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Which blows up more speakers TUBE or SOLID STATE?

#44
#45
Calaverasgrande said:
Well I should mention that I play with distortion-overdrive about 60-90% of the time. Depending on the band. I know its been said that you can hear a speaker complaining before it blows. Well its hard to hear when the signal is already distorted!
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hippie!

It of course is super easy to hear when you are running FOH standing 30 yards from the front of the stage.

There is also that, with the Ampeg and the Acoustic, it always sounded effing brilliant right before the cabs would blow.

Now, I haven't blown a cab in over 15 years.
This is just something that I have never gotten a satisfactory answer on.

I've been told I was blowing speakers with
  • distortion, speakers can't handle distortion.
  • bass-too much bass.
  • square waving the amp-and that melts the VC.
  • too much treble-bass speaker can't resolve the treble so it turns into heat.
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for live work, i've always been a pedal guy when looking for distortion. sometimes i'd start out with a nice frosty layer of foam from the amp, but always did the hard stuff with pedals. it honestly never occurred to me to turn the amp up till it was ready to blow for the longest time. i like being able to go between clean and dirty, so pedals were the way for me. saving my speakers was a bonus.
 
#46
Depends on the operator or operator error.
Had both an SVT with 2 cabs and an Acoustic 370 wih 2 cabs. Used separately and together(HUGE or outdoor settings). No speaker trouble.
A guitarist-turned-bassist had the SVT & 2 cab setup.
The speakers lasted about a year before 6 out of 8 per cab had rubbing voice coils.

A man's gotta know his amp & speakers' limitations.
 
#47
JimmyM said:
hippie!


for live work, i've always been a pedal guy when looking for distortion. sometimes i'd start out with a nice frosty layer of foam from the amp, but always did the hard stuff with pedals. it honestly never occurred to me to turn the amp up till it was ready to blow for the longest time. i like being able to go between clean and dirty, so pedals were the way for me. saving my speakers was a bonus.
Click to expand...

As am I. I used to use the DOD preamp overdrive pedal. The yellow one. Then I got one of the good Rat pedals. When I had the Acoustic I was using it's built in "symetrical overdrive".
I wasn't really running the amps up loud enough to get amp distortion (not on purpose) I was just turning up until I could be heard over the drums, and guitar. Thought that soildstate ampeg never sounded good unless it was cranked and the limiter was off.

@BFM. Art limiter? Really? I'd rather use an Ashly or something with a bit more fidelity.
 
#48
for a guy who's so state of the art when it comes to speakers, bill seems to like cheap stuff elsewhere. the bass he uses that he built looks really nice, but if i'm not mistaken, he uses an ibanez promethean for a head, too. you'd think he'd use a rack of channel strips into a 1500w power amp ;)
 
#49
JimmyM said:
for a guy who's so state of the art when it comes to speakers, bill seems to like cheap stuff elsewhere. the bass he uses that he built looks really nice, but if i'm not mistaken, he uses an ibanez promethean for a head, too. you'd think he'd use a rack of channel strips into a 1500w power amp ;)
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That's the thing, Jimmy -- his cabs are so efficient, they would even make your B-15 sound loud ;):D.
 
#50
Just blew a 15" with my 400+ not too long ago. Ofcorse it was like 20 years old.......I dunno. Power is the communicator here......If you exceed the power handling of the speaker, chances are you will blow it no matter what you use to do it with.
 
#51
GrowlerBox said:
That's the thing, Jimmy -- his cabs are so efficient, they would even make your B-15 sound loud ;):D.
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why you...i oughta...

:hiding:

my b-15 IS loud. i've done an 800 seat theater with stage volume before. put it in an 810 and crank it and it gets difficult to be in a room with it. wouldn't use one with metallica but it'll get the job done with an oldies show.
 
#52
A long time ago I had a 2x15 cab with two electrovoice EL15B built in. This cab was built like a tank. On top I had a 2x12-cab, a copie of a MusicMan-cab. This two cabs have been driven by a GallinKrueger-head with 200 Watt. I don't know exactly the model, but I never got the sound out it I wanted. This was between 1979 and 1983.

I had to play real loud with a 1964 Precision Bass, the guitarists used to have them old one Marshall - 50-Watt-Heads without master volume and used extern power-soaks. Pretty loud, anyway...

As putting it to the max all the time, I blew 3 EVM 15B. All got reconed and used again. After a while they called my Tech and told him, it would be better to use EVM 15L, They would be much better. From this time until I sold the cab I had no more problems.

After that I started with 410-cabs, and I never blew any further speaker.

Awww, there was a tweeter in a SWR Redhead. We played open air, and I had o crank it real hard. Suddenly I missed the brizzeling high tones. The next days I took the combo to the tec. He sayed, he did not see anything like that bevore: The driver did melt down! FUBAR, literaly.....
 
#53
JimmyM said:
hippie!


for live work, i've always been a pedal guy when looking for distortion. sometimes i'd start out with a nice frosty layer of foam from the amp, but always did the hard stuff with pedals. it honestly never occurred to me to turn the amp up till it was ready to blow for the longest time. i like being able to go between clean and dirty, so pedals were the way for me. saving my speakers was a bonus.
Click to expand...

With my amp, I only use a pedal for "okay, that's just ridiculous" levels of distortion.

My normal sound is pretty overdriven, but if I want it less so, I just switch to the neck pickup (which I have the volume set a bit down on) and play more gently.
 
#54
Calaverasgrande said:
@BFM. Art limiter? Really? I'd rather use an Ashly or something with a bit more fidelity.
Click to expand...
Mine is totally transparent. I guarantee it has far better S/N and THD than 98% of bass amps.
for a guy who's so state of the art when it comes to speakers, bill seems to like cheap stuff elsewhere.
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The most important parts of the signal chain are the bass and the speakers. When you have an instrument and speakers as good as mine are you don't have to spend uber cash on uber amps.
 
#55
billfitzmaurice said:
That's more of a pure compressor, very well suited to getting a tubey tone with an SS amp. Mine is a combination compressor/expander/limiter.
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Thanks for the reply. Yeah, it does work well with SS and helps achieve a great tone. Although it is switchable compressor/limiter, I mostly have it set on the compressor. Also great for DI and/or recording.
 
#57
If you're blowing loudspeakers, it means you're trying to do too much with them--i.e., not enough rig for the gig. Possible solutions are more loudspeakers or more powerful loudspeakers (and appropriate amounts of amp power), PA support, etc.

Regarding whether loudspeakers like distortion or not--they don't know what in the signal is distortion and what isn't. More than 90% of the power going into them turns into waste heat instead of acoustical energy, so if someone tells you that a certain waveform "heats up the voice coil," you can know that they actually all do.
 
#58
The funny thing I find about almost all of the answers I got, back when I was havinga hard time with this, is that they made sense on the surface, but didn't bear much examination.
For instance, if woofers, mid bass drivers etc dont like distortion, than how do PA speakers get away with amplifying mic-ed guitars?
If a woofer cant handle treble, how do guitar amps do it? They have lower wattage drivers!
I am still kind of annoydby the whole square wave thing. There is a difference after all between a square wave in a synth (as is often used as an example) and a square waved bass or guitar signal. But to be fair, nither one is a perfect square wave.

As far as tubes "rounding off" the signal. I find this to be a generalization. I have had solidstate amps that sounded a lot muddier and more "rounded off" than any of my tube amps. And at reasonable clean volume I dont think I hear much lacking in the attack of my Mesa. This might have somethign to do with how the power supply on Mesa amps is a little different than other all tube amps. Most of them I have seen have a few large capacitors, Mesa seems to prefer many paralleled smaller caps.

I wonder though, of speaker failures what kind os most common?
I have never seen (or had happen to me, the visible kind of failure where the cone is ripped or damaged looking. It's always the voice coil that goes. SO I suppose it was a heat issue. Again, ever since I went all tube it hasn't happened once.
 
#60
Sartori said:
I've heard that a common type of speaker failure is in cases of overexcursion, the speaker going farther than it's supposed to and basically getting stuck.
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The number one failure is burned out voice coils, usually at power levels lower than the rating. Once you reach xmax any additional power applied gets no additional output, just additional heat. If that additional heat alone doesn't toast the coil it will result in thermal power compression, which reduces output. That usually causes the player to turn up more, which doesn't get more output, but does add more heat, which adds more thermal compression, which reduces output, which causes the player to turn up some more, etc. until the coil gives out.
Mechanical damage is actually rare, as most drivers have at least a 2:1 ratio between xmax and xlim, the damage point.
 

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