Hi,
I am making a small cabinet for my little guitar valve amplifier (1W of power).
Usually, in this size, the sensitivity is pretty bad except for the 2 drivers below:
I like to play rock/hard-rock but not metal!
Which one do you think suits my needs best?
Kind regards,
Pedro
I am making a small cabinet for my little guitar valve amplifier (1W of power).
Usually, in this size, the sensitivity is pretty bad except for the 2 drivers below:
- Faital Pro 3FE26 (90dB - neodymium) and 3FE25 (91dB - Ferrite) https://faitalpro.com/en/products/LF_Loudspeakers/product_details/index.php?id=401000160
- Eminence Alpha 3-8 (88.6 dB) https://eminence.com.mx/files/Alpha_3_8.pdf
I like to play rock/hard-rock but not metal!
Which one do you think suits my needs best?
Kind regards,
Pedro
I will strongly advice against the use of such small loudspeakers. Although your valve amp power is small, the sound is right, so you should not skimp on the loudspeaker quality and size. Loudspeaker is of crucial importance for guitar sound - you can't get quality guitar sound from skinny 3" general purpose loudspeaker (like those FaitalPro or Eminence), you need at least 5" or 6" guitar loudspeaker specially designed for guitar use. I am recommending these guitar loudspeakers:
https://www.jensentone.com/mod-series/mod-5-30
https://www.jensentone.com/mod-series/mod-6-15
https://www.jensentone.com/vintage-ceramic/c6v
https://www.jensentone.com/mod-series/mod-5-30
https://www.jensentone.com/mod-series/mod-6-15
https://www.jensentone.com/vintage-ceramic/c6v
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Thanks for your reply.
Nowadays it’s normal to see small speakers being used in guitar amps. For example: positive grid spark series, black star Fly, etc
I think I may be able to go up to 4’’, but that’s it.
Cars, for example, can have nice sounding speakers which reproduce guitar sound very well and they are 4’’.
Please notice that this is to play at low volume. I have a 12’’ Eminence but the goal is to go small in size.
Cheers,
Pedro
Nowadays it’s normal to see small speakers being used in guitar amps. For example: positive grid spark series, black star Fly, etc
I think I may be able to go up to 4’’, but that’s it.
Cars, for example, can have nice sounding speakers which reproduce guitar sound very well and they are 4’’.
Please notice that this is to play at low volume. I have a 12’’ Eminence but the goal is to go small in size.
Cheers,
Pedro
Marshall disagrees with you: https://www.musicstores.in/electric-guitar-amps/marshall-micro-amp-
Obviously is not the best tone, but pretty much does the job hanging out with some 9V batteries on this little box hanging on the belt.
I remember Dimebag doing some drunk fun with this on a Pantera video, and the tone was pretty acceptable.
I was not objecting the small wattage of the amplifier you have, on the contrary - 1 W of valve sound is more than enough for practicing.
Positive Grid and Blackstar are very different amplifier than yours, plus their loudspeakers are proprietary - not general-purpose off-the-shelf loudspeakers (you can not by those speakers!).
Loudspeakers in cars are regular "hi-fi" loudspeakers - they are reproducing recorded guitar sound (usually by placing mic in the front of guitar loudspeaker/combo). You need a real guitar loudspeaker for playng your guitar.
5" or 6" loudspeaker is small enough.
Again - loudspeaker inside that Marshal is proprietary and much different than any other 2" or 3" general-purpose loudspeaker you can by.
Any of those Jensen real guitar loudspeakers I mentioned above will wipe the floor with that pathetic Marshall toy. I am manufacturing loudspeakers for living, including custom guitar combos.
Sorry. I get your point, but I just want something tiny to put on my desk and connect the amp there. Of course the sound won’t be any close to a larger driver. I know the difference since I connected it to small speakers and to my 12’’ and the difference is really big. But if we would only have the option of small speakers to fit in the box I have, there should be some that are better than the others.
I looked at the sensitivity as the decision factor, and because of that I put the faital pro: 90 dB of SPL in such a small speaker is impressive to say the least.
I looked at the sensitivity as the decision factor, and because of that I put the faital pro: 90 dB of SPL in such a small speaker is impressive to say the least.
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Yes, companies like Positive Grid use a line of driver probably made for them, they are still drivers and there's no magic added to them. They probably add a DSP board to hide the flaws of their cheaply bought in bulk drivers.
Yes, one can make a practicing amp with a small 3" or 4" and add a passive radiator for a little more bass extension.
I have the Spark Mini, and it sounds really good. It's sitting next to me, and I would never ask it to fill a live room with people, unless it was mic'ed.
So, as a practice amp, sitting on your desk or on the floor next to you, no problem.
The Faitals are very good. I'd have a mini amp with tone controls because the highs on the Faitals are prominent, but if tamed a bit, they are fantastic.
The other brand that comes to mind in Celestion, as they have an extensive offering of guitar speakers as well.
Yes, one can make a practicing amp with a small 3" or 4" and add a passive radiator for a little more bass extension.
I have the Spark Mini, and it sounds really good. It's sitting next to me, and I would never ask it to fill a live room with people, unless it was mic'ed.
So, as a practice amp, sitting on your desk or on the floor next to you, no problem.
The Faitals are very good. I'd have a mini amp with tone controls because the highs on the Faitals are prominent, but if tamed a bit, they are fantastic.
The other brand that comes to mind in Celestion, as they have an extensive offering of guitar speakers as well.
No magic, but well known differences between general purpose speakers and real guitar speakers.
Here is the frequency response of Jensen C6V:
And here is the frequency response of FaitalPro 3FE26:
Very different!
DSP may change this frequency response to be similar to Jensen, but can't change the temporal behavior (waterfall diagram) of the cone brake up of the Jensen. So, general purpose loudspeaker never sound similar to the real guitar speaker, in spite of DSP use.
Let me apologize with a different opinion about this.
Why is everybody moving to FRFR speakers in the guitar world?
So, to me, the Jensen looks like a very cheap speaker, with lots of wiggles in the impedance, and huge cone breakup.
We already add distortion pedals and such, why would we need the speaker to add more unwanted distortion?
A PA system doesn't have that kind of FR like in the Jensen, yet, may guitar player will output directly from their pedal board.
So, sorry, but I don't understand why we should get an inferior driver when we can get a better one.
In this day and age of boards like the Cortex, Ampero, PG, etc... we need speakers that can reproduce what we dial in, not being colored at the end by a ragged FR.
Why is everybody moving to FRFR speakers in the guitar world?
So, to me, the Jensen looks like a very cheap speaker, with lots of wiggles in the impedance, and huge cone breakup.
We already add distortion pedals and such, why would we need the speaker to add more unwanted distortion?
A PA system doesn't have that kind of FR like in the Jensen, yet, may guitar player will output directly from their pedal board.
So, sorry, but I don't understand why we should get an inferior driver when we can get a better one.
In this day and age of boards like the Cortex, Ampero, PG, etc... we need speakers that can reproduce what we dial in, not being colored at the end by a ragged FR.
A mountainous frequency response is normal and preferred for guitar speakers (I don't make the rules). Scratching my head as to why, but there may be some technical advantages to having high sensitivity peaks in the 'scream-ish' 2-4kHz range, like reduced loss-related distortion.
Soft polymers dampening paper cones and rubber surrounds may be great for getting a flatter tonal balance, but it's not free. The price is subtle distortion of the "dull, grey, veiled" variety. The opposite of musical and the sound "popping out" at the listener. For a more technical analysis, people would have to take an interest in minuscule <80dB side bands, which is rare.
Of the FR hi-fi speaker variety, the Fostex 'NV2' range could be nice, mainly because of the featherweight cones, cloth surrounds and declared low X-max. But the dedicated Jensen, Celestion, etc. types will probably have more of a classic guitar 'twang'.
Soft polymers dampening paper cones and rubber surrounds may be great for getting a flatter tonal balance, but it's not free. The price is subtle distortion of the "dull, grey, veiled" variety. The opposite of musical and the sound "popping out" at the listener. For a more technical analysis, people would have to take an interest in minuscule <80dB side bands, which is rare.
Of the FR hi-fi speaker variety, the Fostex 'NV2' range could be nice, mainly because of the featherweight cones, cloth surrounds and declared low X-max. But the dedicated Jensen, Celestion, etc. types will probably have more of a classic guitar 'twang'.
Yes, it is cheap, but there are much more expensive guitar speakers on the market. Likewise, FaitalPro 3FE25 is cheap, but there are much more expensive hi-fi/PA speakers on the market.
Huge cone breakup - yes, that is the characteristic of the real guitar speaker. If you don't have that breakup - you don't have the sound of the real guitar.
The guitar speaker doesn't add more distortion (add to what?!), it creates the (distorted) guitar sound.
Zen wisdom: What is the (electric) guitar sound without the guitar speaker? Silence!
And many guitar players prefer the sound form the real guitar speaker/combo.
Real guitar speakers are not "inferior" to PA or hi-fi speakers, they are just different because of the different purpose. You have to understand - hi-fi speaker reproduce sound, guitar speaker produce sound! Totally different!
Hi-fi speaker must faithfully reproduce the recording made by mic close to the guitar speaker/combo (with intrinsically ragged frequency response), so it should have flat frequency response.
I understand your take on this, abstract and sonce.
Get a guitar, add a few pedals, plug everything into an amp and cab.
Old school is beautiful, but I think this is different.
I'm a late bloomer in the world of amplified instruments, in my case a Flight Vanguard ukulele.
I get it was all pedal board, cabs, mics, etc... to get that "special" sound. Lots of audio engineers have lost sleep over setups!
Since I'm late to the party, I have a Positive Grid Mini, a small Ampero modeler and a few guitar plugins. Saves a lot of money over buying real boutique or famous heads, amps and cabs!
Most of these things have IRs from famous guitar speakers/cabinets, which I believe the OP is doing as well.
So, that "mountainous" FR is already baked in the response coming out of those plugins. Hence the fact that in this case, we need a speaker with a flatter response, as to reproduce the sound of the emulated cabs and speakers.
So, in this particular case, I believe a flatter speaker is called for.
Now, if it were just a guitar and pedals, it would be indeed different, along the lines of what you guys talk about.
Get a guitar, add a few pedals, plug everything into an amp and cab.
Old school is beautiful, but I think this is different.
I'm a late bloomer in the world of amplified instruments, in my case a Flight Vanguard ukulele.
I get it was all pedal board, cabs, mics, etc... to get that "special" sound. Lots of audio engineers have lost sleep over setups!
Since I'm late to the party, I have a Positive Grid Mini, a small Ampero modeler and a few guitar plugins. Saves a lot of money over buying real boutique or famous heads, amps and cabs!
Most of these things have IRs from famous guitar speakers/cabinets, which I believe the OP is doing as well.
So, that "mountainous" FR is already baked in the response coming out of those plugins. Hence the fact that in this case, we need a speaker with a flatter response, as to reproduce the sound of the emulated cabs and speakers.
So, in this particular case, I believe a flatter speaker is called for.
Now, if it were just a guitar and pedals, it would be indeed different, along the lines of what you guys talk about.
Yes, but OP don't have sophisticated modeler amp and plugins - he have only simple 1 W valve amp, so he needs a simple non-flat FR guitar speaker.
Well guys, back in the day, guitar speakers were all woofers. With the advent of mp3 players, smartphones, etc they have introduced full-range speakers, which are much closer to hifi speakers, since you want to hear the music from your input properly and not cutting at 10Hz, as woofers/mid-range speakers do.
Because of this, I thought that speakers that target mid-range would be suitable. That includes speaker drivers, for example, from JBL boom boxes, which only have bass and mids. This was my reasoning when talking about car speakers, too. In that case, I would disconnect the tweeter.
Because of this, I thought that speakers that target mid-range would be suitable. That includes speaker drivers, for example, from JBL boom boxes, which only have bass and mids. This was my reasoning when talking about car speakers, too. In that case, I would disconnect the tweeter.
I had to re-read the first post, I got derailed by a later mention of Spark amp and such.
So, yes, in this case, a colored guitar driver is more suited to the task.
A 5" driver with the guitar preferred FR, open back cabinet would be the smallest I'd go in this case, for a small practice box to set next to me.
The little units like the Spark Mini have IRs baked in via DSP to make them sound like guitar speaker.