Speakers in my House...
In a span of 60+ years, I've had lots of speakers in my house. Starting off with speakers reclaimed from junk TV's or stereos left in someone's trash. Hey... you have to start somewhere.My dad bought a Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder with add-on stereo speaker. It was awesome as I could connect it to the TV speaker and record TV shows and it wouldn't pick up sounds in the room when we were all watching Thee Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show!
Learning guitar and my first amp had a tiny speaker, probably 6" but soon after I was able to get something bigger. The name was National and it had 2 10" speakers. I don't remember what happened to it (probably a trade for something bigger) but that vintage guitar amplifier would be worth a small fortune now!
One of my keyboards was financed and when making a payment, my dad saw a bigger amp at the finance office. It was repossessed, probably because it didn't work. He picked it up really cheap and the diagnosis was one wire from the power supply burned at the connector so it failed. Easy fix and I was the owner of an amp with a 15" speaker!
Years later and I had a specially designed cabinet with two 15" high-performance speakers.
Going from band to band and for outdoor concerts I often used 9 speaker cabinets, some fitted with 12" speakers and some with 15" speakers.
I ended up with a custom rig of four 15" speakers in 2 cabinets.
Somewhere along the way, I tried an ACOUSTIC 360 bass amp with one 18" speaker in a large cabinet that had special internal shape to maximize the sound. It's called a folded horn enclosure. It was always my desire to copy one (with the help of the woodshop I was working at) so, I bought two 18" bass speakers and downloaded the specifications of the enclosure.
John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin had 2, Jaco Pastorius had 2, the bassist in Santana had one. That project was put on hold.
In the 90's I bought a bass amp, 100 watts with one 15" speaker. Very nice, but I sold it looking for something larger and shelved that project.
Now, I own a guitar amp, 120 watts with two 12" speakers. My plan was to take guitar lessons, but that project was put on hold.
Since my 2 cousins want me to play music (professionally) with them I considered the guitar amp, but there's a possibility I'll ruin the speakers using bass at a loud volume.
I could buy bass speakers and put them in, but my thought is not modify the guitar amp and buy a real bass amp for practice and gigging.
I did a blog about speaker size and there are all thoughts from 10" to 18" but I'm seeing some manufacturers offering models with two 10" speakers and 300 hundred watts, they move a lot of air and be in a compact lightweight cabinet. The only drawback is the cost. I'm choking on $700 for a freaking combo amp.
Shopping online I see there is a special sale on a smaller model, 100 watts and a 12" speaker. I could buy THREE of these units for less than any of the others and have it easier to move things around, same watts, bigger speakers. Maybe 2 is enough for now.
The sale ends tomorrow, so I have to decide on which which speaker in my House, it's going to be!
Comments (7)
KEF from Britain is good.
Here is a pair to only 70dollars:
I think Pink Floyd used Fender Amps when on stage, all with valves!
I think Pink Floyd used Fender Amps when on stage, all with valves!
Same device.
Agreed... As a global statement, guitarists favor amplifiers with tubes for the pre-amplifier power-amplifier and rectifier sections. Only a few transistorized amplifiers were available in the late 60's (Standell, Kustom, Acoustic, and a few VOX models)
That said, Fender amplifiers use 6L6 power tubes and many British manufactured Amplifiers (Marshall, Hiwatt, VOX, Orange) use EL34. Both are 'valve design' but both are completely different in their wattage output and characteristics.
Simply described, the 6L6's develop less wattage and a warmer sound while the EL34's develop more wattage and what's described as a crunchier sound.
Without doing investigative research, It's hard to say exactly what Pink Floyd used in the studio and in concert and many times they had totally different setups for different size venues. I'm not saying they didn't use Fender, I found one link that claims Gilmore used a Hiwatt DR103 100 watt guitar head for most of his career.
Typically, they were modified in the tone circuit and stacked having several running at the same time.
There is some video evidence, In the early days, Pink Floyd used WEM (Watkins Electric Music) as they were out a little before Marshall and offered stacked PA systems the other companies weren't making. Some of the camera views had both Hiwatt and WEM amplifiers and nearly all the speaker cabinets were WEM.
Guitar speaker selections is a whole study in tonal differences.
I'll hold that (maybe) for a future blog.
100 watts with one 12" bass speaker.
Just to be sure I'm loud enough, I bought 2 of them.
100 watts with one 12" bass speaker.
Just to be sure I'm loud enough, I bought 2 of them.