Speaker Cabs

[spartadrive_in]

If I get a guitar speaker cab and use a bass head with it for bass guitar is that ok???

IF... I wire up the speakers correctly. Like 4ohm or 8 ohm. Or is there a DIFFERENCE between the way guitar speakers and bass speakers are made????


thanks

[Paleo Pete]

I wouldn't advise it. Guitar speakers will handle bass to an extent, but not well and not for an extended time. Bass speakers are made with heavier cones, longer voice coil travel and are basically heavier duty all around. Bass guitar frequencies through guitar speakers is just not a good idea, it will basically make the voice coils try to move further than they are designed to move in order to reproduce lower frequencies than they are intended for.

Guitar through a bass amp will work, although in some cases may be a bit too bassy, because the general range of guitar is mostly within the frequency reproduction range of a bass amp. Use guitar speakers and it will even sound good. (15" bass speakers usually tend to be a bit boomy for guitar while 12's work great with the same amp)

Bass through guitar speakers however demands too much lower frequencies from the speakers. Even bass amps that used 10" speakers like some older Fenders used speakers designed for bass, not regular guitar speakers. Heavier paper, heavier voice coils, longer travel...

The impedance (4 or 8 ohm) should be the same as the amp's output no matter what speakers you use, and make sure it's NOT lower impedance than the amp. A 4 ohm cabinet with a 8 ohm tube amp can blow transformers or other components...(I blew a transistor amp that way too) 8 ohm cabinet with 4 ohm amp will just make the amp work a bit harder, but cause no real damage.

[spartadrive_in]

That's just the stuff I needed to know. Thank you.

[Steve Conner]

That is true. Any time I've played bass through a guitar speaker, or guitar through a bass speaker, it never sounded too good.

Guitar speakers don't have the real low-end wallop to handle the bottom octave of a bass guitar: the low notes just come out as a kind of farting, flapping sound, that makes you think something might break. And 10" bass speakers seem to have a high end that makes guitar crunch sound unpleasantly tinny. 15s might be better.

I think the EVM12L can just about be used for guitar and bass. Zakk Wylde uses them for guitar, and Geezer Butler uses them for bass. If I wanted a cabinet that could be used for either, I'd get an EVM12L in a Thiele cabinet. They are heavy and expensive, though.

[pdf64]

My view is that the classic groups of the 60s and 70s had the best tones, so use what they did, which by and large was 4 x 12 cabs for guitar and bass. I use a 4 x 12 cab with regular G12H30 celestions and it sounds fantastic for both guitar and bass, though as it gets ridiculously loud for guitar, it's been used mainly for bass in recent years. When we've compared it to other cabs it holds it's own in terms of bass extension and volume against similar sized cabs, you've got to take a step up in size before it gets outclassed. Peter

[Joe Bee]

Apart from the fact that you _can_ break a guitar speaker by feeding it too much power at low frequencies, I would argue that it is mostly a matter of taste. Bass amp usually have a rather flat frequency response from 40Hz (if it's a big, expensive cab) all the way up to 20kHz, so linear speakers are chosen to cope with that. With guitar, the amp produces a large midrange dip and relies on the cab to cut off the highs, and also the lows to a large extend.
So if you play bass through a cab like that, it will at least sound very different. Tastes have changed over the decades, and for example that funky popping stuff relies very much on frequencies a guitar cab would have a hard time trying to produce, but for 60s and 70s sounds you would be OK.

[Steve Conner]

The bass tones from "Classic groups of the 60s and 70s" were a whole other ball game. 60s and 70s amps, even the original Ampeg SVT! used high efficiency speakers with relatively high resonant frequencies and not much linear excursion, like Peter's Greenbacks. The result was a tone that was mostly distortion harmonics with very little of the actual fundamental pitches from the lower strings, and the louder you pushed it, the worse the distortion got.

I've heard this tone called by many names, including "Giant hamster fart" but the truth is, it's actually a very useful tone, and the distortion is what makes it useful! In a power trio, where the bassist is also the rhythm guitarist, it's practically mandatory. It also comes loud and clear through tiny transistor radios that don't have any bass response, possibly another reason it was popular in the 60s ;-)

Modern bass rigs have heavy duty drivers, tuned cabinets and kilowatts of power, but they don't actually seem to sit in a mix any better, because the frequencies that let you actually hear what tune the bass is playing are in the lower midrange. If anything, they sit worse because they don't have enough distortion!

Possibly the strangest gig I played on bass was on an outdoor stage made from a truck trailer. I only had a 50w tube amp and a 2x12" guitar cabinet, and the PA was for vocals only. I just cranked it and hoped for the best.