Looking for speakers to match my JVM210h high gain metal

[torbonator]

 

I'm looking for a cab for my Marshall JVM210h, I currently have a Line 6 with celestion v30's I absloutly hate the break up. It just some to distort over distortian it's generally a high end break up thats horrible. I've tried it through my band mates Marshall 1960a the tone was very dark again I wasn't a fan but to be fair I didn't EQ properly as I didn't have a chance. I then tried a Laney IRT212 and it sounded awesome nice and warm with not high end break up, unfortunatly I can't afford the 4x12 version. The laney was loaded with custom HH speakers what ever they are.

 

So I thought take out the V30's out of the Line 6 cab and load it with other speakers, but theres so many different kinds it's over whelming I don't know where to being.

 

I play in a band and taking inpirations from rammstien, death stars and korn. I'm paired with a guitairst with a Peavy 5150 w/ 1960a.

[WRGKMC]

 Matching speakers to cabs and cabs to heads is as difficult as matching a voice to a mic or pickup to a guitar. The biggest problem with speakers is you really don't have the chance to try them out in your cab unless you buy them first which can be an expensive crap shoot.

I don't know what guitar or pedals you're using so I'm not going to have a clue of what kind of tones your feeding the head which feed the speakers. A guitar rig is a chain of events and changing one item in that chain my not get you where you want to go or it can bottleneck things worse than they are now.

Your tone may be off because of the guitar type, Pickups, or pedals used. Or the head may not be the match you need. Marshalls push allot of upper mids and highs. If you're into metal which often has a lower mid scoop in the 400~500hz range and bump in the 2~4K range, it may be the head isn't right for what you want. Or it may be the other guitarists has that range of tones and you're trying to go head to head with the same frequencies and you're clashing frequencies trying to both dominate the same frequency turf.

This is a dilemma for guitarists working together. Working together both musically and sonically are key elements in getting the entire band to sound good. It often takes an outside person with a critical ear who knows what's going on to give it a listen and see if its a matter of one guy trying to overpower the other or hogging the frequency bands before making suggestions on changing tones. It can even be the balance is good and its just a bad rehearsal room causing you to hear bad tones making you think its your amp.

But lets just say it is your amps speakers. The simplest way to narrow down the options is to take the head to a local music store and try the head out on different cabs and speaker types. It would be better if the band was there to play along with you but we know that's a highly unlikely option.

If you can test out a few cabs with different speaker types and focus on the mids and highs for the head. The best match would be having the amp produce even lows, mids and highs with the amps EQ knobs set in the center at 12:00. This should give you range to adjust any of those frequencies up or down to adapt your tones to the music types you're playing.

Keep in mind, The cab you put speakers in makes up a good 50% of the tones and power you get. The air volume of the cab is responsible for the amount of bass and lower mid punch the speakers will produce. Changing speaker types doesn't boost or cut those frequencies as much as it does boost or cut the upper mids and highs. A speaker can sound more bassy if you swap the speaker with one that produces less mids, or harsh if the speaker has an extended high frequency response.

You can figure it out scientifically of course. If you feed the amp a test tone with a sine wave generator then sweep the entire frequency range while measuring the speakers output with a DB meter you can actually plot the frequency response curve. Then you can see what range the amps EQ knobs have on that response curve.

You could do this testing on a shoe string budget. You can download a free frequency generator program to a computer or laptop, then take the sound cards output and feed your amp head with it. You may need to attenuate the volume because a sound card outputs at line level and an amp gets fed a lower instrument level, but you may have a volume pedal that can cut the signal strength down.

The other item you'll need is a DB meter. This one is probably the least expensive and fairly good for the purpose of measuring your rig. http://www.parts-express.com/triplett-tsc-mc1-sonichek-mc-mini-sound-lever-meter--391-078

Guitar amps are mostly midrange so a C ranges DB meter should be good enough for frequencies between 100hz~5Khz range an amp produces.

You can then set the meter near the speaker and plot the meters response as you run the software program through the frequency bands starting at say 40hz up through 10Khz. You can write down your readings across the frequency spectrum as you manually scroll up through the frequencies.

You may find a low speaker output until you get to around 150hz where the DB meter rises up to a peak, then maybe it has a dip in the 500hz range, then a big bump in the 2~3K range, then it drops off steeply above 4K to nothing at 5K and above.

You can then do it with the mid range, treble or lows turned way up (or down) and see what frequencies the EQ knobs boosts or cut. Let say that big bump in the 2~3K range flattens with the mids turned completely down and the treble and bass turned way up. And it just so happens that's where you usually have to set the amp for it to sound good.

This is just an example of course. With those readings you now have hard data to target and not all this touchy feely poop so many musicians use to describe how their amp sounds to them. You really need raw data to make accurate decisions or you could spend the rest of your life guessing what you may need.

In this case, now that we have the facts, its obvious the speaker produces too much midrange tone, a common issue with cheap guitar speakers. The choice to fixing the problem with the head matching the speakers would be to find speakers that have less mids (or boosted highs and lows) My example above has the highs rolling off at 4K which is pretty low and makes for muddy sounding speakers. Having speakers that roll off higher at say 5~6Khz would do the same as cutting down the mids. A larger cab can boost lows and a smaller cab cut lows.

You see there's allot of possibilities here just working with the speakers and head only. As far as I know your rig may be just fine. It could just as easily be something like the guitar pickups being used are hot wound which robs the highs and lows from the strings and makes the guitar sound like mud. Or maybe its a single coil guitar being plugged into an amp that's got a preamp voiced to make humbuckers sound big and fat and instead you have a nasty thin sound.

Without some facts to make decisions on you're just pissing into the wind asking for advice from others. I can solicit advice forever and never hit what's actually needed for my situation. If I come up with some actual data to prove my amp lacks at different frequencies using a test generator, I'm not only taking the guitar out of the picture as being the cause of bad tone, bit I can also pump the signal through my guitar pedals and see if its a crappy guitar box that's sucking all my tone away.

If I do identify its a problem with the amps speakers, than I can shop for speakers based of the frequencies they produce by viewing their specs, not by what some amateur thinks sounds good to them.

You'd be surprised at how many people thing something is good just because they spent allot of money on something. Then when they figure out it wasn't such a hot choice they still give it high ratings in attempts to convince others its good. You know the old saying, Misery loves company.

The fact is its your audience that decides if you have a good sound happening and that involves more than just what sounds good to you. Its great when you can have it sound good to you and the audience which should be the goal of all musicians. Hopefully my suggestions can help guide you to finding a proper match.

I'm just sorry I can't say but this or that and your problems solved. I am a professional electronic tech who's been in the business repair gear for over 45 years and I wouldn't attempt to suggest you making any changes without a proper evaluation based on facts and a good idea of your goals.

Making someone sound like some band they listen to on a recording isn't possible without an evaluation because even that album is loaded with recording techniques and studio effects to make a guitar sound a certain way. You can use a small rehearsal amp producing 5w through an 8" speaker sound like a Marshall stack in a studio production, so its probably the poorest way of attempting to find your own unique tone.

[torbonator]

Thank you for the awesome reply, I had to read through it a couple of times to get it to sink in.

 

I know for defiant it's something to do with the cab. I've tried two different cabs a Marshall 1960a which did sound muddy and dark. I then tried a Laney IRT212 which sounded great it had the Marshall growl that I want but thats 1. a 2x12 2. got specialised speakers so I can't tell what they are comparable to.

 

Guitar wise I'm running a LTD EC-1000 with active EMG's and Schecter Synyster Special, then just and tuner and noise suppressor in front of the amp.

 

I understand what you mean by frequencies within the band my amp kind provides a mid tone boost but I do find my Low end and high end gets a bit lost, but thats not a bother as I don't play lead at all.

 

Also when I originally tried the cab it was at a low volume and I loved it so brought it couple months down the line after being cranked I can hear this annoying break up even when playing on my own.

 

I've read around and saw some stuff about wattage maybe the culprit I might be pushing the speakers to hard.