Wiring a 210 cab

[Protium]

My 210 practice cab is 4 ohm and I want to wire a tweeter into it. How will I go about this - series or parallel, and will it affect the overall impedance? The speakers are wired in parallel.

Specifically this tweeter: [url="http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=3263&&source=14&doy=13m8"]http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?Module...14&doy=13m8[/url]

Edited August 13, 2008 by Protium

[alexclaber]

No crossover required as it's a piezo tweeter so you can simply wire it in parallel with the existing drivers. However due to the low sensitivity and power handling I would recommend using a vertical array of four of these tweeters wired series/parallel to double power handling and raise sensitivity by 3dB.

Also, that seems expensive for piezo tweeters.

Alex

[Protium]

Yeah it's Maplin prices haha. So the overall impedance won't be affected?

[alexclaber]

[quote name='Protium' post='261858' date='Aug 13 2008, 07:54 PM']Yeah it's Maplin prices haha. So the overall impedance won't be affected?[/quote]

Indeed.

Alex

[Protium]

Awesome. Cheers dude

[Fraktal]

Alex, I have seen lots of manufacturers adding a huge condenser in the tweeter cables. Is it working as a high pass filter? As a fuse to protect the tweeter from overloading?

[alexclaber]

[quote name='Fraktal' post='262685' date='Aug 14 2008, 08:21 PM']Alex, I have seen lots of manufacturers adding a huge condenser in the tweeter cables. Is it working as a high pass filter?[/quote]

Yes, first order high pass filter. Unfortunately that isn't a steep enough slope to protect the tweeter from unnecessarily low frequencies hitting it which is why most tweeters sound nasty and grainy and distorted instead of a clear smooth yet bright reproduction of the higher overtones and percussives.

Alex

[Fraktal]

Thanks a lot Alex, I was always curious about that fat condenser.

Maybe going out of topic here, but worth asking I suppose since its still related to high frequency drivers and might be an interesting read for Protium also. What would be an efficent, reliable, small and high quality solution to improve the high frequency sound on a 2x10" and tweeter cab? Such as my Markbass cmd 102p combo? Its HF quality is very poor when compared to my Alesis M1 active MKII monitors.

I know this may sound as apple to potatoes comparison here, since the markbass combo is a single amp with ceramic tweeter and the Alesis monitors are biamped, crossovered and have silk dome tweeters, but still, I would KILL to have that Alesis high frequency sound in a bass amp. Smooth and creamy highs at any volume without hurting your ears!

Would Protium do better buying something different to the piezo driver sound? Maybe adding a passive 2way filter? Maybe a different material HF driver?

Edited August 14, 2008 by Fraktal

[alexclaber]

Your Markbass combo has a piezo tweeter so that's not a great start! In my opinion there are two ways to get good highs from a bass cab - either use a large horn tweeter with a steep crossover on woofers and tweeter or use a midrange driver and tweeter with shallower slopes. The Bergantino HT cabs take the former approach, Acme cabs take the latter. For my own designs I've gone without any high frequency components on one model and with just a midrange driver, no tweeter, on the other model - in my opinion the majority of bassists don't need the treble to go much beyond 5kHz.

A lot of bass cabs use a smaller tweeter and cross it over relatively high with a steep slope and they can sound great on-axis but as soon as you move off-axis you get a gap in response between where the woofer starts beaming and the tweeter kicks in. At least if they use a steep slope on the tweeter you get a nice sound from it, even if the off-axis response is poor, which is much preferable to the grainy sound from less well thought out designs.

Alex