Any speaker gurus out there? (amp related)

[Jake Wildwood]

I know this is sort of out on a limb posted here, but MCafe seems to have an overabundance of clever and useful personalities that are nice to tap.

I picked up a Fender Greta tabletop amp (tiny tube amp) for home and cafe use and am currently upgrading its tubes but I'd really like to upgrade the speaker in it as well. The trouble I'm having is finding a suitable speaker for it!

The one in the box is a 4", 3w, 8-ohm little thing but there's room to fit a 5" speaker in there so long as the depth isn't over 1 5/8" -- otherwise it'll bump into the chassis. My goal is to find something between 4.5" and 5" with the same specs, but I'm having a hard time tracking something down since the application is so curious in this size range.

Any ideas or sources for something like this? Thanks in advance...

[almeriastrings]

I am guessing here, but I would think that is a custom designed speaker in there, not a stock unit. It is probably a long-throw design, and will have been built/selected to work with that specific enclosure. So... any change to a different driver will dramatically affect the sound. However, if you want to try it, I would look at car stereo 5" full range drivers, some of those are available as 8 ohm units and tend to be fairly 'slim' build. I can see from a thread on the Tele forum that many drivers would not fit:

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/amp-centr...der-greta.html

One source for some unusual drivers is:

http://www.madisound.com

Personally, I would stick with it "as is" and experiment with an external speaker if I wanted to get a different sound from it.

[mandroid]

http://www.parts-express.com/ has a bunch of speakers .. shipping out of Ohio.

5" full range http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=292-518

its 4 ohm car stereo stuff others : http://www.parts-express.com/cat/mid...=498|3938&pg=2


call them up they can help you sort out possibilities.

[strings777]

Check out this link Jake:

http://www.jensentone.com/speaker/mod_5_30

[Tom Wright]

Try this site: http://www.usspeaker.com/

I have bought from them, and found my great little 6.5" Eminence neodynium speaker there. You can compare frequency-response curves, dimension specs, efficiencies, resonant frequencies, total weights. I even used their Thiele-Small parameters so I could design a cabinet using an online app, KBapps: http://www.kbapps.com/

[Jake Wildwood]

Thank you so much, guys. I was starting to go blind with all of the different supplier websites.

And yes, this thing sounds great and very 40s/50s with an external cab (8-12" single speaker ones all sound good with it) but I'm hoping to get a slightly creamier tone right from the little box itself so I won't be tempted to bring an extra "box" to shows. I don't mind if the tone changes on the box itself as I bought the thing to tinker with, mostly, and figure if I don't like the different speaker I can always pop it in one of the zillion old radio boxes hanging out in the back room...

I'll report back on how all this stuff goes. If it turns out how I expect after the swapping-out I think it should be a very useful little box.

[Tom Wright]

I would pay particular attention to the frequency response, since the smaller cones tend to be very bright and tinny, quite different from 12" cones. I chose a woofer for my small box, which still has plenty of highs but they don't dominate. In fact, it is a little sweeter than my 12" neodynium Celestion, but still goes up to 5K Hz. I demo'ed it in this thread: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...5824-Gear-Demo

[mandroid]

... and some may need sealed cabinet designs rather than open back .. this one seals the back of the speaker, for example... still in 4 - 5" size range, as desired in OP.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...number=292-200..

back to the morning cuppa ..