Speaker question

mart

mart

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Ok, so my 115ND arrived today. Got it all plugged in and fired up, and it sounds good, except a few notes produce some hideous clipping. What's going on there?

I've just got the 15" plugged into my GB 3.0 shuttle, so it should only be producing 175W (whereas the speaker is rated at 400W). I've got the volume and master volume on only about a third. Most notes are fine, but a low Bb or a high F (10th fret on G string) clip badly unless I play them very gently. The Bb, in particular makes a horrible farty sound, and the high F is buzzing almost like fret buzz. (No, it's not fret buzz: I'm playing fretless, and the note sounds the same whether played on the G or the D string).

Help!!
 
Hi Mart, not familiar with your gear but.....in over 40 years of messing with bass guitar stuff I have found most stuff has its limitations.
have you tried another bass guitar on it? process of elimination is usually the best way of fault finding, I had trouble with strange bass
sounds with a fretless and came to the conclusion it was the bass, unless a bass is set up correctly especially fretless buzzing and farting
will be there.

I now use a full range speaker system
(2 x 18 inch celestion speakers and a 2 x 10 inch with horns trace elliot) with a warwick tube 6

I found that the speaker/ cab is
usually the weak link if the amplifier has plenty of reserve watts.
 
Thanks. I've tried my Thumb, and then my Squier P (from the sublime to the ridiculous ;-)) and the sound's the same - the same notes are the problem.

I took the grill off the front of the cab to see if there was anything obviously amiss with the speaker. There wasn't anything I could spot, but testing the cab with the grill off, the problem moved slightly - the buzz occurred at C and G instead!

And I put the same head through the 15" 4ohm speaker of my Ampeg combo, so the amp should be putting out 300W, and there was no buzzing at all.
 
in my opinion 175 watts is not much for bass it takes a lot of watts to get a big speaker(s) to reproduce bass properly.
I used to get all sorts of weird and strange sounds using low wattage amps.
I'm a go for the old saying "there ain't no substitute for cc"
 
Well, it did sound better when I put it and the 10" shuttle speaker together, so the head was pushing 300W into a total 4ohm load.

But I suppose what I've got to decide is whether the speaker is ok, or faulty, and so whether to keep it or send it back. I hate decisions like this.

ned zeppelin said:
...
I'm a go for the old saying "there ain't no substitute for cc"
Click to expand...

Huh?
 
if in doubt send it back.
without wanting to bore you to death (relating to amps and speakers) I recently had a thought of downsizing my speaker rig,
I'm getting old and it's getting heavier.

I took my warwick tube 6 amp and my modified active yamaha rbx to a local store they have tons of gear and are helpful.
every cab I tried with my amp sounded rubbish
even top of the range gear just could'nt get anywhere near as good as mine, no deep bass, and no undistorted midrange.
so I'm stuck with a car full of gear. but its a small price to pay for satisfaction.
welcome to bass guitar world!!!!! ha ha
 
run another head thru the cab in question

it's really easy to clip a 175w head with low b
btw, what's your EQ like?
 
Thanks. I don't have another head to hand, but running that head through another cab doesn't give me any clipping. And it's not a low B that's clipping - it's the Bb at 1st fret on the A-string (or 6th fret on the E string), and the F at 10th on the G string. My EQ is completely flat on the amp, and the Thumb was in passive mode, bypassing the EQ.

I've concluded that the cab has got to go back to the shop, but I'm left wondering if it was faulty, or if that's the best a Warwick Neo cab can do. I am so disappointed.
 
if just experienced with certain notes, it can always be some effect of resonance frequency. Maybe some screws or other parts in the cab are loose and start rattling? Also things in the room could be responsible - this sounds stupid, but I had similar problems for quite a while, until I recognized it was only a buckle on my case vibrating...
 
Sound to me more like something is loose and rattling rather than actually clipping. Will you be able to test it outdoor ? so you know for sure the noise is coming from the cab. I once had a cab with the spring loaded handle rattling, I look all over the cab to eliminate the noise, even took the woofer out to re-sit on the baffle. Until one day I clip my instrument cable over the handle, then the noise is gone. DUDDD!!!

For what it's worth, running the same head into the Ampeg with no noise does not guarantee the head is ok. It may just be the case that the Warwick cab is able to reproduce certain frequency that wasn't as prominent in the Ampeg. I am not saying it must be the case, just suggesting that could be a possibility.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ned zeppelin said:
in my opinion 175 watts is not much for bass it takes a lot of watts to get a big speaker(s) to reproduce bass properly.
I used to get all sorts of weird and strange sounds using low wattage amps.
I'm a go for the old saying "there ain't no substitute for cc"
Click to expand...

Sorry,

But that's rubbish ;) 175w is plenty to get a speaker to move properly.

:d

It takes more than 175w to get really loud, but we're not talking about loud here... we're talking about tone.

mart: Is your bass active? how fresh are the batteries?
 
babebambi said:
run another head thru the cab in question

it's really easy to clip a 175w head with low b
btw, what's your EQ like?
Click to expand...

Please... this has nothing to do with the head's wattage.

You don't need lots of watts to make a low B sound good. I've got 20w combos that sound great with a low B.

:roll:
 
Thanks. I did wonder if something was vibrating, so while I was playing my wife was listening all around to detect where the buzz was coming from. She concluded it was definitely the amp. I haven't played it outside (it's been raining solidly for days) but I've played it in a couple of different rooms, so I really do think it is the amp. I took the grill off the front but all the screws looked tight and I couldn't see anything else that could be rattling - the handles are solid metal, for example.

I take your point babebambi that the Ampeg cab sounding ok doesn't prove that the problem is with the Warwick cab. But the volume is pretty much constant for all the notes in both cabs, it's just that if you play a scale through the W cab it goes "dong, dong, dong, squelch, dong, dong ...." with that squelch on the Bb. The volume is pretty much the same, just the tone is badly wrong on that note (and the high F).

My Thumb is active (though I'm by-passing the preamp, so it's only the pickups that are really active), but you're right - batteries could theoretically be an issue. That's why I tried with the passive P bass, and the sound was exactly the same: dong, dong, squelch ... (with the squelch on the same notes as with the Thumb).
 
i've had similar problems ..
1- pushing the amp to high volume or using certain frequencies may cause too much resonance and cause tubes or other parts to malfunction. do you put the head on top of the cab?
try isolating the cab from the head!
2- the twitter filter on the cab had a bad solder... i couldn't really spot it but a friend of mine who work with electronics spotted it on the hour and it was a easy fix (resoldering!)
 
It was a while before I thought of moving the head off the cab, but I did that and it made no difference. And the problem occurs at such low volumes that I know that isn't the cause. The cab actually has just one speaker - no tweeter, no crossover, no electronics to speak of, and no soldering, I think - it's all spade connectors.

After taking the thing apart again this morning I did find a loose bolt - one of the hex fixings for the speaker was not fully tightened and wouldn't tighten. I took it out but the sound didn't improve. I fear a nut has come off its back and lodged somewhere but I decided not to try looking. I've sent it back to the shop for them to fix or replace.
 
Eberbachl said:
Sorry,

But that's rubbish ;) 175w is plenty to get a speaker to move properly.

:d

It takes more than 175w to get really loud, but we're not talking about loud here... we're talking about tone.

mart: Is your bass active? how fresh are the batteries?
Click to expand...

+1.
I used 50 & 100 watt all tube heads that were insanely loud.
 
Eberbachl said:
Please... this has nothing to do with the head's wattage.

You don't need lots of watts to make a low B sound good. I've got 20w combos that sound great with a low B.

:roll:
Click to expand...

hahaha, we are trying to diagnose what the problem is with the OP's cab, please save your rant of anti-power for another time.
 
i heard that you can't compare tube heads to transistor heads power wise a tube head with the same power will be louder.i don't know why though.
 
it sounds like there might be a problem with the speaker.i had one do something like wwhat he is saying,i put a new speaker in and the noise went away.i never did figure out why it made noise.the ony thing i could think of was a problem with the voice coil.
 
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