Hey, I bought a GALLIEN KRUEGER 800RB and a Deitz single 15" cab yesterday off some horsehead, but the wattage on the Deitz us unattainable without pulling the motherfucker apart. I want to make sure I don't push too much juice to the speaker and blow it until I get another 15" t osplit the work load. Any of you have a Dietz 15" cab with the stock speaker that can give me a clue here? There is virtually no info on Deitz online, and I guess I can call Heart of Texas Music and see if I can find out but I figured I'd start here.

Love,
JJ French

It's a 400 watt EV FYI. I just called up Heart of Texas Music to find out.

BadComrade wrote:Yeah, we know.

Be careful with any solid state amp. Cranking up and clipping the signal on a solid state amp will melt the voice coil on the speaker. Clipping a tube amp will create the coolest fucking sound ever.

(You could crank even a 50 watt solid state amp in to the 400 watt EV and fry the voice coil, that's what I'm sayin')

100% true.

You could blow the EV with the GK. You might hear it going weird before it goes. Might not. They're the best bass speakers, for my money, and tough, but I've blown them with nothing more than a gank or two thru a high-powere SS amp.

tmidgett wrote:

BadComrade wrote:Yeah, we know.

Be careful with any solid state amp. Cranking up and clipping the signal on a solid state amp will melt the voice coil on the speaker. Clipping a tube amp will create the coolest fucking sound ever.

(You could crank even a 50 watt solid state amp in to the 400 watt EV and fry the voice coil, that's what I'm sayin')

100% true.

You could blow the EV with the GK. You might hear it going weird before it goes. Might not. They're the best bass speakers, for my money, and tough, but I've blown them with nothing more than a gank or two thru a high-powere SS amp.

Ok, so how do I know where to set the volume control settings?

Make sure that your solid state amp isn't clipping.

if your amp isn't clipping, then there is no distortion. clipping is the mechanism by which an amp generates distortion. bass with no clipping?

does the GK have a light on the front to indicate when it's clipping (like so many SS amps do)?

what about a speaker that is rated for 1000W sustained and 2000W peak? can that handle the full wrath of a GK800?

oops. I didn't notice the word "clip". I guess that when Solid States are distorting the waveform is becoming more like a square wave, which is like DC which speakers don't like. While Tube amps clipping is more subtle(it that the word for that?) and the waveform isn't that "squarish".

scott wrote:what about a speaker that is rated for 1000W sustained and 2000W peak? can that handle the full wrath of a GK800?

Not really.

Voice coil burnout happens when the coil (wire) has to carry too much current through it for too long. Either low freqs or high freqs can fuck that up.

The deal with clipping in SS amps is that they can (and will) reproduce very high frequencies when clipping.

Tube amps typically only produce that kind of shit if there's an super-HF (probably inaudible) oscillation going on. The nice thing about that kind of oscillation is that it's constant and will show up as a physical vibration in the speaker when the amp is silent. If you notice it in time, you can avoid toasting the driver. And it only happens when the amp is fucked up somehow.

In SS amps, the super-HF is a normal byproduct of the way some of them break up. Wattage rating means you have a burlier voice coil, but not that it will withstand that kind of stuff.

Also, solid state devices are low voltage and high current (tube devices are the opposite). A SS amp is capable of sourcing a great deal of current almost immediately. That current can zap a voice coil like *that* if it's high enough. Think of turning that GK800RB all the way up and going all Brothers Johnson on the bass--spankity spank spank. Hit it right, and you'll dump enough current at once into most any speaker to kill it. Tube amps can't do that, by nature of their design.

Speaker excursion is another primary foe of bass speakers. Again, higher-rated speakers will be burlier but they are still susceptible to getting blown in this way.

Speaker excursion is due to LF and is equivalently probable in either SS or tube amps, in normal use, though the ability of SS amps to source lots of current quickly may make the likelihood of a sudden, destructive excursion more likely.

Also, in my experience, it is hard to get a decent overdriven sound out of a SS amp. If you are used to having (or want to have) a bit of grit to your sound, you may find yourself hitting the speaker harder if you have a SS amp, probably to effect some speaker distortion and give you some of what you would get from the power amp stage of most tube amps. Hitting the speaker harder will wear the thing out faster, obviously.

I used to have a very clean, very powerful little SS bass amp, made by this guy Walter Woods. Great amp in some applications. I toasted four (4!) 400W EV drivers trying to make it sound like my SVT, which never once toasted a speaker.

eliya, you can still kill the EV with the GK even if it's not clipping. But it's much less likely, and you will probably hear the speaker ganking out to warn you it's being stressed.

tmidgett wrote:eliya, you can still kill the EV with the GK even if it's not clipping. But it's much less likely, and you will probably hear the speaker ganking out to warn you it's being stressed.

Thanks for all this info Tim!

Now as for the portion which I quoted, basically, Solid State amps aren't good for anything but playing round-smooth-jazzy basslines played with your fingers and not a pick. Cause anytime you play with a pick and play hard enough you'll fry your speakers. That's kinda suck. no?

I didn't buy my GK 400(maybe this one isn't powerful enough for frying?) because that's the only thing decent I could find in Israel, I didn't buy because of David Sims or anything. Anyhow, with time it turned out to be a great sounding amp, but now I'm kinda scared to use it. any playing/protection methods?

eliya wrote:

tmidgett wrote:eliya, you can still kill the EV with the GK even if it's not clipping. But it's much less likely, and you will probably hear the speaker ganking out to warn you it's being stressed.

Thanks for all this info Tim!

Now as for the portion which I quoted, basically, Solid State amps aren't good for anything but playing round-smooth-jazzy basslines played with your fingers and not a pick. Cause anytime you play with a pick and play hard enough you'll fry your speakers. That's kinda suck. no?

I didn't buy my GK 400(maybe this one isn't powerful enough for frying?) because that's the only thing decent I could find in Israel, I didn't buy because of David Sims or anything. Anyhow, with time it turned out to be a great sounding amp, but now I'm kinda scared to use it. any playing/protection methods?

you want input distortion not output.

GK's i think have an input level/gain knob you can crank for some not too bad solid state overdrive.

crank the gain, not the volume. input not output.