The Steel Guitar Forum

Lane Gray wrote:The high power is for headroom to keep microtonal intervals clear and clean.
They're more prone to break up and sound worse when they do.

Ah, thanks. I thought there was a chance I would hear this answer from someone. The compromises required for common tunings can have beat frequencies well above those you might use to tune. Tones up in the audio range. Recent thread on that. Intermodulation, subharmonics, interference tones, whatever you call them
This is starting to make sense to me. I make my own distortion pedals, and all that intense listening as I tweak the circuit continues to show me the inaccurate nature of 6 string intonation on a fine guitar. Distortion, even just a little, really reveals the relationship of two or three notes. If I really want to hear my pedal circuit, I might tune the 6 str guitar for a perfect c chord. So some PSG people, most perhaps, don't want the warm dirt a low wattage tube amp may offer. I get that.
Sorry for the derail. 10" speakers- I don't think any replacement speaker could be recommended more often than the Ragin' Cajun. I keep seeing recommendations constantly.

By the microtones, I mean all the infinite intervals between, for instance, the perfect 4th from B to E (4th and 5th strings at the nut) and the minor third from the C# (5th string with A pedal) to E, as we pass through them all as we press the A pedal.
We also want a 9th chord to ring true and clean.
Even lap steels can get away with it, because the intervals are pure enough to sound good with hair on them.

Thanks all for the suggestions. Sorry to re-derail the thread. My idea is to pair my 50 Watt tube amp with a lil' bitty single 10 in an open back cabinet. Sounds like a tonal disaster right? Basically, I'm looking to minimize the obvious issue of using a single 10" speaker without a properly ported cab by making an intelligent speaker choice.

I got the idea when I recently removed the amp and reverb from my Gwin combo unit and built a separate cab for the chassis and reverb tank. After the build, the head cabinet looked an awful lot like a nice compact amp (think the size of a princeton or thereabouts). Then with the amp and reverb tank installed I looked in the back and thought, "hmmm I could probably fit a little speaker in there."

So if I can get a decent 10" speaker that can handle a good amount of tube power I could have a nice compact amp for practicing and small gigs, but also have the option to line out to my 15" cab for the loud jobs.

That said, I'm worried that the 20b 1000 watt-rated BW might be too heavy and overkill. On the other hand, the Eminence lil buddy or JBL K110 might not be able to handle 50 tube watts in case I ever push the 10. Granted, the whole point if the 10 is when I don't need to be too loud, but better to have a more resilient speaker I think.

Any thoughts on a middle ground?

As I look at bass speaker specs, what should I be looking for that will produce a nice tone for steel? the SICA is my 15" speak of choice tone-wise.

Thanks again,

Rick

Again, talk to Scott Buffington (or maybe his website has the details).
The RE300 is a steel amp with a ten in it. I shot a little shootout here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nuZeewMS9qk

The lil buddy is a pretty rolled off smokey tone. Great if you're a blues guitar player but won't be very sparkly with a steel. And yeah a 50 watt tube head will definitely blow a 50 watt speaker if you're pushing it. If you're not, it shouldn't be a problem.

I currently use a Eminence Delta10A in the Evans RE300. I sold the first one to Pat Bergeson last summer. After having it for a couple weeks, he told me that his bass player played a Saturday night gig in Nashville using only his new RE300. I personally test each RE300 combo amp down to a low "A" note like the open "A" on a bass guitar. The Delta 10A speaker can easily handle a C6 PSG at very loud volume levels.

Scott, you misspelled "the 10th string of C6th with the boowah pedal"

I have Telonics 15s in Telonics cabinets.
weight 28LBs total each with no compromise on sound.
EV 10L is good but almost impossible to find.
Fox Vintage bassman works fine for me with 4x10s

Rick,

I have a couple of cheap Peavey bass practice amps... Lynx 110, or something like that. They have a single 10" speaker in a closed cabinet. As much as I hate to admit it, they don't sound bad for Uni pedal steel.... And I hate to admit it because I have amps the cost 25 or 30 times as much as these things do. But it's really all about the closed cabinet, so I'm not sure that any 10 inch speaker is going to work for your application with the small open back cabinet .