jr with Eden speakers.
First thing I did was turn the tweeter to just barely on. All my subsequent SWR cabs were set this way. (I often wonder if this is part of their negative criticism? That salespeople crank the tweet so they lose all warmth)
Then all the little accents had that finish on them that made them distinct. I like that. Half way up you do get that hissy thing we both deplore.
I love a B-15 yet that little extra clarity is what I want available. I can always dial it back or lose it by technique.
My experience with Bergs is that the tweeter is so integrated in the design that you don't have the hiss at half way and there's no gap in sound between the cones and tweeter.
Click to expand...

I really like the Bergs, but think there is a bit of a gap between the woofer and the tweeter in the upper mids-to-highs range. Jim certainly does have about the best integrated of the tweeter/woofer cabs out there though.

People talk a lot about the 'hiss' of the tweeter, but the reality is that its showing you the weakness of your amp. A speaker cannot add anything to the sound...it can only reproduce or not reproduce. So if you find that with a cab with a tweeter, you're getting hiss, its just being more 'faithful' in its reproduction up high. This is probably a hold-over from amps that weren't designed to be used with cabs that could go so high, or modern amps that are aimed at a less hi-fi crowd.

I'm OK with tweeters being there, because I tend to roll off my highs from the amp, then I can balance where I want my tone up there to start or end. I'd rather have the option to add some in than be stuck in a situation where I want more up top and can't get it.
 
#15
BurningSkies said:
I really like the Bergs, but think there is a bit of a gap between the woofer and the tweeter in the upper mids-to-highs range. Jim certainly does have about the best integrated of the tweeter/woofer cabs out there though.
Click to expand...

FYI, there are many different voicings to the various Berg lines of cabs. The HT line (which includes the IP's) definitely has a 'built in dip' in that 1K or so gank area, resulting in a very smooth, and what some would call 'hi fi' sound. This can work really well with some bass guitar tone goals...big and smooth built in.

The original AE line cabs had a very strong bump in the upper midrange, and the SA/HS/HD line sits kind of in the middle of the HT's and AE's. The later AE's (AE212 and the revised AE112 and 210) had a very even, smooth transition between the top of the driver and the tweeter.
 
#16
rstob911 said:
Just My 2 cents worth I don't know why any one would want a Horn in a Bass Cabinet I have Been Playing for over 40 years and the cabs worth there salt Don't have Horns In a bass Cabinet i have 2 cabs with them and when the horns are switched on It makes A Horrible Hissing Sound which annoys the Heck out of me so I took them completely out now i have a nice Port Hole for my Bass cabs Sounds Better and I get Better Response out of my cabs So If you have a 2-15 cab and a 4-10 cab the 15 will take care of the the lows and the 10 will take care of the highs and also If you get a Amp Head that Splits these two signals with a crossover then you have a winning combination
Click to expand...

Sorry to pile on, but wow, virtually every point you make is literally wrong. However, many like the tone of a one way cab, nothing wrong with that. So, in your case, 8 or 9 wrongs actually does suggest a 'right'.... that there is a place in the market for one way cabs.
 
#17
KJung said:
FYI, there are many different voicings to the various Berg lines of cabs. The HT line (which includes the IP's) definitely has a 'built in dip' in that 1K or so gank area, resulting in a very smooth, and what some would call 'hi fi' sound. This can work really well with some bass guitar tone goals...big and smooth built in.

The original AE line cabs had a very strong bump in the upper midrange, and the SA/HS/HD line sits kind of in the middle of the HT's and AE's. The later AE's (AE212 and the revised AE112 and 210) had a very even, smooth transition between the top of the driver and the tweeter.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip Ken. I thought Jim only made one cab.
 
#19
Hehe....it's always interesting to see I wrote something in some thread that gets dug up, then having to read through it to see what the heck I said and if it makes any sense.:p

Re: the Bergs, some of it's probably using higher quality HF components to start with, but more probably better, more driver specific crossover/filter design. When people get a crossover right, whether they're shooting for even response or not, the cab sounds more like one cohesive unit playing the sound and less like different parts playing different things. That translates into sounding "smoother", or just "better".

And ya, tweeters don't make hiss, they just reproduce what's already going on further up the chain. Doesn't mean everybody needs one or has to like them, just that the tweeter often gets blamed for just doing it's job.
 
#20
Foz said:
If your tone is "ganky"... maybe it aint your cab, maybe its operator error. :crying:

Where do you got that treble boost on your bass' preamp set?
Click to expand...

This has nothing to do with 'my sound'. Just describing the different Berg cabs, and clarifying that there is no one 'Berg tone' since all the different lines sound VERY different regarding transition from the top of the driver to the tweeter. Also, that upper midrange area that I mentioned (between 1 and 3K) would not be impacted at all by the vast majority of treble controls, which typically are shelving circuits with a start point well above 4K.
 

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