I'm looking for a 2nd cab for my bassguitar playing. My first cab is a 1x12 + tweeter. As a whole, that cab is full range. It is 8 ohms.

I'm looking for a second 8 ohm cab.

Some guys buy (or build) an identical cab, so that they have two 1x12 cabs. The second cab can be without a tweeter. They say: the two cabs must be identical, otherways the lows will never be tight.

Other guys like to add a 10". So, they have a 1x12 + 1x10. Or even a 1x12 + a 2x10. Or, they add a different 1x12 (so, they use two different 12" drivers). Usually, no cross overs are used between the cabs, so both cabs run full range.

These guys say: the second cab should be different, to compensate for the weak points of the first cab. For instance, if the first cab has a strong bass but shy mids, they like to add a cab with a lean bass and strong mids.

My question: who is right? Must the cabs be identical, to prevent "mud", or can the cabs be different, so that they complement each other ?

Second (related) question: if one uses different cabs with overlapping frequencies, MUST one use a crossover? Why? What cross over?

Thanks in advance,

Pieter

High fidelity requires flat response, low distortion and as faithful reproduction of the recorded signal as possible. But electronic musical instruments use the loudspeaker as part of the overall sound, and it is voiced to suit the musician. So basically what sounds good to your ears is what you should be using. Rarely do musicians choose a speaker for the same reasons that a home hifi buyer would, or even a sound company doing shows.

As a bass player, you might not be as interested in speakers with a neutral presentation as you are with making your own sound. Modeling amps are a little bit of an exception to this rule, but still, as a musician, you're looking for your own unique sound. So if you're not looking to do modeling, you might want to keep an open mind, try a few setups and find what sound suits you best.

• http://www.talkbass.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=15

Guitar cabs vs PA (or home stereo) cabs:

Some time ago I received this from my brother, and lifelong sideman, a guitarist himself. He asked me to post this: The basic audiophile rules of speaker design need to be ingored. For guitar cabs, the cabs themselves are part of the sound--they need to be live, not dead, as with audio and PA cabs--so you don't want to stuff the boxes at all. I have some decent, but rather old Epicure stereo speakers and have run my Les Paul through them--Yuck! It is the driest, deadest sound imaginable. You want the sound to be colored by the cabinet because the straight sound is uninteresting. Craig Anderton, John Simonton along with PAiA have a tube pre-amp for guitar called stack-in-a-box (http://www.paia.com/tubestuf.htm#siab) with "two switchable filters simulate the timbre of speaker cabinet resonances." You want to minimize bracing, until you get up to 4x12 cabs and then a single front to rear brace is fine. You want limited low end response and so forget porting and you want nothing over about 7.5 k, so forget piezos (or any kind of tweeter) altogether. Anything over 7.5 k you get an unpleasant harshness that even a heavy metal guitarist would want to avoid. There is a good discussion of this at the Celestion site.

You want neither ports nor tweeters nor damping material in a guitar amp. Bass guitar, keyboard, other instruments, PA, etc. will have different designs, but these will usually follow the guidelines of standard hi-fi speaker design more closely than guitar cabs.

Electric-acoustic guitar speaker design is different still, using more of the upper mid range and less of the lows. DJ cabs will often be a bit heavier in the bass guitar range to pound out the beat for dancing. Just as with other things, "Form follows function."

The guitar amp probably does no damping of highs. The reason for this is that guitar amps are designed to run with guitar speaker cabs, which do not reproduce frequencies above about 5 or 6 k. No need to worry about those highs if the speakers are not going to reproduce above 5or 6 k. If you want the amp/speaker setup to do several things, it might be a good idea to put an L-pad in the crossover and turn the tweeters way down. An on-off toggle to the tweeters would probably work just as well.

(Now, on to bass cabs)

Go to the link below, read up.

Also take a look at this link: http://sound.westhost.com/instamps.htm

• http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Bistro/3491/speaker.html

As far as this bass spkr project

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Bistro/3491/speaker.html

the model number he quotes for the 15" woofer is no longer valid. I ran the numbers and in that cab you can also use the Eminence Delta-15, Delta Pro-15, Gamma-15.

For the 2x12 cab by the same author

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Bistro/3491/speaker2.html

You can use Eminence Delta-12's.