Bullet Tweeter 4~16 Ohms

[TomCarlos]

Friends...

I was looking for a tweeter, something other than a piezo. I came across this Pyle Bullet Tweeter. The impedance shows as 4~16 ohms. Which is it... 4, 8, 0r 16 ohms? Yes, we plan on using it with a crossover.

I am going to build a small cabinet... a 12" and a tweeter, maybe with a 2 way crossover or a high pass filter.

Thanks in advance...

Tom

[g1]

At parts-express, when you click on "product details" it shows 8 ohm, 100W.
Pyle PDBT45 Titanium Super Bullet Tweeter

[Leo_Gnardo]

That's funny, there's no engineering data, and a big sign on the unit just so ya know, it's a SUPER TWEETER. Maybe the impedance varies widely over its 1500-20,000 Hz range. I'd start with say a 2 uF film cap as a crossover, that would give you roughly a 5 K -3dB XO point IF it's 16 ohms, you'll hear it adding some "air" to the topmost frequencies. Geeze it claims 400 watts power handling? Hard to believe. Maybe they mean, "recommended for use with speaker systems driven with no more than 400 watts."

I hope you're getting it at a significant discount to its claimed $52 MSRP. With no data, no reviews I'd buy one as a lark, just see what it does, add 2 uF at a time to the first one until it starts to "bark" then back off & let it do its thing in a bass cab or full range PA cab.

[TomCarlos]

Thanks Greg and Leo....

I went digging through my file cabinet and found a few spec sheets on Pyle and other tweeters. Same thing... 4-8 ohms (as a range). I did see the Parts Express page and it says 8 ohms. Heck, for $15, it might be a good buy just to compare this tweeter against a few others.

In the Crate Acoustic Guitar Amps, they use a small tweeter that hardly has any output. So I thought this might be something to try as an alternative.

Thanks for the replies.

Tom

[Leo_Gnardo]

If the lonesome spec of 104 dB/1W is to be believed, it oughta add a lot of zip to your Crate acoustic amp. FWIW I thought the Crate was "pick of the crop" compared with Fender, Fishman & a couple other companies' offerings. It had a handy narrow-notch cut control. I found it handy to take the 5KHz "spike" out of guitars that had piezo pickups. It's nice to have a good clear top end, no question, but that kind of pickup often resulted in a clang that sounded to me like workin' on the railroad, whacking in a metal spike with a sledge hammer, over n over again, ow! If you're buying at $15, the price is right, can't beat that. Even if it turns out to be a bust, you're not going to break the bank. Snap up a handful of Dayton 250V film crossover caps if you're buying from Parts Express. Any extras will come in handy eventually, repairing/building passive XO's. They're excellent quality & very affordable.

[Enzo]

Cabinet for what? Bookshelf speaker? Studio monitor? Stage monitor? Near field or far?

Pyle is not a name I associate with quality, just my opinion.

[DrGonz78]

Pyle is not a name I associate with quality, just my opinion.

It's a Pyle of something...

[loudthud]

I remember reading that one of the speaker companies that Fender used became Pyle. Anybody know the story?

I replaced the speakers in a Twin Reverb with a pair of Pyles. They weren't anything special, but they sounded OK and didn't smoke.

[Leo_Gnardo]

I remember reading that one of the speaker companies that Fender used became Pyle. Anybody know the story?

I replaced the speakers in a Twin Reverb with a pair of Pyles. They weren't anything special, but they sounded OK and didn't smoke.

It was Utah that became Pyle. My experiences with Pyle as replacement speakers, they always seemed to have a midrange peak that made the amp sound like you were playing with a wah pedal stuck partway up, sort of gave an rrr rrr rrrrrr rr rrr tone to everything you played thru them. Not impressed.

[The Dude]

What Enzo said....what's it for? That's going to make a big difference. I wouldn't use it in anything you want to sound "hi-fi". Bullets are a very harsh sounding tweets, IMO. On the other hand, if you're building a stage monitor, maybe something that cuts through the mix and is a little harsh is what you want.

[Leo_Gnardo]

What Enzo said....what's it for? That's going to make a big difference. I wouldn't use it in anything you want to sound "hi-fi". Bullets are a very harsh sounding tweets, IMO. On the other hand, if you're building a stage monitor, maybe something that cuts through the mix and is a little harsh is what you want.

Answer's in #4 ^^^ and that's why I suggest bringing in the bullet tweet just a little at a time, start with a 2 uF XO cap & work up.

[The Dude]

I agree completely that will help, Leo. Just saying, if you can avoid the situation all together and get a better sounding tweeter to start with, you can avoid having to "band aid" it. That said, again, it depends on the application. Bullet tweeters are definitely beneficial in some applications. Others, not so much.

[J M Fahey]

Very general purpose explanation, *might* not apply to Pyle but I have no hard data against it either, just tke this with a grain of salt:
1) bullet tweeters are a great design idea, so much so that even a cheap knockoff can do quite well
2) JBL (the original ones) were lathe turned out of a solid aluminum bar (= expensive) , first ones used a large 1 3/4" - 44mm diameter Alnico cylinder (for comparison the one inside a Jensen P12/15N was 38mm diameter so we are talking a *serious* magnet there) so all added up to a very expensive tweeter, best of the best of course in its area.
Now knockoffs were made with plastic injected parts and used WAY cheaper ceramic magnets, so they can be made for 1/.10th the cost and yet retain 80% the sound, a very good deal.
The first ones to cheap clone it were HH and were all over the place


by the way, the 80% of the sound for 10% of the cost comment was originally applied to HH

It's basically a geometrical problem, so if you get the bullet horn curves right , a reasonably good diaphragm and coil (it might be aluminum or even phenolic instead of Titanium) and a good (cheap ceramic) magnet the clone will actually perform quite well for a very low cost.

Pyle might very well have done something like that.

And real cost is around $40 ; the $15 applies to a stock clearance sale only.

Will it be comparable to JBL, specially in home or studio monitor use?
Don't ghink so, although I might be surprised.
Will it be a killer acoustic guitar tweeter?
Will *definitely* be way better than anything remotely in that price league.

Now as a crossover, a plain cap is not enough, period.

The microscopic air chamber between ring diaphragm and phase plug which is the key to its high performance at high frequencies (yes, I believe the 104 dB rating, in any case way below the 112dB or so of the JBL original) also means it has NO space for free displpacement at lower frequencies, I'd use at least a 12dB/Oct (1 inductor 1 capacitor) crossover at arouind 7 kHz or a 18 dB/oct (2 capacitors, an inductor to ground in between them) 5kHz one.

A single capacitor is not safe at any frequency.
Don't ask me how I found out

Even mid priced Selenium bullets perform VERY well:

[Leo_Gnardo]

Good advice also from Juan ^^, and Parts Express has some crossover design charts in their catalog, I'm sure you can find 'em on the website too, to help select inductors for 12dB or steeper curves.

[TomCarlos]

Thanks everyone....

I will soon open up a different thread on a Peavey Ecoustic 112- and that is what we are after hear. This will be a project amp that will be handed over as a gift. Originally, we were going to yank the chassis and mount that in it's own cabinet and build something else for the speaker. But we decided to stick with the original cab and make some fixes to it.

The Ecoustic 112 comes stock with a Coax Speaker- the same one found in the KB/A 60 amp. The speaker in the Ecoustic is toast. So the choice is to find an exact replacement OR drop in a 12" woofer and add a cheap piezo OR try a bullet tweeter. I think I might have a 2K high pass filter that might come in handy here. Otherwise, we might go with a single cap. For their Coax speaker, Peavey uses a 2.2uf and a couple caps? in parallel measuring out to 10pf. The small caps are in series with the 2.2uf that goes to the Pos lead of the tweeter. Are those caps or something else?

I guess this all started with the question of "what's up with a spec that says 4 to 16 ohms? G-One, I visited the Parts Express sight and while it says 8 ohms on the one screen, when you click down to the spec page it repeats the 4 - 16 ohms.

I found a Pyle Pro tweeter that a friend gave me. It is their version of the PH44. The spec sheet says 8 ohms. The sticker on the speaker says 4-8 ohms. It measures at 7.1 ohm (dc resistance). So it looks like the stickers and/or spec sheets are goofy. So I am guess the bullet tweeter is 8 ohms.

The Pyle is probably a lower end component- I get that. But we are not building a high end PA cab here. The Ecoustic is somewhat noisy and not a top end amp by any means. It is a cost efficient way to amplify an acoustic guitar. I just wanted to make sure that I understood if there was anything behind the impedance range that was stated in the specs.

Again, you all provided great info in this thread. Thanks !!!

Tom