Why do we get the horn?

[Dandelion]

My 2x15 cab also has an intergral horn. Last Thursday practice I elected to switch of the horn completely. Everything sounded a whole lot better without it. Much less honky and more warm. On turning the horn back on the sound became honky again despite much use of eq. Is this common with all horns?

[Prime_BASS]

Depends on quality etc, some cabs I've used seem to add brittle highs and noise to the sound. If I use a cab with a tweeter, it gets turned off.

My new DI pedal has cab sim on it that has a roll off from 3khz at about 12db every octave.

[hamfist]

People are looking for all sorts of different sounds on their basses. One man's "warm" is another man's "woolly" etc. The plain fact is that if you want any real sort of high frequency content to your sound you will need a horn/tweeter etc. As always, the application and quality of some of these is poor, and some is excellent.

[Jack]

Judging 'a horn' is like judging 'a speaker'. Some are fantastic and some are woeful.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='Jack' timestamp='1398679327' post='2436382']
Judging 'a horn' is like judging 'a speaker'. Some are fantastic and some are woeful.
[/quote]+1. Most bass cabs use horn loaded tweeters that they really shouldn't, as they don't go low enough to give the midrange response that the woofers cannot, while they extend much higher in frequency than bass has any need for. They'd work much better with either horn loaded or even cone midrange drivers, but they opt for tweeters instead as tweeters are much less expensive.