Help required.... What pair of 12" drive units needed.

[spyder]

Can someone please run these numbers for replacement drive units.

 

I have a sealed 63lt ( 30x35x60 ) cab with cut outs for two 12" drive units. I'm looking for a flat response from this with very little bass hump.

I'm currently using two Celestion BL12- 200x which are very warm.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

The BL12-200x are about as flat as you're going to get in that enclosure. What you call very warm I'd call a weak low end, as its response is -10dB at 55Hz. That's not the fault of the drivers, it's what you're going to get from a sealed enclosure that small. If what you're after is stronger lows you've got to go larger. If I had to use that enclosure I'd load it with one Eminence BP122. It would be -10dB at 36Hz, and one BP122 in that enclosure would be capable of more output than two BL12-200x.

[spyder]

Thanks Bill.

You are a star....again.

[spyder]

Bill.

Would two be ok?

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Two would give slightly less low end than one and the midbass would boom.

[Phil Starr]

I'm curious as to what you mean by 'warm' I'd have thought these speakers would be pretty weak in the bass region. as Bill says they are about as flat as you'll get in that cab the -10db is 55hz and they roll off from around 150hz which is really quite high. -3dB is more than an octave above a low E.

 

In your situation I'd try porting the cab, the blue line is the current predicted response green with a 8cm port 19cm long. that would crucially move the -3dB point to cover most of the open E string harmonics and give you an extra 2dB across most of the bass. 30l is very small for a 12" speaker so the only way to get better bass without spending a fortune is to do as Bill says and use a single speaker or move to a couple of 10's. Porting would mean you got a better response without spending anything.

 

[spyder]

It is strange.

Unfortunately I have only used the cab with my one and only bass, so can't compare basses to see if it's mine that has a naturally warm sound. 

[Phil Starr]

How we perceive sound is something that is pretty subjective, it could be down to eq and the balance between the bass, middle and treble you have in your system. The other problem is that the language we use for describing sound isn't very precise. For me warmth is a boost in the upper bass/low mids but there isn't a dictionary definition. Try boosting the mids and treble a bit on your tone controls and if you have a lot of bass boost cut it down a bit. Maybe tell us which amp you are using and how you have the tone controls?

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

For most warmth is considered as a strong midrange with not a lot of low end, which is what I'd expect from his current arrangement.

[spyder]

1 hour ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

For most warmth is considered as a strong midrange with not a lot of low end, which is what I'd expect from his current arrangement.

Agree with you Bill.

If I turn up the bass on the Sadowsky preamp (40hz) there is very little if any extra deep bass.

The cab - driver combination has no real beep bass.

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

The meaning of warmth isn't too difficult to imagine. The same for boom, or harsh. But when you get into the terms used by oddiophiles it's easy to be left in head scratching mode. I have no idea what they mean by 'air', other than that they have far too much of it between their ears. And of course there's 'fast bass'. WTF?? Did the bass player finish the song three bars before the rest of the band? 🙄

[Lozz196]

They did if it was a jazz band. 

[DGBass]

I messed around with a pair of Eminence Beta 12A-2's a while back in a sealed and a ported cab in an attempt to get a useable 500watt 4 ohm box with a deep 'warm' tone using a p-bass with flats (and an ABM 500). I picked up a generic sealed (empty) cab in the classifieds and a ported cab ( an empty tc electronic BC212) for just a few quid. Both sounded fine to a point but the ported cab won the day. The sealed cab struggled with the really low stuff( I know thats not very technical sounding) but was good with that low mid honk. The ported cab was seismic in the lows by comparison. The cab dimensions were almost identical at approx W x H x D 462 x 662 x 380 . The ported cab had two very large ports to the rear. I sold on the BC212 and had replaced the drivers with Celestion BL12-200X units by that time  and they paled in comparison to the Eminence Beta 12-A2's in either the sealed or ported cab. The Celestion's were very inexpensive to buy at the time. I haven't owned a windows computer for eons so don't do WinISD so can't offer any technical data as to why the Eminence units sounded better. I just used my ears. But they did in my opinion and the ported cab was by far the best option to deliver a meaty warm low end with a pair of twelves.😁