The Steel Guitar Forum

I recently installed the EPC 12C Eminence speaker in my Nashville 112.
Anyone have some input on the break in time
Thanks for your input
Paul

I can tell you what I did, Paul....plug a cd, or mp3, player into the input, turn the reverb off, set tone controls to 12 o'clock, turn up the volume pretty high, or as high as is reasonable in your environment, and let it play for about 24 hours.

If you aren't hearing some strong bass response, then turn up the bass control till you get a nice thump from the bass and kick drum. This is what actually does the "break-in" work.

Good luck.

Thanks Mike

A drum machine also works great if you happen to have one.

I am not trying to be troublesome, but why do you need to break in an EPC 12C Eminence speaker? It is not like you are trying to create the sound of a broken in 1959 Bassman Jensen. I fully understand that speakers change with use, but does that mean that modern speakers get worse or better sounding with use? What don't you like about the new speaker? Are you sure it is because it isn't broken in?

The near-universal opinion is that they're brittle sounding for 25-30 hours.

Most speakers need a break in period. Even the Peavey Black Widow speakers.

One of the sales pitches for the Telonics speakers is the are broken in before sale.

Guess I'm deaf because I never noticed the difference in tone on my Quilter (after many hours playing)or the other new speakers I've installed in my amps. Keep hearing about this break in time but think that's a sales gimmick cause I can't tell the difference.

Perhaps Quilter breaks them in. It would only take a day or so hooked up to an mp3 player or something.

The only break-in time I've used for sixty plus years
has been from the music store to my home. NEVER encountered any kind of adverse playability.

All of my equipment has been NEW, Gibson, Peavy Session 400 and Peavy LA-400, with the exception of my Volu-Tone amp.

I played a rugged schedule in all kinds of hot and/or cold weather.

Lane Gray wrote:Perhaps Quilter breaks them in. It would only take a day or so hooked up to an mp3 player or something.

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No, they do not. They see no reason to.

I have never experienced any break in issues with speakers. I think a speaker gets broken in when your ears get used to it. I also think it is a way people talk themselves into liking a speaker that doesn't sound good.

I recall that when Eminence released the EPS-15c there was a recommended 40 hour breakin period. Whether it was my ears adjusting or the speaker breaking in, there was a noticeable difference with mine.

I would like to thank everyone for their response
the steel guitar forum for is
a great resource of information

I would like to thank everyone for their response
the steel guitar forum for is
a great resource of information

Jim Cooley wrote:I recall that when Eminence released the EPS-15c there was a recommended 40 hour breakin period. Whether it was my ears adjusting or the speaker breaking in, there was a noticeable difference with mine.

Jim, every time I set down at my steel, it sounds different and I think some will agree. I never touch the controls and after afew minutes it always lines its self out. I think that may be the difference you are hearing. Jim Evans calls it getting your ears in tune. I've had nights where mine never got in tune but I don't think a speaker break in time was the problem because one night it would sound great and then next night be different. Maybe my ears are screwy, lol.

Henry,

I couldn't agree more. It has happened to me many times, although in my case there are sometimes entire sessions when I really like or hate my tone; same room, same equipment and settings, different sound. I understand what everyone is saying about our ears just geting accustomed to the speaker, and I don't disagree at all. It's funny, though, in the case of my EPS-15c, I swear that while I was practicing one night, I could hear the speaker "open up" for lack of a better term. The lows sounded boomier and the highs were smoother. Then again, maybe it was just something about the time and place and my ears.

I wonder if there's any real science behind this. I'm certainly no audio technician, but it does seem to make sense that certain speaker parts, especially the paper cone, could loosen up after a period of time. Since Eminence recommended the break-in period when I bought their speaker, do they know something or is it their way of telling us to be patient while our ears adapt? I have a Weber NeoMag 12" speaker. Weber offers to break in their speakers before shipping. They say it adds an extra day to the delivery time.

I agree that speakers do change over time to some extent. In my personal experience though if I like a brand new speaker out the box I will still like it in 3 years. If I don't like the sound of a speaker I will never like it.

It is really hard to know what changes over time also. Super responsive stuff like Milkman/JBL brings out every little thing so your hands and ears adjust to it as you play more. This is a very very good thing in this case.

I'm sure there are plenty of charts and graphs about speaker response but I am not so sure that they would tell the full story.

Right now I am dragging my 2x12 jbl cab around with my Milkman 85 head to every gig because it sounds so good at the moment. Sometimes I think maybe a tube on the edge of its life has a perfect thing to it that doesn't last very long. For now it is freakin awesome sounding.

Quilter's response was that every speaker will be different. How do you know if an individual speaker needs no break-in or 500 hours? He was saying -- my interpretation -- You cannot hook up a bunch of speakers to a break-in machine and dial in X hours and expect the same results from each speaker.

Hook up your steel. Play through it a few times. Bingo! It's now broken in😃

Hi gang, Chris from Quilter here.
We do not extensively break our speakers in.
After receiving amplifiers back with many hundreds if not thousands of hours of use, they test almost precisely the same as new out of the box speakers.
Now people can become nearly religious about issues like this, so I am not going to weigh in heavily with my thoughts. But I can say that many times the differences you are experiencing over time are a combination of tubes and circuitry wear in as well as some minor changes in string wear/general dirtiness with some minor variation in speaker change over time.
Most modern speakers use drastically different compounds than were used only a decade ago.
That said, some people swear by the break in, and honestly if it works for you, and you feel that you gain something from it, I won't dispute it. The customer is always right.
But that said, in our testing we run 2/3rd power pink noise into the speaker for one minute prior to testing for rub and buzz, frequency, distortion, etc...
But we do this intentionally trying to make the speaker fail before we test it. Not necessarily to break it in.
So that is my thinking in a nutshell.
Again, I have seen beat to death amps that have logged 20,000 or more miles of travel and years of use test precisely the same as a new driver. Your mileage may vary.
For the curious we utilize a Clio test rig and a sound dampened chamber designed to simulate an anechoic chamber for test accuracy.

Thanks very much Chris for your input.
I rest my case and love my Quilter.