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Hey everyone,
I’m a happy owner of a Toob Metro 6,5GP+. I’m using a Quilter Superblock UK with it. It has an Eminence Alpha 6A in it which is good before it’s rated at 100 watts.
Recently, I’ve been wanting to get some more grit and very subtle overdrive in my sound when I dig so I’m looking at changing the speaker to a Jensen C6V. The overdrive can get a little fizzy with the current Eminence Speaker because it’s a PA voiced speaker. Does anyone have experience with how this speaker handles overdrive?
If I decide to change the speaker and put a Jensen C6V in the toob cabinet, does anyone have any ideas on what to do with the old Eminence Beta Speaker? I was surprised to the price has shot up so much.
On one hand I could attempt to sell it for some extra cash, or find a used and cheap practice amp that houses a 6 inch speaker, and use that to make a small speaker cabinet. It’s true an open back 6 inch speaker cabinet wouldn’t have much bass response, but for me, that is a big plus.
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10-27-2023 05:25 PM
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Hi, it's Markku from Toobsville. The Beta 6A is quite a chunk - I wonder how it has ended up in your Metro. The only Eminences I have used are of the 620H variety, which is a hemp-coned guitar speaker. Like the C6V, they are rated at 20W max. and, in terms of sensitivity and sound, a cut above the Jensen. The main reason they aren't more common in my products is that Eminence doesn't offer 8 ohm versions, and many micro-amps have trouble sustaining a 4 ohm load. Also, several Metros serve as extension speakers. The other reason is Eminence's limited availability in quantities in Europe.
How small speakers handle distortion is a highly subjective matter. Personally, I play clean only and don't have an opinion.
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Ah, I meant to write Alpha 6A, not the Beta 6A. I may just elect to keep the speaker it has inside because it has a higher sensitivity rating than the Jensen and I'd lose some volume. I'll double check today that it is an Eminence Alpha. Hopefully someone else in the forum who has experience with these small speakers can chime in on the overdriving capabilities of them. I'm really enjoying this cabinet's weight and portability. It's perfect for people in my line of work as English teachers living abroad. We have to pack light as we are usually constantly changing cities or countries.
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Hi again! You said Alpha in the headline and beta only once, so my bad. Anyway, what you have in there must be an Alphalite 6A Neo version. I did install a few of those into early GP+ versions. It was the original choice for Metro BG but didn't handle deep enough basses as well as the current SICA 6L 1.5SL. The Alphalite is an 8 ohm speaker, regrettably discontinued.
By the way, the Swedish metal guru Ola Englund recently posted a review of a TOOB 12R and a Metro 6.5BG on his popular YouTube channel. He only played on serious distortion and liked the Metro a lot. So did many of the 33,000 viewers. Although the SICA is not a pure guitar speaker either, it could be a serious alternative to the Eminence.
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Buy a pedal, not a new speaker!
A "clean boost" or "low gain overdrive" pedal can get you where you want to be; for my Toob Metro rig, I use a Combs "JJ-150" pedal, and love it!
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I used the Alphalite 6.5" quite a lot. Not lots of bass but very smooth high end. I have a couple sitting around now, as I replaced those in my two-speaker compact cab with Eminence Beta 8" cones. I need the smooth high end for mandolin, both electric and acoustic.
I still have one in my "shoebox" cab, which would fit in a carryon bag, and weighs 5 lbs. total.
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I have an early ish Metro and it had
Originally Posted by Gitterbug;[URL="tel:1295232"
an Alphalite in it I believe
after a while ….
I changed to a SICA 6L 1.5SL
which, as Gitterbug said , had a warmer bottom end sound and less shiney top end (which suits me fine)
I don’t know about the breakup
character of these as I don’t play
that loud , and mostly use a clean sound anyway
this using a BAM200 amp
for breakup i’ve just bought a
Drive thru dirt pedal
GasFX Pedals — Huw Price
which I’m digging
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It occurs to me that we’ve come a very long way. Who would have dreamed even 20 years ago that we’d be having a serious discussion about 6 1/2” speakers? If anyone had told me in 1980 that I’d be using them in top quality gear for serious gigging, I’d have said they were nuts!
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I had my 6.5" shoebox cabinet and GK MB200 for a jam session in Chicago. Guitarist Tom Coryell played his archtop through it. Plenty of bottom, plenty of volume.
Tom C said he was Larry's brother. I believe him, because his touch and tone was so similar.
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What speaker does Henriksen use in the Bud 6?
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I’ve been following Larry Coryell since I first heard him (on his first major recording - Chico Hamilton’s The Dealer) in 1966. I’ve read a lot about him, and I don’t recall ever seeing mention of a brother. I just looked for anything on Tom Coryell that might suggest he was Larry’s brother, and again there’s nothing I can find. In one interview, he talks about his influences, but he doesn’t mention LC. Originally Posted by Tom Wright
I can’t find a bio of Tom anywhere. Larry was born in Texas (Galveston, as I recall) - so there may be info in the archives of local newspapers. It just seems a little odd that neither is ever mentioned in anything about the other.
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I always thought it was a stock Eminence Beta 6A, but Henriksen's website now states that it's an, "OEM 6.5-inch Eminence Beta speaker." (Maybe the same thing(?)) Originally Posted by Woody Sound
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Same. I found a Facebook page, about a gig in AZ, but the faces don't ring a bell. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
That said, I was impressed my little shoebox was putting out in a jazz setting. Amp + cabinet weight was 7lbs.
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The state of the speaker making art has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last 20 years. Until recently, Phil Jones used only 5" drivers in all of his amps (the biggest of which had a lot of them). For small gigs, I used a Phil Jones Briefcase amp (2 drivers in a rear ported cab the size of a 6" thick briefcase) when they first came out. Then I bought a Cub (100W into 2 of his drivers in a 10 pound shoebox), which was truly amazing for the day. Now, a Blu 6 or a TOOB Metro with any decent little head will outperform the little Jones amps by a lot. The RE Custom One-6 is also a fine little cabinet. Originally Posted by Tom Wright
I find it amusing that after using only 12s and 15s from 1960 until a few years ago, I now consider 6.5s to be standard and 8s to be big. My RevSound RS8 cabinet (about 10 pounds in a gorgeous tweed covered 11" cube) is one of the best sounding cabs I ever heard. Dave uses drivers made to his spec, and this one carries a 125W RMS rated neo driver (Eminence, I think). With any clean head, it has a great jazz tone that should keep pretty much anybody happy. I've used it with an Elf, a Vox NightTrain 15 (class A triode), a SBUS, a DV Mark EG250, and a few bigger tube heads when I still had some. It's well worth the $350 it cost me about 3 years ago. My 10" TOOB is its equal, and the pair make a great stereo rig for bigger gigs using my Roland synthesizer in stereo. For smaller gigs with the synth, I use a pair of Metros.
My RE 10 is now the biggest cab I have. At about 20 pounds, it carries a Jensen Jet Tornado neo instead of the 4 pounds heavier monster Rich put in it when he made it for me. I haven't taken it to a gig in a few years. It lives under my piano and I use it when I practice in the living room. But I usually practice in the den with my SBUS and a Metro.
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Never... thank you for this wonderful publicity! I've been called nuts all the time, but latterly in a more positive tone than 6-7 years ago when I started bringing Ur-Toobs to gigs and jam sessions.
Cheers,
Markku
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DISCLAIMER: Markku is not nuts when it comes to guitar amplification. But I cannot state with certainty that he is not nuts in any other way. To do so would exceed my scope of practice. Originally Posted by Gitterbug
Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 10-30-2023 at 10:08 PM.
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I think we're all nuts, to one degree or another, regarding one subject or another. And by 'we', I mean all of humankind.
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indeed …. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit;[URL="tel:1295493"
the positive grid Spark 40 amp has 2 x 4” speakers and is sometimes accused of have too much bass !
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Hey everyone,
Sorry for not responding, this week was busy teaching my students.
I checked out a video of Ola Englund demoing the Metro 6.5BG with an all-tube amp and the overdrive sounds smoother but still a little too frizzly for my tastes especially when compared to the 12R that has a Jensen guitar speaker in it. With the current Eminence Alpha having about 2 more decibels when it comes to the sensitivity rating when compared to the Jensen C6V, while the overdrive would sound smoother, I would lose overall volume with the amp, thereby forcing me to have to tap into the overdrive zone earlier. Through messing around with the limiter on the Superblock UK, I saw the more I turned it up, the more it tamed the fizzly overdrive.
I have a video of me plugging my Fender Deluxe style amp into the Toob speaker cranked to 10 back when I lived in the United States and I remember that overdrive sounding much more smoother than the overdrive from the Quilter SUperblock UK into the same cabinet. I’ll look for that video and listen but I’m beginning to think that as good as the Quilter Superblocks sound, they aren’t the direct replacement for tube amps I thought they were. In short, it could be the amp also that is contributing to the fizzly overdrive.
Come to think of it, I seldom play live nowadays to where I have to worry about any overdrive even with the current Eminence Alpha. I figure if that ever changes in the future and I need more clean headroom, I’d get a TC electronic BAM 200 or the Warwick Gnome. With how cheap they are, it might even be beneficial to sell the Superblock UK for 250-275 euros, and get the Warnock Gnome for 145 euros on Thomann and have more clean headroom for my chord soloing plus some extra money on the side for any weekend vacations with Ryanair.
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Hey everyone,
I’m looking at purchasing a Celestion TF0615 to replace the Eminence Alpha in my cabinet. I saw that Quilter uses a similar PA speaker with their block dock cabinets. Through looking at demos of the block dock cabinets it sounds like they handle overdrive well. Any ideas on where I could sell the Eminence Alpha speaker? There’s a pawn shop called cash converters in the next town over, but my guess is they’ll give me €15 at best.
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I think it might be an Eminence Beta. I tried out the Henriksen and it was wayyyyy too boomy on the low end. When I emailed Henrisken I asked how I could reduce the bass even more and he said to replace the stock speaker with an Eminence Alpha. I ended up not buying the bud as I was never a fan of active tone controls and was skeptical the henriksen with the alpha would get the bass down to controllable levels.
Whatever Markku has done with the Metro GP6.5+ is great. The bass is extremely well controlled. I’m now skeptical on changing the speaker out. A celestion TF0615 or another speaker could have more bass frequencies. When I plugged the Superblock UK into the 12 inch speaker I used to have, it sounded like a bass amp. The bass was uncontrollable even with the bass knob at 0. With Markku’s cab, the bass frequencies can be totally wiped out of my sound. I’d rather have a sound with controlled tight bass with the Eminence Alpha and less than preferable overdrive rather than risk changing the speaker and end up with an overly bass heavy sound.
Perhaps I can get another cabinet with a guitar speaker in it to use in tandem with the Toob speaker, and as a change of pace speaker.
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