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What is the inherent problem with a 4x10?

#142
Jeez Jimmy, did you mean to post this stuff to the "Chicks at Shows" thread? :hiding:

JimmyM said:
what??? nicole bass isn't sexy to you?

NicoleBass.jpg
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JimmyM said:
mommiedearest.jpg


NO MILK CRATES EVER!!!
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#144
ishouldbeking said:
what I find interesting re: this whole debate... when placed into the context of a traditional rock band (bass, guitars, drums)... no matter how much thought we bassists might put into things like stage dispersion, I can't imagine any guitarist buying into it. and therefore, there are probably very few guitar cabinets that would feature the ideal positioning anyway... mostly rendering the whole point rather moot, no?

Given, just cuz one or two members of the band are going to ignore science doesn't mean we should too... But I wonder how much an audience really cares if the full frequency response of my bass is being properly dispersed when my guitarist is beaming all his highs straight out of an AC-30 horizontal 2x12... with an open-backed cabinet.
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To the best of my knowledge guitarists really haven't had options that combine a fairly wide, uniform pattern with the sort of tone they're looking for at a reasonable price. I hope to change that one day.
 
#148
Rockmusician said:
I have used 410's for years and never had any issues
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If you've never listened to a 4x10 compared to a pair of vertical 2x10s side by side while wandering through the audience there's no basis for comparison. Ignorance is bliss, and there's a lot of blissful 4x10 owners out there. It's certainly not their fault, they can only use what's offered.
To the best of my knowledge guitarists really haven't had options that combine a fairly wide, uniform pattern with the sort of tone they're looking for at a reasonable price.
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Catch 22. Manufacturers don't make vertically arrayed guitar 2x12s because they don't think they'll sell, guitar players can't try them because manufacturers don't make them, and besides, who wants their amp overhanging the speaker on both ends?
 
#149
Rockmusician said:
I have used 410's for years and never had any issues
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410's can sound very good. i've got a real nice one out in the garage that i haven't used in 3 years. bill would say it was horribly designed but i bought it from dave larue so it's nice ;)

but it doesn't make what bill says any less true. they do have poor dispersion of highs and mids except for the tweeter frequencies. for some it's not an issue, and for some others it is. doesn't bother me in the least when i use my 810 or 215. but it's really nice to have a cab that has good dispersion. it's like hearing your rig through a good pa.
 
#152
Derek Kiernan said:
:hyper:
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For nearly a year now I've had a couple of prototype cabs in the hands of a guitarist who likes them, but they're for electric guitar, not acoustic. Imho amplified acoustic is a different animal, and an amplified acoustic cab has very different tone goals.

[For those wondering why I'm writing all of that in response to Derek's succinct comment, he and I have been communicating regarding a cab for amplified acoustic guitar.]

Roadkill said:
A 1x12 with a beam blocker does a pretty good job :) .
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The beam blockers I've seen cover up the middle of the cone and that's not going to solve the problem. At best it will reduce the highs somewhat because it's blocking some of them while longer wavelengths will wrap around, but it doesn't address the basic mechanism by which beaming occurs (sound from one side of the cone encountering sound from the other side with a path-length-induced phase shift that results in frequency-variant patterns of reinforcement and cancellation... in geekspeak).

A professional loudspeaker designer named Jay Mitchell has invented a more effective device, but your guitarist would have to DIY it:

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Note in particular the graphs on page two. In the top graph, the large on-axis peak at 2.3 kHz is the "icepick to the eardrum" that characterizes many electric guitar cabinets. Note that it's gone in the second graph. The guitarist will probably need to boost the highs to regain his tone, but now there will be minimal difference between what he hears onstage and what the audience hears.

With Jay's permission, I may be using a variation of his invention in a future commercial electric guitar cab.
 
#155
DukeLeJeune said:
The beam blockers I've seen cover up the middle of the cone and that's not going to solve the problem.[...]A professional loudspeaker designer named Jay Mitchell has invented a more effective device, but your guitarist would have to DIY it:
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Yes, I had read about that before - very interesting idea, especially for an un-mic'd amp. The beam blocker that I saw wasn't designed to increase dispersion - it allowed the guitarist to hear the amp (mostly) as normal but attenuated the "beam" that fries the audience members directly in front of it. Then the PA and monitor system handles the dispersion to the audience and other band members. Or at least that's my understanding of it. I've run sound for a band that has one and it sure made my job easier!
 
#156
DukeLeJeune said:
The beam blockers I've seen cover up the middle of the cone and that's not going to solve the problem. At best it will reduce the highs somewhat because it's blocking some of them while longer wavelengths will wrap around, but it doesn't address the basic mechanism by which beaming occurs (sound from one side of the cone encountering sound from the other side with a path-length-induced phase shift that results in frequency-variant patterns of reinforcement and cancellation... in geekspeak).
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Beam blockers do work, just not all that well. They operate the same way all phase plugs do, they're just not sophisticated enough to work really well. A well engineered phase plug would cure beaming but 'well engineered' and 'electric guitar cabs' is even more of an oxymoron than it is with electric bass cabs. I may do one someday, but as the average guitar'd player would just want to screw up the works by trying to use them in a stack it's a very low priority item for me. OTOH all of my full range bass and PA woofer cabs now have phase plugs.
 

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