Celestion CF1840H - 18" speaker

McCapp

McCapp

Oct 27, 2023
2
1
51
Finland
#1
Hi,

I've always liked to play bass through a 1x18" cabinet, it usually gives me the sound I like a lot for some reason. Now I got my hands on an old Music Man 1x18" cabinet with no loudspeaker installed, and I've been trying to figure out where to get one. It seems next to impossible to find speakers of that size made for bass guitar use, especially because I'd prefer it to be 4 ohms. (I am planning to use it with Ampeg SVT-7 PRO, which is 1000W RMS @ 4 ohms)

However I now found out that Celestion has an interesting multi purpose LF driver available: Celestion CF1840H. I reckon it's a professional subwoofer driver made primarily for PA systems and not for bass guitar, BUT in addition for being 1000W and 4 ohms, its frequency range is 30-2500Hz, which is pretty wide for a subwoofer. Sensitivity is 97dB. And the price is not bad either.
More specs here: Celestion CF1840H - Cast Chassis Ferrite LF Driver

So since I don't seem to find a loudspeaker made for bass guitar with those specs, I am now considering to buy this. Do you think it would work? I'm not looking for a modern super bright hi-fi bass sound, but rather an old school gruff rock sound often played through a bass overdrive pedal.

Any opinions on this are appreciated, thanks!
 
#2
Just to clarify, this is a 1000 watt RMS driver thermally, not necessarily mechanically, based on "must survive 2 hours" AES testing. It's also dark on axis and very dark off axis. It's intended for subwoofer applications where anything over 250Hz is ignored.

I would look at the Eminence Kappa Pro 18LF-8, Sigma Pro 18A and as a better alternative I might suggest that mounting a KappaLite 3015 (not the LF version) into the cabinet with a fabricated adapter ring (and maybe some cabinet runing adjustment) would get you almost the same low end response with MUCH better mid response for bass guitar.

The Music Man driver was completely different than what's available today for bass guitar applications. It was a (fairly) shallow cone, low compliance driver that had better mid response. The same was true of the similar though more advanced Cerwin Vega driver of that era.

An 8 ohm driver for this application will get you almost exactly the same maximum volume, there is nothing to be gained by using a 4 ohm driver (except for premature driver failure).
 
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