Will this damage my speakers?

smo · Dec 7, 2005

Hi guys,

I need a little advice - i tried a serach for an hour or so, and couldn't really find what i was after.
My question is -- If i use multiple pedals, say a couple of distortion pedals and whatever else simultaneously, will this damge my speakers?

thanks again,
smo

tplyons · Dec 7, 2005

No.

Terrorstorm · Dec 7, 2005

I would also say no, but still "no" when you use such a thing???
http://www.effector13.com/pedals/nofi/index2.html

I really think of getting one of these sick effects from Effector 13 or DBA, but I am afraid they could do something bad to my speakers at louder volumes...

Groundloop · Dec 7, 2005

Terrorstorm said:

I would also say no, but still "no" when you use such a thing???
http://www.effector13.com/pedals/nofi/index2.html

I really think of getting one of these sick effects from Effector 13 or DBA, but I am afraid they could do something bad to my speakers at louder volumes...
Click to expand...

I checked out the sound samples of the Nofi pedal at Effector 13. That is, without a doubt, the ugliest thing I've ever heard. They've managed to make a pedal that replicates bad shielding, a cable that's had a few too many road cases rolled over it, a tube hanging half out of the socket and a torn speaker. Brilliant!!!

smo. You probably won't damage your speakers, just make sure that the level knobs on the pedals (especially distortion/od and preamp pedals. ie: anything that adds gain) aren't all cranked to full, and you should be fine.

Terrorstorm · Dec 7, 2005

Groundloop said:

I checked out the sound samples of the Nofi pedal at Effector 13. That is, without a doubt, the ugliest thing I've ever heard. They've managed to make a pedal that replicates bad shielding, a cable that's had a few too many road cases rolled over it, a tube hanging half out of the socket and a torn speaker. Brilliant!!!
Click to expand...

Hahaha! well said..

Joe P · Dec 7, 2005

Here's an excerpt from a private message that I sent someone recently. Maybe this could help.

You can tell that it's part of a conversation between fellow GK owners, but I still think it's applicable. It's copied-and-pasted just as it was originally written; I don't have time right now to go-over it...

First of all, clipping - like as-in 'clipping distortion' - adds higher frequencies to a waveform, so if you have a bass cab with a little tweeter in it that was figured to only need to handle clean bass (with just several percent of upper harmonics, as compared to lower frequencies), then you can stress or fry them (OR their attenuators, unfortunately) by subjecting tweeters to 30 or 40% harmonics (easily ten-times the clean-bass harmonic power!), even if your TOTAL power is within the stated speaker rating.

What makes all this worse, is that AMP ratings are calculated for a sine wave with some peak available voltage (like a solid-state amp's power supply voltage) wired across some certain load (like a 4-Ohm or 8-Ohm speaker..). The thing is - that same amp can put out nearly TWICE that power if it's outputting a squared-off wave (like a CLIPPED wave) to the same load! This extra power is all harmonics; the fundamental frequency will measure no louder than if it were clean.

It's important to understand, though, that an amp can really, reasonably only put-out TWICE it's rated power at absolute worst-case - that's with a pure squarewave, running rail-to-rail on the power supply. Now if any amp could really do it, it'd probably be a GK, being that they have huge, oversized supplies - but STILL, that's only double.

Now the G.I.V.E. (Gate Induced Valve Effect) distortion on our GKs is not harsh, pure-square distortion to begin with, for one-thing; it doesn't contain near the harmonic density of a cranked fuzz pedal or something (which bassist's all-over are playing through all the time!). That takes us back away from that theoretical-max twice-the-power, but I s'pose we can say close-to-twice, just to be conservative.

If you're using the special, biamp-able GK cabs, then the whole idea is that the tweeter-side of the sound never goes through the G.I.V.E. boost section, and gets to the tweeter clean and un-distorted!

If you don't have a tweeter at all, then highs won't hurt a regular cone any more than any other frequency.

If you do have a tweeter, then you don't want to blow it - but before it blew, it'd be screamin'!, you understand. There are no magical, mysterious, destructive properties to highs! Generally-speaking: ONLY TOO MUCH POWER CAN FRY SPEAKERS! ..we just have to remember that a distortion-tone has a higher-than-normal (or 'natural', should I say?) amount of high-freqs compared to lows.

...So here's the thing: If you turn your master ('woofer') volume down all the way, then NO sound can come out; no power can go to the speaker, even if your bass, and the pre-gain, and the boost knob is dimed, right? Well, how's THAT going to hurt your speaker? Now - with the bass and vol and boost cranked, turn-up the Woofer volume until it's like five or ten watts - like as loud as a boom-box; how's THAT going to hurt your speaker? So now turn it up some more - Dude: it's going to be SKAH-REAM-IN' before you're going to hurt anything!

..and like I said: the GK distortion isn't like a harsh, squarewave FUZZ, it's a nice, natural, tub-ish overdrive/distortion, and it's MADE to do that!

Now somewhere between super-clean and the singing 'lead-bass' clipped-distortion, you'll find in your GK a beautiful range of tones that have a nice, warm-yet-aggressive, compressed sound that is not clipping distortion - it's the Gate-Induced Valve Effect!

..and it's NICE!
Click to expand...

Hope this helps -

Joe

smo · Dec 7, 2005

Thanks for the info fella's!
Now i can put my mind to ease..........
smo

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