A guitar speaker is a
loudspeaker
A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or " ...
– specifically the driver (
transducer
A transducer is a device that converts energy from one form to another. Usually a transducer converts a signal in one form of energy to a signal in another.
Transducers are often employed at the boundaries of automation, measurement, and contr ...
) part – designed for use in a combination
guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier (or amp) is an electronic device or system that strengthens the electrical signal from a pickup on an electric guitar, bass guitar, or acoustic guitar so that it can produce sound through one or more loudspeakers, which a ...
(in which a loudspeaker and an amplifier are installed in a wooden cabinet) of an
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
, or for use in a guitar
speaker cabinet
A loudspeaker enclosure or loudspeaker cabinet is an enclosure (often rectangular box-shaped) in which speaker drivers (e.g., loudspeakers and tweeters) and associated electronic hardware, such as crossover circuits and, in some cases, power a ...
. Typically these drivers produce only the frequency range relevant to
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
s, which is similar to a regular
woofer
A woofer or bass speaker is a technical term for a loudspeaker driver designed to produce low frequency sounds, typically from 50 Hz up to 1000 Hz. The name is from the onomatopoeic English word for a dog's bark, " woof" (in contrast to th ...
type driver, which is approximately 75
Hz — 5 kHz, or for
electric bass
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck
The ...
speakers, down to 41
Hz for regular four-string basses or down to about 30 Hz for five-string instruments.
The cones of these drivers typically range in size from with and models being the most popular for electric guitar and electric bass combo amps and speaker cabinets. As with all loudspeaker drivers, the magnets are usually made from
Alnico
Alnico is a family of iron alloys which in addition to iron are composed primarily of aluminium (Al), nickel (Ni), and cobalt (Co), hence the acronym ''al-ni-co''. They also include copper, and sometimes titanium. Alnico alloys are ferromagnetic, ...
, ceramic, or, to reduce weight on more expensive models,
neodymium
Neodymium is a chemical element with the symbol Nd and atomic number 60. It is the fourth member of the lanthanide series and is considered to be one of the rare-earth metals. It is a hard, slightly malleable, silvery metal that quickly tarnishes i ...
. Higher quality Alnico magnets are reserved for more expensive models. Well-known guitar speaker manufacturers include
Jensen,
Celestion
Celestion is a British designer and exporter of professional loudspeakers.
History
Origins
What became Celestion was started in Hampton Wick (suburban London) in 1924. ''Cyril French'' and his three brothers had taken over a plating works ...
, Eminence,
Electro-Voice,
JBL
JBL is an American audio equipment manufacturer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. JBL serves the customer home and professional market. The professional market includes studios, installed/tour/portable sound, cars, music ...
,
Peavey, and
Vox. Small practice amps often have 6.5 or 8 speakers. Combination (or "combo") amplifier cabinets often have one or more 10 and 12 speakers. The largest speaker "stacks", used in stadium concerts, have eight 10 or 12 in speakers.
Bass amplifier
A bass amplifier (also abbreviated to bass amp) is a musical instrument electronic device that uses electrical power to make lower-pitched instruments such as the bass guitar or double bass loud enough to be heard by the performers and audien ...
speaker cabinets for the
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
also often use one or more 10 or 12 in speakers (both 2x10 in and 4x10 in cabinets are popular; in addition, bass cabinets are more likely than electric guitar cabinets to use 15 in speakers.
Guitar speakers are designed differently from
hi-fi speakers intended for in-home listening to pre-recorded music. Whereas hi-fi speakers are meant to provide as little coloration of the source signal as possible, guitar speakers are often designed to add some type of tonal coloration to the sound.
Cabinet
![Kustom 200 bass amplifier (1971)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Kustom_200_bass_amplifier_%281971%29.jpg)
A guitar speaker cabinet is typically a wooden box that contains one or more guitar speakers. The smallest guitar cabinets have one 6.5" or 8" speaker; these are usually practice amplifier units designed for private practice. Some cabinets designed for rehearsals and small- to mid-size venues contain two 10" or 12" speakers. Another popular format is four 10" or four 12" speakers. Some performers use two 4x10" or 4x12" cabinets. The largest guitar speaker cabinets have eight 10" or 12" speakers. A 4x12" ("four by twelve") is a guitar speaker cabinet containing four 12" speakers. Less commonly, some bass amp cabinets have multiple 8" speakers (e.g., the 8x8" cabinet).
Cabinets with mixed-size speakers are less common, but they are used (e.g., a bass amplifier cabinet with a 15" loudspeaker for lower frequencies and a smaller speaker for mid- to high-range frequencies. A cabinet is usually
mono
Mono may refer to:
Common meanings
* Infectious mononucleosis, "the kissing disease"
* Monaural, monophonic sound reproduction, often shortened to mono
* Mono-, a numerical prefix representing anything single
Music Performers
* Mono (Japanese b ...
, but may have two inputs for a "
stereo
Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...
" amplifier. Two speakers in a cabinet may be wired in
parallel
Parallel is a geometric term of location which may refer to:
Computing
* Parallel algorithm
* Parallel computing
* Parallel metaheuristic
* Parallel (software), a UNIX utility for running programs in parallel
* Parallel Sysplex, a cluster of IBM ...
(lowering the
impedance) or in series (increasing the impedance). Larger multiples will usually be series/parallel to maintain an impedance of 4 to 8
ohm
Ohm (symbol Ω) is a unit of electrical resistance named after Georg Ohm.
Ohm or OHM may also refer to:
People
* Georg Ohm (1789–1854), German physicist and namesake of the term ''ohm''
* Germán Ohm (born 1936), Mexican boxer
* Jörg Ohm (b ...
s.
Many cabinets contain parallel input/outputs on the rear panel, so that one speaker cab can be plugged into the amp head, and then a second cabinet can be plugged into the first cabinet; as this "daisy-chaining" approach is wired in parallel, plugging in a second cabinet lowers the impedance seen by the amplifier. Cabinets typically have an impedance rating printed on the rear panel, such as "8 ohm minimum" or "4 ohms minimum". These warnings mean that the user should not connect an amplifier requiring a higher impedance; tube amps in particular are designed to work with speakers having some particular impedance. Since speaker impedances as seen by the amplifier vary with frequency, with voice coil construction, and with the cabinet's acoustical loading (which also varies with frequency) there can be no exact match under all conditions. When users daisy-chain a second cabinet with paralleled speakers, they must ensure the amplifier can handle the lower impedance it will see.
Bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
cabinets may include a single speaker (typically 12" or 15"), multiple speakers of the same type (common formats include 2x10", 4x10" and 8x10"). Some bass cabinets use multiple different-sized speakers, such as a mixture of 12" and 15" speakers. In rare cases, some large bass cabinets (known as "bass bins") incorporate
folded horns to boost the bass response. Bass amp cabinets may have a horn or tweeter built into a speaker cabinet which contains one or more woofer drivers. When a cabinet includes such a horn, the enclosure may also have an attenuator knob, for turning the horn volume up or down. Some more expensive bass cabinets with a woofer/horn approach may have additional features, such as circuitry to protect the speakers or horn from overloads or a biamplification option.
Biamplification enables a bassist to use a
crossover
Crossover may refer to:
Entertainment
Albums and songs
* ''Cross Over'' (Dan Peek album)
* ''Crossover'' (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album), 1987
* ''Crossover'' (Intrigue album)
* ''Crossover'' (Hitomi Shimatani album)
* ''Crossover'' (Yoshino ...
circuit to split their bass signal into two: a low frequency signal and a high frequency signal, and then route the low and high frequencies into two power amplifiers, each of which send their powered signal to different speaker enclosures. One power amp (usually of higher power) handles the low frequencies, which are sent the larger drivers (at lower frequencies), and a less powerful amp amplifies the high frequencies, which are sent to the horn. For bass players seeking a pure, transparent sound, biamplification may produce a "cleaner" sound. For bass players in
hard rock
Hard rock or heavy rock is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest hard ...
or
heavy metal who are using an
overdriven
Distortion and overdrive are forms of audio signal processing used to alter the sound of amplified electric musical instruments, usually by increasing their gain (electronics), gain, producing a "fuzzy", "growling", or "gritty" tone. Distort ...
sound, biamplification may be safer for the horn or tweeter; while a
clipped,
distorted signal can be handled by a heavy-duty woofer, the same clipped signal will come much closer to damaging a horn driver or a tweeter. Biamping allows a bassist to have the "dirty" overdriven sound through their woofer(s) while keeping the signal sent to the horn clean, thus protecting the horn. At the high onstage volume levels used in large rock and metal concerts, a powerful, overdriven bass signal poses a higher risk of horn damage in non-biamped systems.
Often what is referred to as a "guitar amp" is in fact a combo amplifier: a cabinet with speakers and a built-in amplifier. Combo amplifiers may be referred to by their speaker cabinet configuration plus the word "combo", so that "4x10 combo" means a guitar amplifier built into a 4x10" speaker cabinet. Since the popular configurations are limited in variety, cabinet configurations are often written abbreviated without ambiguity: For example, 4x10" may be written 410, and 112 refers to a single cabinet housing a 12" speaker.
The speaker cabinets, which hold these drivers can be closed-back or open-back, along with variations such as a semi-open back 4x12 in cabinet, which may have a baffle deflecting two of the four speakers. Closed back cabinets may be
acoustic suspension
Acoustic suspension (air suspension, closed box, sealed box) is a method of loudspeaker cabinet design and utilisation that uses one or more loudspeaker drivers mounted in a sealed box or cabinet. Acoustic suspension systems reduce bass distortio ...
or
bass reflex
A bass reflex system (also known as a ported, vented box or reflex port) is a type of loudspeaker enclosure that uses a port (hole) or vent cut into the cabinet and a section of tubing or pipe affixed to the port. This port enables the sound fro ...
. Bass cabinets are usually closed-back or use a bass reflex port or vent to boost low frequency response. The purpose of the cabinet is match the acoustic impedance seen by the driver to the driver's own electrical/mechanical impedance. Cabinets are best used when they are matched to the driver(s) being used; casual substitution of another driver which can be mounted in a cabinet will only accidentally make changes in a beneficial direction.
The sound of the speaker and cabinet is crucial to the sound of the electric guitar, so much so that it needs to be considered part of the instrument's tone. If the clean signal from a guitar amplifier or pre-amplifier is captured directly (i.e., before it is sent to a speaker cabinet) it will very often be rather brittle and thin, with no "resonant" depth, particularly if the guitar signal is from a string pickup (i.e., the type used in a solid-body electric guitar). Vibration pickups, or microphone pickups, as used in many hollow body electro-acoustic guitars, aren't as strongly affected. The result can sound excessively shrill, scratchy and fizzy, completely different from the smooth tones that listeners hear in recordings or live performances.
When driven hard, guitar speakers produce complex behavior, which affects the sound of the instrument. There will be some
power compression In a loudspeaker, power compression or thermal compression is a loss of efficiency observed as the voice coil heats up under operation, increasing the Electrical resistance and conductance, DC resistance of the voice coil and decreasing the effectiv ...
, several kinds of
distortion
In signal processing, distortion is the alteration of the original shape (or other characteristic) of a signal. In communications and electronics it means the alteration of the waveform of an information-bearing signal, such as an audio signal ...
, even mechanical limiting as one or more drivers approach their physical limits (e.g. cone excursion). A guitar speaker shows a nonlinear frequency response depending on the speaker's load, e.g. the frequency response, and various distortions, at small amplitudes is different from those at large amplitudes.
Isolation cabinets and emulation devices
A guitar speaker
isolation cabinet contains a guitar speaker and one or two
microphones
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...
in a single- or double-layer soundproofed box. These devices allow the capture of the sound of a guitar amplifier and speaker being played at high levels, while minimizing "bleed through" between tracks in the mix. These are almost exclusively used in
recording studios
A recording studio is a specialized facility for sound recording, mixing, and audio production of instrumental or vocal musical performances, spoken words, and other sounds. They range in size from a small in-home project studio large enoug ...
and during live performances being recorded.
As an alternative to the isolation cabinet, there are guitar speaker cabinet emulating circuits or signal processors (also known as
direct boxes or
preamplifier
A preamplifier, also known as a preamp, is an electronic amplifier that converts a weak electrical signal into an output signal strong enough to be noise-tolerant and strong enough for further processing, or for sending to a power amplifier an ...
-DI boxes), allowing the sound of a guitar amplifier to be fed directly into a
PA system
A public address system (or PA system) is an electronic system comprising microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and related equipment. It increases the apparent volume (loudness) of a human voice, musical instrument, or other acoustic sound sou ...
or recording equipment without the need for a speaker cabinet and microphone. Direct boxes are used more often with electric bass than with electric guitar, because the tone of a guitar amplifier and speaker is often considered to be a key element of an electric guitarist's tone. While DI boxes are used to route an electric bass signal to a mixing board, the
audio engineer
An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduction, ...
also often uses a mic set up in front of the bassist's
speaker enclosure
A loudspeaker enclosure or loudspeaker cabinet is an enclosure (often rectangular box-shaped) in which speaker drivers (e.g., loudspeakers and tweeters) and associated electronic hardware, such as crossover circuits and, in some cases, power ...
, to capture the bass player's preamped, equalized signal from the speaker cabinet. The engineer can then use either the DI out signal or the miked cabinet in the live or recording mix, or use a blend of the DI signal and the miked cabinet signal.
Digital cabinet emulation is the treatment of a signal with the simulation of the sound of a speaker and a cabinet. It is available in software, "
stompbox
A stomp box (or stompbox) is a percussion instrument consisting of a small box placed under the foot, which is tapped or stamped on rhythmically to produce a sound similar to that of a bass drum. A stomp box allows a performer such as a singe ...
" pedals, and in some guitar amps with a "cabinet modeling" feature. Cabinet emulation is complex, but at its core it is the use of digital equalization which, combined with resonance models that reproduce the frequency response of the mounted speaker as well as the internal reflections and standing waves of the cabinet. Cabinet emulators typically offer the user a range of commonly-used presets (e.g., different sizes of speaker cabinet, from small combo amps to large 8x10" "stacks" and different types or styles of speaker or cabinet, for traditional, blues, metal and other genres). Some cabinet emulator systems also allow the user to select the type of miking or the position of the microphones (e.g., front miking, rear miking, etc.). There is debate about how successful this level of emulation is or can be from a musical perspective. Technically, with enough funding and effort, it is possible to emulate a particular speaker/cabinet combination, but so many factors also affect the sound (eg, the room in which the speaker/cabinet is being used, the amplifier driving it, ...) that musical success for a particular observer may be justly debated.
See also
*
Isolation cabinet (guitar)
A guitar speaker isolation cabinet is a sound-proof enclosure that surrounds the speaker and sound-capturing microphone and prevents sound leakage into the outside environment, enabling the guitar amplifier to be turned up without excessive listen ...
*
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier (or amp) is an electronic device or system that strengthens the electrical signal from a pickup on an electric guitar, bass guitar, or acoustic guitar so that it can produce sound through one or more loudspeakers, which a ...
*
Instrument amplifier
An instrument amplifier is an electronic device that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal of a musical instrument into a larger electronic signal to feed to a loudspeaker. An instrument amplifier is used with musical ins ...
*
Loudspeaker
A loudspeaker (commonly referred to as a speaker or speaker driver) is an electroacoustic transducer that converts an electrical audio signal into a corresponding sound. A ''speaker system'', also often simply referred to as a "speaker" or " ...
*
Bass instrument amplification
A bass amplifier (also abbreviated to bass amp) is a musical instrument electronic device that uses electrical power to make lower-pitched instruments such as the bass guitar or double bass loud enough to be heard by the performers and audien ...
*
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
*
Re-amp
Re-amping is a process often used in multitrack recording in which a recorded signal is routed back out of the editing environment and run through external processing using effects units and then into a guitar amplifier and a guitar speaker cabin ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guitar Speaker
Amplified instruments
Electric guitars
Sound recording
Loudspeakers