speaker sizes

[idiotbear]

I've been practising hard on my joinery skills lately, and I feel like I want to test them out on building a cab - either to run the spare speaker out from my Marshall Silver Series combo into, or to pair up with the Orange Tiny Terror I'm almost certainly going to buy on of these days 

Now, I know that it's a bad idea to mix different impedances, but if I wanted to have 2x10" speakers and 2x12" in the cab, that shouldn't be a problem, right  - assuming the impedances are the same?

What about if I had 2x10" at the top of the cab and 2x15" bass speakers at the bottom? I'm thinking that if that could work, it'd sound awesome in combination with the Vintage 30 in my Marshall.

Or do I have this all arse about face? 

[Superfuzz]

For what I know Steve Albini runs his jcm800 into a custom built cab that has speakers of different sizes..

[pullover]

Yes you can mix different speaker sizes, they've been doing that more and more with  bass cabinets recently. SWR has a cabinet with one 15" and one 10" speaker.

[flatfiver]

Contrary to popular belief, size doesn't matter.  Um, it's the motion of the ocean, or something.

As long as your impedance is sorted you're fine.

[mewithoutus]

Contrary to popular belief, size doesn't matter.  Um, it's the motion of the ocean, or something.

As long as your impedance is sorted you're fine.

hahahaha classic.

as long as the impedance matches, you are good to go.

[idiotbear]

Cool. Thanks guys.

So - 2x15" + 2x10" - sound like a good thing soundwise?

[mezcalhead]

What about if I had 2x10" at the top of the cab and 2x15" bass speakers at the bottom?

I'd put one of each at the top and bottom to save wasted space at the top.

However you put them, it's gonna be pretty heavy.

[mjet]

Are you thinking about putting 10s and 15s in a single cab? I think making two that sit atop one another gives you more flexibility, and you could port the 15 cab.

[mezcalhead]

Not a bad idea, but now you're talking different impedances, if you're going to be switching between two cabs and one.

Another thought: not sure if the TT has more than one output to the speakers?

[idiotbear]

Def. only want one one cab - I only have one spare speaker out on my Marshall and, Jon, I think you're right about the TT's outs.

However you put them, it's gonna be pretty heavy.

Heavy I can deal with  I'm a big fella.

[1946dodge]

I think the 10's combined with the 15s will give a nice wide range frequency response. Lots of bottom from the 15's and lots of high crispness from the 10's.
I have a Mesa Boogie 45 cal with two 12s and they sound shitty. But when I ran it into a 4X12 it sounded awesoome and like a different amp.
Speakers do matter alot I think.

[idiotbear]

Soooooo - I've been doing my homework a little, but one question remains (well, one so far - I'll probably have 3 million soon!).

Do I really need to worry about the physical volume (as in size, not as in loudness), if I'm building an open-backed cab? Ideally I'd like to fit the four speakers into as small an enclosure as I possibly can, and right now that's looking like about 32" (W) x 34" (H) x 9" (D).

Is there gonna be a serious sonic disadvantage to that?

[mudhoney]

Soooooo - I've been doing my homework a little, but one question remains (well, one so far - I'll probably have 3 million soon!).

Do I really need to worry about the physical volume (as in size, not as in loudness), if I'm building an open-backed cab? Ideally I'd like to fit the four speakers into as small an enclosure as I possibly can, and right now that's looking like about 32" (W) x 34" (H) x 9" (D).

Is there gonna be a serious sonic disadvantage to that?

well you should check the size of the marshall box, I would not recommend to make a smaller box because you might have problems with sound due to "physical"  vibrations of the speakers.

[Pumpkin]

Strange no ones mentioned(STRESSED)  ohms in relation to speakers and amps cause if you have the ohms wrong you can and will blow your amp if its way out of wack.


If an amp puts out 100 watts at 4ohms for example and you have a total speaker load of 2ohms then your amp is in trouble!

If you had 4x 25watt/16 ohm speakers wired in parallel it would be a total of 100watts at4ohms,hence it would be fine.
If it were wired series it wouldn't be fine.


Maybe you should check it out dude,I'd hate to see you blow your amp.

Theres this exact issue on the orange forums it may have some info thats helpful.

This explains a lot:

[luau]

Soooooo - I've been doing my homework a little, but one question remains (well, one so far - I'll probably have 3 million soon!).

Do I really need to worry about the physical volume (as in size, not as in loudness), if I'm building an open-backed cab? Ideally I'd like to fit the four speakers into as small an enclosure as I possibly can, and right now that's looking like about 32" (W) x 34" (H) x 9" (D).

Is there gonna be a serious sonic disadvantage to that?

I think it doesn't matter much for an open backed cab. And consider this bit from the Weber Speaker Q&A (which is a great read).

Jim Marshall, the man who gave us the world's most emulated sealed box guitar amp speaker enclosure, was recently interviewed by a popular guitar magazine. In the interview, he stated that the dimensions for his cabinet were dictated by the smallest practical cabinet that would fit 4-12" speakers. Evidently, no thought whatsoever was given to the acoustical properties of the cabinet.

Scroll down for the question that starts with " I don't know alot about guitar speaker cabinet design".