I don't post much here, if I have at all, but there is a wealth of info that I digest on regular occasion. Lately it's been speaker treatments and phase plugs and all the cool things you guys are working on! Thank you very much for Doing It Yourself and telling us.
I build tube amps and effect pedals and play the guitar. So I've been on a ridiculous search for a guitar speaker that I love. The closest is an Eminence Private Jack, and I have that one and half a dozen other popular speakers on hand.
The following is perhaps a pointless quest in experimentation with no hope of success.
I bought a $15 1976 Eminence 12" (supposed to be) guitar speaker the other day to mess around with. It was terribly dirty, probably been wet (maybe the real cause of bad tone), and I read here and other places about cleaning it with a dry bristle brush. That made it look a little better. I then read about cleaning artwork with an eraser, so I tried that, and it worked a little more. The speaker sounds like the guitar tone knob is turned all the way down. It was probably built as a woofer in a cheap PA cab. I say that because it has an aluminum former, which hasn't ever been very popular with guitar speakers. I did contact Eminence and Anthony Lucas didn't have any info available about this driver.
So my first attempt at bringing some life to the cone was a 50/50 white glue and water mix, spread over the cone and dust cap (the dust cap paper is a little wooly on top, not sure if that's by design, but it has to suck treble). The glue made a very modest improvement in the high end, but not enough to bring it up into 'crappy guitar speaker' territory.
Next I decided to listen to the speaker without the wooly dust cap. And though I've read that it often improves tone, in this case it sounded almost exactly the same naked or with the dust cap. This brought my outlook to pessimistic.
So, then I read somewhere that a guy used a beer can for a dust cap. Hey, that's my style, so I cut the bottom off of a Diet Pepsi can. The original dust cap weighed 2 grams, and the Pepsi can was trimmed down to 2 grams. The glue is drying on this attempt right now.
So, before all the pictures, do you have any possible ideas to get more energy in the 2kHz-5kHz range? Maybe it's just not possible.
I build tube amps and effect pedals and play the guitar. So I've been on a ridiculous search for a guitar speaker that I love. The closest is an Eminence Private Jack, and I have that one and half a dozen other popular speakers on hand.
The following is perhaps a pointless quest in experimentation with no hope of success.
I bought a $15 1976 Eminence 12" (supposed to be) guitar speaker the other day to mess around with. It was terribly dirty, probably been wet (maybe the real cause of bad tone), and I read here and other places about cleaning it with a dry bristle brush. That made it look a little better. I then read about cleaning artwork with an eraser, so I tried that, and it worked a little more. The speaker sounds like the guitar tone knob is turned all the way down. It was probably built as a woofer in a cheap PA cab. I say that because it has an aluminum former, which hasn't ever been very popular with guitar speakers. I did contact Eminence and Anthony Lucas didn't have any info available about this driver.
So my first attempt at bringing some life to the cone was a 50/50 white glue and water mix, spread over the cone and dust cap (the dust cap paper is a little wooly on top, not sure if that's by design, but it has to suck treble). The glue made a very modest improvement in the high end, but not enough to bring it up into 'crappy guitar speaker' territory.
Next I decided to listen to the speaker without the wooly dust cap. And though I've read that it often improves tone, in this case it sounded almost exactly the same naked or with the dust cap. This brought my outlook to pessimistic.
So, then I read somewhere that a guy used a beer can for a dust cap. Hey, that's my style, so I cut the bottom off of a Diet Pepsi can. The original dust cap weighed 2 grams, and the Pepsi can was trimmed down to 2 grams. The glue is drying on this attempt right now.
So, before all the pictures, do you have any possible ideas to get more energy in the 2kHz-5kHz range? Maybe it's just not possible.






