1 x 12" speaker cab for clean baritone guitar - Thiele?

[pjd3]

Hello.

This is just for generating concepts for an up-and-coming project.

So, I've finished a baritone guitar build that began almost 2 years ago. The build was in response to learning a good handful of very challenging old fingerstyle Celtic songs as you would hear from Tony McManus and Stephen Wake. I fell in love with material like this and was inspired to build a baritone electric guitar fully intended for Acoustic guitar style fingerstyle. (Think, "Wild Mountain Thyme, Maids of Mitcheltown, Cry of the Celts, Rosemary's sister, etc....).

I attempted to optimize this guitar for acoustic fingerstyle material with a wide maple/ebony neck and fingerboard and very low inductance/DCR pickups. The electronics allows for 43 distinct coil combination recipes using every form of parallel/series/cutcoil/phase switch wherever and whenever reasonably possible. So the guitars DCR's range from under 1K ohm to over 16K ohms and everything in between.

With that said, I'm pondering what would be the cab of choice to build in order to optimize the usable range of this electric guitar. I actually found that having it down to A and B as its standard tunings did not bring the level of "lively-ness" that I was imagining so, after some experimenting I found that in the DADGAD and Orkney tunings (and others) the guitar came to life centered around a D tuning. It felt like baritone heresy but, there was no doubt about it. The guitar came to life once I reached this tuning with the 14-68 gauge strings. Most of the time, there is a capo on the 5th, 6th, 7th or 9th fret with the low E and A tuned down to meet the Orkney and DADGAD like tunings. Luckily, I made the neck from a good quality slap of hard rock maple so, despite the unforseen hugh increase in sting tension, its barely up-bowing at all. I really love the guitar now right where it is and in the process of designing a big clean stereo tube amp for it.

With that all said, back to the notion of a compatible speaker cab. Am I looking at a Thiele cab as a way to bring good resonance and solidity to the low G's, E's, D's and C's (and sometimes B's that will be constantly walking about supporting the Celtic lines coming out of this guitar? Those lows shouldn't be mushy or boomy, but nice n tight and plump.

Is the Thiele cabinet with one of the EV12 or EV12 variants what I should be looking towards?

Thank you. I've never experienced playing through one of them.
Best,
Phil D. (pjd3)

[GAStan]

I'm not an expert but here's what I do know. A ported cabinet is designed to sound like a larger cabinet. I believe they were developed by the HiFi community. They can make for very clean sounding speaker cabinets.

EVM designed the Thiele cabinets SPECIFICALLY for their speakers. I have learned that although close, the EVM12x clone speakers do not have the same parameters as the originals so they do not work as well-theoretically. I have two Thiele TS806 1x12 cabinets, one loaded with an EVM12L the other with a WGS12L and I'd be hard pressed to distinguish them apart in a blind test. That said I'd personally stay with strictly EVM12L in the future.

IMHO they sound great with my 100watt ODS amps. I've got a 2x12 ported cabinet loaded with EVM12L'S that I use for my 100watt SSS #002 head. In fact i may not get back one of my Thiele's that I loaned with an ODS head to a nephew that fell in love with the Clean Channel and Thiele combination...

[pjd3]

Thanks GAStan,

Hey, experience is every bit as valuable as expertise with this so, I"m grateful to hear about your results with those cabs and speakers.

The only thing that might make me seek out an EV12 alternative is the cost. However, if the call is that they are "very close" that may be enough to satisfy for the time being. I like what you say about the cabs being made to sound bigger than they actually appear, if we compare to normal cabs of the same size. A small cab that sounds notably bigger is a very good plus for my applications. I'm looking at my baritone guitar in the same way I would look at a piano, or a big harp, where you want a well focused and robust low end, but never boomy or mushy, and of course well rendered mids and highs that arent too colored or distorted in some way, and they all live together well. That along with good clarity, a speaker that will stand up to some complex effects like a good dash of chorusing now and then. Plus, I intend on using really good stereo reverbs and of course, I would want them to hold their compexity and depth.

So thats my story and I'll stick to it but, I have a fairly good idea of where Im headed with this and your description seems to be compatible with that.

Thanks for sharing your experience with this, very interesting.
Best,
Phil D

[GAStan]

Phil it's my pleasure, hope it does help.

On the WGS I have, the first one didn't last long at all, less than a few hours. I was playing it pretty loud when it kind of stuttered then quit all together with an open coil. WGS was great and replaced it promptly. During this time I read that some of the large speaker manufacturers void the warranty if they know the speaker was in a ported cabinet. I read this in a forum post, never did look at manufacturers site to confirm. Reason has something to do with over excursion of the cone. I did ask WGS straightforwardly about using their speaker in a ported cabinet but the question was not answered in subsequent emails. I have and use other WGS speakers and do like them but in the future will stick to EVM for 12L's. While they do cost more IMHO they're worth it.

Do you plan to make your own cabinet? If not Tim at TRM Cabinets makes good ones, that's where I got mine. I can tell you more about them, if you're interested let me know.

Edit: Hopefully others will comment on their experience with ported cabinets, I'm interested in hearing what they have to say.

Also-many commercial home stereo speakers are ported.

[pjd3]

Thanks,

Yes, I've been to TRM site. VEry good thing he's got going over there, looks to be very good quality and affordable. I did mean to visit the site to see about the Theile cabs. I was entertaining making a couple. For chrismas I was gifted all the routers, bits and templates to build box joints cabs for a few completed chassis, A Fender 40 watt in a princeton chassis, a rebuild for the 20 watt plexi that I built and gig with, *Sluckys 6V6 plexi" and mostly for a stereo 20 watt plexi that I'm nearly finished with now. Since the creation of all the really good stereo reverbs available now, I feel like its a big waste to not go stereo. So, I also have the intention to build a stereo tube amp for the baritone as well. That needs a nice big clean sound. I figured a clean stereo tube amp into a couple of Thiele with EV12s' might fit the bill. That guitar was alot of work, so I wan't it to have a nice amp system.

Bestm

Phil D

[solderhead]

This thread might be helpful:

https://ampgarage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=37973

Beware -- the port tuning frequency of a TL-806 cabinet is 80 Hz. It was designed for lead guitar in standard tuning, which has an fLL (lower limit frequency) of 80 Hz for the low E string.

With an EVM-12L in a TL-806 it is the port (not the cone) that is designed to move the air that reproduces the frequencies at the lower limit of the cabinet's frequency response. It does this with minimal cone excursion by exciting a resonant volume of air in the cabinet. The volume of air in the cabinet, the stiffness of the paper cone, and various other intrinsic parameters unique to the driver are used to design the optimal size of the port.

With this type of system if you were to plot driver excursion ("X") as a function of frequency, as you moved down in frequency the chart would show decreasing values of X, until X approached Zero at the port tuning frequency of 80 Hz. Once you go below 80 Hz the excursion increases logarithmacally. Guitar speakers are NOT designed to tolerate infinite excursion, so this is a real problem.

EV designed their Thiele speaker-cab systems to be used with a rack EQ that would absolutely roll off every frequency below the port frequency, to protect the driver from the type of over-excursion failure that was mentioned in a previous post.

Most people don't run the proper EV XEQ filter in their effects loops, so they're taking a chance whenever they try to run program material into the cab that has a frequency less than 80 Hz.

Now bear in mind that a baritone guitar has an fLL of about 64 Hz. Run that through a TL-806/EVM-12L combination without proper EQ protection and you're guaranteed to have speaker bottom-out if you're lucky, and a driver that freezes due to over-excursion if you're not.

For a baritone, you're approaching the fLL of a 4-string bass, which is 40 Hz. At those frequencies you need to be thinking about a bass cabinet, not a guitar cabinet.

If you want a Thiele/EV design, the only off the shelf option that is suitable for a baritone guitar is the EVM-15L in a TL-606-type cab. I have used this setup since the 1970s with high power amps and I have never blown a speaker. Not once.

Don't even think about the EVM-12L in a TL-806 for baritone guitar. If your signal levels are high enough then you'll kill whatever driver you put in the cab, even an EVM-12L. You don't ever want to feed that ported system a frequency that's below it's design limitation.

Here are a couple of rules of thumb that everyone should follow:
1. Never use any driver other than an EVM-12L or EVM-12S in a TL-806 cabinet
2. Always protect the driver with an XEQ equalizer in the signal path
3. If you don't do #2, be careful to never allow the cabinet to see a frequency below 80 Hz or a blown driver is to be expected.

Now that is not to say that you can't accomplish what you want to do with a Thiele-Small design, it's just that you shouldn't try doing it with the specific T-S design we've been talking about in this thread. If you want to go with a T-S ported system, you could easily download one of the T-S design spreadsheets and tweak the box parameters to match your driver and your desired fLL. Chances are that you can get where you need to be by just changing the total box volume and the port dimensions.

PS -- Wasn't the 6v6 Plexi the brainchild of Mark Huss?

[pjd3]

Hi Solderhead, and thanks.

I do understand the technical aspect of the TS806 and the warning you give for frequencies below 80Hz. Thank you for that very good explaination.

This baritone is expected to reach down to near 60Hz so, I need to rethink this. I did read a moderately indepth article somewhere a couple of years ago that did introduce some web pages with details and how to calculate volume for the particular speakers parameters that you would want to use. Perhaps I will have to take a close look at that. I do believe it is a matter of executing equations with the correct parameter values. It may reallly be worth it. it would be nice to hear a well balanced picture of the baritone with a solid bottom. (and to not damage any speaker)

And yup, I did first build the Mark Huss inspired "Sluckey" 6V6 plexi amp. Its doing me quite well, takes my pedal decently and given me alot of compliments on my tone. Perfect wattage too, I tend to play restaurant/bars that are small to medium size, and we all go thought the PA.

So, since that amp has been serving me so well, I'm about 70% done with a stereo rendition of that amp. Its really two of those amps in a Twin Reverb chassis, and I'm ready to start making a cabinet for it. I'll be using a couple of V30's in a Blackface style cabinet, made with 11.25" depth pine cabinet. Plus giving it the Shou Sugi Ban treatment. I just have to not burn the box finger joints. I'll just dye them after. Really looking forward to this one, figured I would just mic each speaker and pan them left and right out the PA.

Thanks for stopping by, you may be the instigator in getting me to size out a Thiele cab for the lowest frequency of my baritone guitar!
Best,

Phil D

[Colossal]

FWIW,

Here is a shot of two 1x15 Thiele cabs and a bass amp I built for a friend. Those cabs had incredible punch and clarity.

[pjd3]

Man, those look freegan great.

Is there a difference between having ports vertical, along the ground or horizontal?

I figure there must be some sonic effect, like "more bass if the ports along the floor".

Thanks for showing me this. I understand that there is a TS606, or something that is tuned for a 15" speaker and the frequency range that is expected for a bass guitar.

How did you choose or design the cab for this? Its tempting to look into designing as there seems to be a few Thiele small parameter sites with calculators. I'd be up for that should generating the dimension not be too too tricky. I have to wonder if keeping a 12" speaker is feasible since I really don't ever expect to go below 60Hz, and I would never be playing really loud. This is for low to medium volume, always clean and never overdriven.

Thank you,
best,
Phil D

[Colossal]

The choice of the (Thiele TL606) cabs for that bass amp were:

1) high power handling
2) resonably compact and transportable
3) punch, detail, and clarity
4) Geddy Lee, Moving Pictures 1981

Standing in front of that rig and you really feel the sound pressure when the amp is working but it is never muddy with that congested "uuuhhhhhh" that some bass amps have. It is running a pair of 6550s into a Dynaco A-451 2k2 output transformer running in Ultralinear. The power supply has a CLC filter in front of B+1. The choke is big. I'm not sure it matters to have the port oriented along the bottom or side. The speaker is 15" and the low end is massive. It sounds like someone beat a wrought iron fence with a baseball bat.

[pjd3]

After doing some research today,

The prospect of using an EVM 15L with a TS606 is looking like a good possibility. It's compatible with that cab, and the frequency tuning seems to be in a good place. The EVM 15L has a freq range of 50Hz to 5K which is OK for what I'm doing. I did intend on having an amp with KT77's that can get a good bright end and a solid bottom, and so far this could work.

Thanks,
Phil D

[pjd3]

Correction, I was calling the EV 15L the EV12L by accident in the above post - fixed it!

[solderhead]

Fwiw those stacked 1x15 cabs look a lot like a TL-606. With the matched EVM-15L speakers those cabs are freakin' great. But it's still possible to fart them out with really big signals. If the truth were known, the Thiele-Small parameters are optimized for small signal levels, and at high signal levels the bass performance of a Thiele-Small array falls short. EV once published a great white paper that covered the diminishing T-S bass response as a function of increasing signal level, but they don't publish that any more. I can't find my hard copy. Maybe someone at EV tech support could find it if you asked them, but chances are that since they don't make any of those drivers any more (except the 12L) they've probably purged the old documents when Bosch took over.

The EVM-15L data sheet has information on bass response in quarter space, half space environments, etc. Personally I just lay the cabs on their sides (port on side/vertical) because that fits under a wide amp head the best.

If you decide to go with a 15L there are some commercial TL-series cabinet options out there. Mesa's Road Ready series (ugly as hell but very robust) used EV-designed TL-606 type cabs. The 1x15 used a TL-606, the 2x15 used a TL-606D. EV also published plans for a 4x15 TL-606Q. I started off with a TL-606 1x15 that I built myself back in the 70s when EV was prototyping the design. Later on I ended up buying a used Mesa Road Ready 2x15 (TL-606D) because I found one at the right price.

I run the 1x15 or the 2x15 Mesa cab with an SVT. It rocks. For a baritone, I think the 1x15 would be a great choice with just about any amp.

[solderhead]

For comparison, here's a link to internet images of the 1x15 and 2x15 Mesa Road Ready cabs, stuffed with EVM-15L:





The Mesa armored cabs are ridiculously robust. I once lost control of the 2x15 at the top of a flight of concrete stairs and reeled in horror as the cabinet tumbled to the concrete pavement below. There were only a couple of scratches on the aluminum armor and no other damage to the cab. It blew out a chunk of the concrete steps though.

[pjd3]

Thanks guys, for info and images. I find these cabs kinda interesting, and something in me resonates with them that they may be a worthy idea specifically for the application I would be using them6t0 in.

Does anyone have any knowledge of an Altered Mesa Boogie Thiele cabinet that has been calculated and built for a 60Hz tunes frequency for EV12L's I swear I was seeing something like that. That would actually be perfect. After watching/listening to as many youtube vids as I could on the EV line of speakers, it did become apparent that while the EV15L could work, there was just something a little more desirable in the general frequency content of the EV12L. The reason I was gravitating suddenly to the EV15L was that there were premade cabinets available and likely building plans in case I thought to go that way.

If someone could verify the existence of a Mesa Boogie Theile 60Hz cabinet for EV12L that would actually be optimal. I'd get the basic response and size of a 12" speaker that would handle the lowest notes of my baritone without issue.

Thank you for taking the time to stop by, and if fate has it, its not out of the question to hunker down to some "Theile cab design" using the available directions and calculators I've seen online.

Best
Phil D. (pjd3)