59 Bassman LTD Swap one speaker for more fundamental?

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cvold63

Jul 7, 2024
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#1
Hey everybody, first post here. I've got a later reissue Bassman LTD as my do it all amp. I'm very limited on space so can only really have one amp for guitar and bass. I'm playing in a band right now and have used this amp for a gig and it was manageable. It was just a local brewery, one guitar and lead vocals, drums and me on backing harmonies and bass. Not incredibly loud (4 out of 12 on the bassman) but probably the most volume we'd need for indoor gigs without a house PA to mic up to. Since that gig, I've swapped all the tubes out in the amp for JJ Tubes, 1 12AY7, 2 12AX7's. 5AR4 rectifier and 2 6l6GC power tubes. One of the previous ones was bad, rendering the normal channel unusable. I played through the bright channel for that gig on bass haha. I understand it's a very uncommon setup and not usually recommended but I want some thoughts about potentially changing out just one speaker on the amp so it doesn't change the tone too much but so you can feel more of the fundamental in the sound at the volumes I described. We have one more guitar player now in the band and I will also use this in the future to amplify my double bass with a Realist Lifeline pickup on it. My upright bass has an extension to reach a low B and I will be using a 5 string electric bass too sometimes. I don't know the most about speakers but I understand the open back cab of the Bassman is not great for bass but I still want to try to make it better. The current speakers are the Jensen P10R speakers it came with. I was looking at the Eminence Legend CA1059 and Celestion BN10-200X. Comparing the 3 on loudspeakerdatabase.com seems like both of these would be a huge improvement over the Jensen's, with the Eminence potentially being better due to the higher sensitivity and lower resonant frequency.

Here's the Jensen's: Jensen Vintage AlNiCo P10R - 10″ Guitar Speaker
Eminence: Eminence LEGEND CA1059 - 10″ Bass Guitar Speaker
Celestion: Eminence LEGEND CA1059 - 10″ Bass Guitar Speaker

I'm very open to other speaker options but I feel like I'm approaching the end of my knowledge in regards to speakers. I believe I need the sensitivity to be at least as high as the Jensen's so it match volume wise but correct me if I'm wrong. The lower the resonant frequency I assume also would be better especially when I can't tune the enclosure.

Thanks!
 
#2
I’m no expert, so I won’t venture a speaker recommendation. What I can say is I’ve been on the quest for a double duty bass/guitar amp, and I don’t think that holy grail can exist.

No matter what, you’re going to have to sacrifice, and IMO/IME the speakers that will best be able handle the full range of both instruments don’t sound very good for either.
 
#4
Those Jensens are great guitar speakers but not good bass speakers.

That's an open back cabinet, and not good for bass. It doesn't matter one bit what the resonant frequency is because the cabinet is what mostly determines the bass response. Replacing one driver also won't help and may in fact hurt.

Don't waste your money, just find a used bass amp/cabinet that suits your needs. It will be cheaper, work better and leave your guitar amp intact.
 
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#5
It's not a great bass amp. I own a genuine 5F6A and it never was a great bass amp. It is a heck of a guitar amp though. Especially if you have a place to play it loud. It does that very, very well.

If you need a do-it-all rig, I might suggest a good bass amp rig with a tweeter and a nice smooth even frequency response, and an effects channel or a pre-out/amp-in jacks.

Then for guitar, use a digital modeling device fed into the power amp and speaker stack. Or, a guitar DI/fly-rig kind of thing, like Tech21 Sansamp or FlyRig pedals.

I've done this with a Fender ToneMaster Pro digital modeler and my Peavey Nitro bass stack. It actually sounds quite good. I've also used the Peavey bass amp and speakers as a keyboard amp, and it worked pretty well for that too.
 
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#6
cvold63 said:
Hey everybody, first post here. I've got a later reissue Bassman LTD as my do it all amp. I'm very limited on space so can only really have one amp for guitar and bass. I'm playing in a band right now and have used this amp for a gig and it was manageable. It was just a local brewery, one guitar and lead vocals, drums and me on backing harmonies and bass. Not incredibly loud (4 out of 12 on the bassman) but probably the most volume we'd need for indoor gigs without a house PA to mic up to. Since that gig, I've swapped all the tubes out in the amp for JJ Tubes, 1 12AY7, 2 12AX7's. 5AR4 rectifier and 2 6l6GC power tubes. One of the previous ones was bad, rendering the normal channel unusable. I played through the bright channel for that gig on bass haha. I understand it's a very uncommon setup and not usually recommended but I want some thoughts about potentially changing out just one speaker on the amp so it doesn't change the tone too much but so you can feel more of the fundamental in the sound at the volumes I described. We have one more guitar player now in the band and I will also use this in the future to amplify my double bass with a Realist Lifeline pickup on it. My upright bass has an extension to reach a low B and I will be using a 5 string electric bass too sometimes. I don't know the most about speakers but I understand the open back cab of the Bassman is not great for bass but I still want to try to make it better. The current speakers are the Jensen P10R speakers it came with. I was looking at the Eminence Legend CA1059 and Celestion BN10-200X. Comparing the 3 on loudspeakerdatabase.com seems like both of these would be a huge improvement over the Jensen's, with the Eminence potentially being better due to the higher sensitivity and lower resonant frequency.

Here's the Jensen's: Jensen Vintage AlNiCo P10R - 10″ Guitar Speaker
Eminence: Eminence LEGEND CA1059 - 10″ Bass Guitar Speaker
Celestion: Eminence LEGEND CA1059 - 10″ Bass Guitar Speaker

I'm very open to other speaker options but I feel like I'm approaching the end of my knowledge in regards to speakers. I believe I need the sensitivity to be at least as high as the Jensen's so it match volume wise but correct me if I'm wrong. The lower the resonant frequency I assume also would be better especially when I can't tune the enclosure.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
You would be about the zillionth person to try and make an amp do both guitar and bass duty and about the zillionth person to find out how impractical it is, myself included. Assuming you will always have some PA support ... I say embrace the nice mids you get from that amp for your stage monitoring and use some type of DI to feed the PA and get your fat stuff.
 
#7
Mine sounds good with a real bass cabinet instead of the four alnico speakers. The problem is, the output has a 2 ohm impedance. You could use two 4 ohm cabs in parallel. You see the complications.

If you substituted the speakers as your suggested, they need to be in a sealed cabinet. It isn’t just the speaker but the combination of the speaker in the right sized cabinet that gives you the performance in the speaker’s spec sheet. See the spec sheets at the manufacturer’s web sites, they specify the size and type of cabinet (sealed vs ported).

As suggested, find a small relatively inexpensive bass amp. Both Fender and Ampeg offter them. Used will save some cash.

As an example:


 
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#8
cvold63 said:
I'm very limited on space so can only really have one amp for guitar and bass.
Click to expand...
Broadly speaking bass amps can handle guitar better than guitar amps will handle bass.

Even though your amp is called Bassman it's not not really a bass amp. Or it's probably better to say that it was a bad bass amp that accidentally became popular because it was a good guitar amp. It's how the entire amp is built that makes it bad for bass -- swapping speakers to make it better for bass would be like repainting your sedan to make it better for carrying bales of hay, when you should be shopping for a pickup truck.
 
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#9
I’m going to come right out and say it. This is not a good idea. You’d be far better off with an amp suited to the purpose of handling bass frequencies. A used bass amp can get you a much better outcome. You won’t get what you’re looking for by reducing your amp to a frankenstsin.
 
#11
Installing this or that speaker is not the problem. It's an open back cabinet, and no matter what you stick in there, it's . . . still . . . an . . . open back cabinet, and they just aren't going to make legitimate bass in a professional setting, ESPECIALLY with a five-string electric and an upright with an extension.

The money you are thinking of spending for that 'other' speaker would do you far more good putting it on a legit bass amp and will save you screwing up the amp you already have.
 
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#12
Thanks for all your thoughts everybody. I do agree and understand the open back is the killer of bass. I do like the sound enough for the stuff we do and if we go any bigger I could just do DI and use the Bassman as a stage monitor. I've never swapped speakers in anything before though so in what ways would it make the Bassman worse? Would putting a bass speaker in it make it have any more bass at any volume above practicing?
 
#14
cvold63 said:
if we go any bigger I could just do DI and use the Bassman as a stage monitor.
Click to expand...
still pointless, you'd be lugging out this huge heavy combo that had no low end and very little clean volume

seriously, a modern cheap little 100w single 12 kickback bass practice amp would blow that thing away for actual bass guitar use
 
#15
Just . . . . Don't.

I mean, do you think the guys at Fender used a roulette wheel to decide which speaker they worked best in that amp? There's engineers and all kinds of testing to decide among several criteria what was best, not some random guess. I mean, go ahead, spend the money, install whatever speaker you think will re-invent physics, but I promise you in a real sense you're just throwing good money at a dead end. This isn't like screwing a new light bulb in, the speaker that is in it was the result of some serious engineering work, both for tone and how well it worked with the onboard circuitry.

You can put a saddle on a steer, but it won't turn it into a horse.
 
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#16
Just to reiterate, you can change out one speaker, or you can change out all of them -- you're not going affect any change in bass response in that open-backed cabinet. And mixing drivers in a bass speaker system is not a path to improving performance; different drivers can interact in ways that are more destructive than beneficial. You might consider buying a small-ish, used bass cab, like a 210 or 115 and using just the amp part of your Bassman with that.
 
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