NAD: Trace Elliot but no tweeter

[SimonK]

So picked up the below head and amp for a crazy good price this week (£90) and tried it at band practice last night. The cab is almost identical to the one I normally use (second picture) but without a tweeter. Initially I didn't mind as in my mind tweeters extend the high frequencies from about 5kHz to 15kHz (based on old Trace manuals) which my prejudice tells me is only really good for clicking fret noises and slap - neither of which I worry about too much, and yet I couldn't help think that there was more than this missing from my sound last night. Yes of course different amp/cab, no matter if very similar make/model will sound a bit different, but it got me wondering whether a tweeter interacts with other parts of the cab in cleverer ways... I'm sure this has been discussed before so happy for people to point me to a discussion (but I couldn't find one with the search).

 

 

vs

[prowla]

Well, it has got a graphic eq to tweak things.

Trace did that little 5" speaker HF unit, if you manage to pick one of thos up somewhere.

[Chienmortbb]

The problem is that bass speakers beam with any HF going to your knees. A well designed cab with a tweeter will push the lower HF up towards you ears. 

[bremen]

I'm just wondering what that combo weighs 😵‍💫

[SimonK]

45 minutes ago, bremen said:

I'm just wondering what that combo weighs 😵‍💫

 

Yes - hence thinking the head plus cab was a good alternative (albeit spur of the moment purchase) - but as stated above they don't quite sound exactly the same and I love the sound of the combo!

[Phil Starr]

The tweeter does so much more, but depending upon how it is implemented. That depends to a certain extent on the crossover used. The Crossover shares the sound out, highs to the tweeter lows to the woofer. It might be wortwhile checking that the crossover is disconnected in your cab, if not it might be stopping the highs reaching your woofers and killing your sound.

 

There is a reason why tweeters have a poor reputation; many older cabs had tweeters added as an afterthought. Frequently they were poor quality and simply added  on to an existing design with a simple capacitor to protect the tweeter as a 'crossover' instead of a properly designed system. Worse still many of the add ons were super cheap piezo tweeters which did away with crossovers altogether and in any case didn't have a very flat response. Simply adding high frequencies simply doesn't work well creating lot's of unwanted noises and sharpness whilst messing up the crucial mid range. 

 

Bass guitar doesn't really need high frequencies there is nothing there above roughly 6,000Hz depending upon which pickups you use and in any case these frequencies are lost once you are playing within a band, the crucial frequencies are from roughly 80-4,000 Hz, give or take. Speakers with big cones start to beam (narrow the dispersal of sound) when their dimensions get close to the wavelenghts of the sound they are producing, 10" speakers start to beam at around 500Hz and beaming is significant and unpredictable above 2kHz and big heavy cones don't produce high frequencies well anyway. A well designed horn system will fix a lot of problems the small driver will produce cleaner high frequencies and the horn will guide the sound in a predictable fashion so people to the side of the speaker will hear more or less the same sound as people in front of the speaker, That includes the bassist who rarely has the speaker pointing at anything other than their legs.