The Steel Guitar Forum

Why do steel amps come with 15" speakers? Is there that big of a tone difference than one or two 12" speakers? I know several players play through Twin Reverbs with 12" speakers. I currently play through a Fender Deluxe with one 12", but I would like a little more power.

Georg,
I don't know where you come up with your advise.
Most steel players prefer an amp with a 15" speaker.
You need a large speaker to handle the range of tones that are available with a pedal steel, especially if you are a C6th player.
The Fender Twin Reverb is an excellent amp for non-pedal but it's very hard to beat the Peavey Nashville 400, with 15" speaker for pedal steel.
Or the Webb with 15" speaker, etc.

George, I don't know where you are coming from on your seeming advise either. Your wrong. The 15" speaker is by far and away the accepted standard for steel guitar amplification. Maybe you on play the first 4 strings?

Most 15" speakers behave/sound so lossy/lousy (you choose descriptive word) that the steel's inherent tone don't get through - you hear the speaker not the steel. Some players seem to like that.

I'm not certain if Georg is trying to slam his brothers and sisters here or simply experessing a personal opinion in a over-jealous fashion, but he does not speak at all for the thousands of us who prefer quality 15" speakers because of their superior low end response and efficiency. The JBL 15" speakers that many of us have used for decades still reproduce far more of "the steel's inherent tone" per watt, AND clearly from bottom to top of the tonal spectrum, than any new 12" musical instrument speaker available.

There will always be some who prefer a different speaker because of what it sounds like, but to infer in general that the users of 15" speakers do so because they prefer the sound of the speaker to the sound of their instrument is not only unkind and untrue, but perhaps just the opposite of the fact!

A properly ported and tuned 10" cab will blow you away with its clear low end..............

Hmm, a variety of opinions. Buddy used a Twin on "Trip In The Country" with Roger Miller, E9th and C6th. Sounded OK, eh?

Well,my favorite is the 15" BW in my Session 500,but at 81 pounds,that one doesn't go to work unless I REALLY feel motivated.Usually I just bring a Nashville 112 or if I'm using just one amp and playing a lot of six-string,a Music Man 212 HD-150.But if I had my druthers.......

How much does the Session 400 weigh?

I don't know if they are still made, but my favorite Anp in the early years was a Feender Bassman with four 10" inch speakers. Plenty of punch, hard to ever distort and a great sound.

Doesn't Ken Fox make a 4-10"?

Well I feel I need to jump in here and give my 2 pennies worth. I've worked for 2 different MI companies as a product specialist, not that it gives me a PHD or anything but some back round. When we were building and designing amps we would voice a speaker for the amp. Voicing a speaker had nothing to do with the speaker size. The material the cone and voice coil are made out of have a big impact on frequency response of the speaker. If you don't believe me you can do a simple test with a couple of different brands of speakers of the same size. Just thump the cone with your finger you can tell much of the characteristics of the sound of the speaker. The size of a speaker does have a impact on how fast it responds to the signal it is receiving. So that why you don't really see a 18 inch full range speaker. Also the cabinet has a big part of how much of what we hear coming out of the speaker. Box volume, port length, material construction so on have a big impact of what we hear from the speaker. You can take the right 6X9 speaker in the right box and it will go down to 20hz. Without some crazy processor. I could go on and on about cab design and speaker construction, the bottom line is what sounds good to you.

Thats some pretty heavey stuff guys.I play thru an 80 model peavey special 150,and it sounds great to me.But most of the time its miked thru the p.a. system.All my notes are clear but does reproducing the sound have anything to do with how the amp sounds?We dial in the sound we want no matter how the amp sounds.I guess what Im trying to ask is does it matter if Im sitting in the practice hall unmiked how it sounds or in a concert with 2000 watts +?

A 15 is popular I thought, because you have your tone in your face and to the back of the room. I've always heard that if you take a 10 or 12 ince with the same power as the 15 it takes more distance for it to project the sound, but at a distance will sound the same. IMHO
I have been wrong before.

I have amps with 15 inch open back and closed back.
Sometimes play through 2-12s, currently and mostly play through my Fox 4-10.
The rack sys has like 1200 watts and the Fox Vintage is 30-40 amps.
Seems to me the quality of the amp plays a big part in it.
I have a friend here in Austin that builds Bass guitar cabs with one ten inch speaker that will make you scratch your head...
How can that sound come out of that tiny box?
All these amps sound good.

Well, I kinda have to mark myself down in the "little speaker camp." What a 15" speaker IS, as what every speaker IS, is a big, final tone control. For those people who say they like the natural, unadorned tone of a pedal steel guitar, with no processing - what you need to do one day is plug your steel into a direct box, into a powered P.A. system, into some "flat" speaker system with enough horns and tweeters to really amplify the frequencies above 6K or so. After you've cleared the neighborhood of dogs and bats and cracked a few windows and teeth, you'll realize that you like some aspects of your fave signal chain because they KILL OFF some of that natural, unadorned tone.

If you look at the response curves of just about any speaker - 8" -> 18" - you'll see there is a drastic rolloff of frequency reproduction above about 2K to 2.5K. There are small differences between speakers there, and reason there are so many speakers available is because that frequency range is critical for listening enjoyment, which goes back to the evolution of the human brain concurrent with speech and sound perception, the "mapping" of frequencies within the brain. Gee does music in the same frequency range as a lion's roar seem scary? But that's another subject.

The fact is that a 15" speaker both kills off a lot of highs, and also compresses and delays the signal a good bit - and that's a good thing, for a lot of people. I prefer 12" speakers, as they are a bit quicker and allow me more options to shape the tone in other ways - but it is a preference. There is no more "one perfect speaker" than there is "one perfect guitar cord", as the cords you use change the capacitance of the pickup/preamp system. Which is why Strat-slingers from Hendrix to Eric Johnson to Julian Kasper always carry a fat old high-capacitance cable into a recording studio, as another global tone control device. I wonder how many steelers who say 15" speakers are "best" also say George L's low-capacitance cables are "best" - because a big speaker effectively cancels out the characteristics of a low-capacitance cord....

I'm respectful of all of the opinions expressed here, so I humbly submit my view.

I've lived with the evolution of speakers since the late 1940's when I played a Sears amp, then the early 1950's when I played a Fender, then in the 60's when I played Standel's, then Peavey's in the 70's, and finally in the 80's nd 90's with a botique amp that served all of my limited needs.

I even have a Peavey 112 for backup that I have used only once. It is a great amp for recording, but fails in reaching the "back of the room" in a live gig in a joint without a sound system.


Respectfully,

Gene

David Mason wrote:
The fact is that a 15" speaker both kills off a lot of highs, and also compresses and delays the signal a good bit - and that's a good thing,

Have you ever played through an Evans with a JBL D-130?
Its very bright and uncompressed.. like .. alot

Lloyd Green uses a 15" JBL.

Got to say here it depends on the application .. I use a NV 400 with the stock 15 and it has all the tone i could wish for .. its got plenty of punch in the low end for my 70 guage string .. and plenty of sparkle for my 11.5's I also play through a DR with a jbl 12 and that sounds fantastic for low volume shows ... the nv400 with the 15 is the bomb .. i also have a vibrasonic with a neo 15 and it's the bomb as well ..
I rather like 15" the best .. better low end .. that 12" don't.

There will always be players who prefer a 15" speaker and others that swear by a 12" speaker in the right cabinet setup. I find that I can achieve a terrific sound using either when they are in the right setup.

I personally have found what I think is the best of all worlds. My ultimate setup is not for everyone as many players want to walk in to the job site with everything needed to play in a maximum of two trips from the vehicle. This is smart thinking especially if the amp is mic'd or ran direct through the sound system. I'm not always "smart" though as I am a fanatic when it comes to tone.

With all of the above being stated, my new ultimate setup consists of an 800 watt rig starting with the Sarno Revelation preamp, into a TC Furlong 12" VB split with Eminence speaker on one side and a 15" open back Furlong split with new Eminence EPS 15" speaker on the other. In my opinion, this is the best of all worlds and it solves the solution as to which is best. My guitars are Emmons PP's but any guitar would sound terrific through this rig.

RD

I have never heard any sound-man being able to correct "phase twisting", which is inherent to steel sound-chains and especially those with large speakers. Equalizers used to "dial in" are also far from phase-linear, which is just one of the reasons what comes out of 2000+ Watt sound-systems often sound so bad - regardless of instruments/voices.

Sorry, Georg, you keep touching on science then tossing it on its head for effect and at this point your signal-to-noise ratio is getting out of hand. Still it's your thread so you just go ahead on with your rant and I'll be down the road, making 2000+ watt sound systems sound great EVERY DAY - regardless of source material or your opinions about how things work.