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Who else here uses 12s and 15's?

fantastic ..untill i hear it or experience it ..thats the way i feel ..and ive played alot of cabs..
well this is good news for me. now there will be only one 10", only one 12", and only one 15" because there is only one sound they can make no matter how they are manufactured. that will save a lot of hassle when buying speakers.

:scowl:

hey, believe what you want to believe, dude. people were just trying to help you understand what's going on and we got a smug reply with nothing behind it in return. if you want to reject proper speaker science in favor of "i've played a lot of cabs," that's up to you. doesn't affect my life one way or another.
 
what are your takes on 18s? i have one that i use with 4x10s.
i hate mixing speaker sizes like that, but i think 18"s are cool for certain applications, like maybe subs. in a bass cab, i think you can get everything you'd want out of an 18" in a properly designed ported cab using 15"s, 12"s or 10"s. but that's my opinion. if it works for you, rock it and don't worry about opinions.
 
Can a 10 or 12 go lower than a 15? sure, when its pairs or quartets of 10's and 12's when compared to a single 15. A quartet of 15's will go lower than almost anything, but who wants to drag that around!
It's about efficiency and coupling.

I think all this sillyness about not mixing speaker sizes is funny. Of all the things in your signal chain, speakers have the highest amount of distortion inherent to them. Like 10% in a best case scenario. The phase vs frequency plot of every speaker known to mankind is ugly as hell. Speakers are crude at the best. The difference between a 15 and a 12 is a lot less than the difference between the input signal and what comes out of either cab!
 
-I- care. but still, you're right....if it works for you, don't worry about it.

IMHO we all care, but Bass4 has a good point. I know two people that use Mesa EQ, but their sound doesn't jump out at me. I know that is some of the best EQ out there, but you are talking about $75 gigs in a local club, those people are not worried about your cabs are out of phase, they just want a strong drink and cold beer. I don't know about anyone here but at 2am in the morning after playing a gig I would not want to move that stuff, color me Neo.
The people I am talking about are well over 30 something, as am I over 50. Bigger and heavy goes out the door for me, and none of use have roadies to move that stuff.
 
My goal is what works for me...

with:
The minimum money invested
The minimum cartage necessary
The maximum volume headroom I can have within those requirements
The best tone profile I can get within those requrements

Figuring out how to meet those requirements involves thinking and occasionally some graphing, and THEN testing. Buying and taking back stuff to guitar center until I find something that works only guarantees I'll get the best thing to meet my needs that guitar center sells.

Researching what will probably meet my needs cuts back on the things I have to try out and increases the odds I'll get what works best for me.

90% of the bass players I see out there are using way too much rig or suffering with something that sounds like crap and costs more than its worth. Why? Because they "just use what works" without thinking about it.
 
Can a 10 or 12 go lower than a 15? sure, when its pairs or quartets of 10's and 12's when compared to a single 15. A quartet of 15's will go lower than almost anything, but who wants to drag that around!
It's about efficiency and coupling.

With that logic one of these (15);

15-Inch_Bass_amp-woofer_1580_web.jpg


can go lower with more volume then (12);

kappalite-3012ho.jpg


The box that speakers are put in makes a huge difference to voicing and efficiency too. If you had a Kappalite 3015LF crammed into a undersized and badly ported box it'd probably put out nowhere near as much low end as a pretty rubbish 10 inch woofer and a well designed cab. There's a Vox cab or some other old British brand from what I recall that does a 2xTHIRTYSIX cab, and the guy that owned it said it had a god awfully non existant and muddy low end and it's power handlings like 30-60W or something. Speaker size really doesn't mean anything beyond beaming.
 
With that logic one of these (15);

15-Inch_Bass_amp-woofer_1580_web.jpg


can go lower with more volume then (12);

kappalite-3012ho.jpg


The box that speakers are put in makes a huge difference to voicing and efficiency too. If you had a Kappalite 3015LF crammed into a undersized and badly ported box it'd probably put out nowhere near as much low end as a pretty rubbish 10 inch woofer and a well designed cab. There's a Vox cab or some other old British brand from what I recall that does a 2xTHIRTYSIX cab, and the guy that owned it said it had a god awfully non existant and muddy low end and it's power handlings like 30-60W or something. Speaker size really doesn't mean anything beyond beaming.
Well the first point I agree with, and that was kind of my point. The speaker will only perform well in a great enclosure.
There are diminishing returns to speaker size. As well as cone mass. As cone size goes up it's low frequency cutoff goes down. Then of course the cone mass increases which makes it less efficient. Of course there is a sweet spot between those two variables.
If you compare two speakers from the same model line would be a more reasonable comparison. Say compare the Kappa 12 and 15 in TL606 style enclosures. The 15 will be louder and go lower.
Combine two 12" Kappas in a TL606 style enclosure as the EV plan specifies and it will go louder and lower than single 15", with four 12" it would be pretty good, if unmanageable to move.
 
you no doubt were not referring to me. except for my gig friday night where i couldn't find a place to put my 810 and had to lay it down sideways, i never use way too much rig ;)

Besides limitations on what is physically possible to move and to fit onstage, I don't really believe in there being such a thing as "too much rig." This is because I have yet to see someone gigging an amp that has no volume knob.

Some people have the luxury of having more than one rig. Others do not. If I'm only going to have one rig, it's going to be the biggest rig possible. Better to have a ton of loudness available and not use it than to not have much and need it.
 
Besides limitations on what is physically possible to move and to fit onstage, I don't really believe in there being such a thing as "too much rig." This is because I have yet to see someone gigging an amp that has no volume knob.

Some people have the luxury of having more than one rig. Others do not. If I'm only going to have one rig, it's going to be the biggest rig possible. Better to have a ton of loudness available and not use it than to not have much and need it.

Most people who can afford a Mesa 4x12 or Ampeg 8x10 new could afford to get a pair of nice 2x12s instead and be able to scale down.

I think there are very few people out there who can only afford one huge cab rig - generally speaking they've got as much invested in that large cab as they would have invested in two smaller cabs.

The nice part is if you go modular you often do not have to buy a combo amp, and part of your backup rig its done for you, if you need one :)

It's not for everyone, but in my opinion most of the people who use giant cabs these days don't need them for ANY venue they play. Just my two pence from never seeing an 8x10 user get louder than a 4x10 woulda been.