I tested if speaker break in is fact or fiction

  • Thread starter Thread starter the other John Browne
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Very cool video John. The only thing I could think of, and I may have missed it is how you have your mic placement exact as to not change the tone. Anyway cool video, appreciate the effort that goes into them!
 
Bram576 said:
Very cool video John. The only thing I could think of, and I may have missed it is how you have your mic placement exact as to not change the tone. Anyway cool video, appreciate the effort that goes into them!
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Thank you! I had the mic mounted on a fixed arm in the iso cab and I had wrapped gaffers tape around the mic and arm to really keep it where it was supposed to be.
The speaker was always placed with the same orientation in a marked position so mic placement should have been 99% the same each time.
 
Fantastic. I strongly appreciate your focus on using good test methods, getting quantifiable results, etc. Excited to see possible videos on the effects of tubes, which you hinted at. You might appreciate this treasure trove of technical books regarding tubes if you go ahead with that video series: http://www.tubebooks.org/technical_books_online.htm. Being an engineer, I assume you'd find it eventually, but might as well save you the effort.
 
After watching it I thought the changes were not enough to make major differences. More the same than different.
Definitely seemed there is bigger differences between individual speakers than that caused by speaker break in. Seems there is a lot of other factors that have a bigger effect on the sound.

I wonder how much is EQ hangover (becoming accustom to a new sound) or mental expectations. It is believed by some that over 90% of perception is created by the mind.
 
stephen sawall said:
After watching it I thought the changes were not enough to make major differences. More the same than different.
Definitely seemed there is bigger differences between individual speakers than that caused by speaker break in. Seems there is a lot of other factors that have a bigger effect on the sound.

I wonder how much is EQ hangover (becoming accustom to a new sound) or mental expectations. It is believed by some that over 90% of perception is created by the mind.
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This. I could not agree more
 
I think having a clear idea of how you want to shape the sound and being familiar with the range and limitations of the gear used. Like any job or task being familiar with the tools. This habit many of us guitar players have of constantly changing or updating the rig in some ways is counter-intuitive.
I like a fairly wide range of different types of sounds. The type of stuff I play goes way beyond rock. But I tend to set up most gear to a handful of sound types. There is differences between different gear. But the basic sounds are the same.
The guitars and amps all things equal have less effect on the sound than the speakers and cabs. Yet I can become accustomed to them rather quickly.

In other words having a clear idea of how you want to shape the sound is more important than the gear.
 
ive had quite a few new cabs and speakers and never experienced the magical transformation guys claim to hear, to me it was always a nice comforting lie for one to tell themselves when their new cab isnt sounding as good as expected.
 
I cannot stand speakers before break in, whether Celestion, Eminence or even Tone Tubby, which are in order of shortest to longest break-in time.

Bob Gjika breaks his Mesa-sourced CL80’s by hand, as well as by variac and playing to get them to his specifications before sale. The Gjika 2x12 is $1,500+ and buyers swear by them, even suggesting they are the best cab they’ve heard and these are players with wealth and taste who’ve heard it all.

Nothing sucks worse in terms of ice-pick than a new speaker. I’ve played Meshuggah and Deadmau5 through a Crown into my cabs for 8-10 hours a day for a week straight to break in speakers.

Your mileage may vary, but I won’t play a speaker that hasn’t been broken in to my taste; literally cannot stand the tone.

?
 
i remember guys spraying new speakers with fabric softener back in the day trying to get them to break in faster :LOL: im actually surprised speaker companies never tried to profit more off "break in", like i could see a special batch of celestions called the "Masters" line or some bullshit thats been broken in with some special method or exotic fabric softener fine tuned to only allow the sweetest highs and creamy lows for $50 more per speaker, you know guys would buy them
 
the other John Browne said:
Merry Christmas, fellow enthusiasts!
I did another obsessive deep dive. I've been talking about speaker break in and have teased a test ever since I released my 50+ Vintage 30 shootout over half a year ago.
Well, I finally got it done. Enjoy!
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The results of this particular experiment are very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing John.
 
finally watched it!
great job! comparisons done in this quality are very rare in the music industry.

i think your theory, getting more effective at the frequencies it's exposed to, sounds very convincing!
Will you try to prove it in an experiment?
 
Another tube info source I just remembered, this one explicitly focused on guitar amp use, including the nonlinear funny business that breaks the ideal tube models presented just about everywhere else; chapter 10 of this book: https://gitec-forum-eng.de/the-book/. To deal with non-applicable ideal models they instead present measurements they took (with what they call "precision instruments") of the sort of abuse tubes see in guitar amps.
 
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RaceU4her said:
ive had quite a few new cabs and speakers and never experienced the magical transformation guys claim to hear, to me it was always a nice comforting lie for one to tell themselves when their new cab isnt sounding as good as expected.
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Kind of like the magic a tube swap imparts on an amp..."like a completely different amp once I swapped tubes"...LOL! Subtle differences with this stuff to me, nothing significant.
 
Very nice test, really liked it!

The only thing that came to my mind: have you considered that your setup feeding the signal to the speaker maybe goes through a break-in period as well? For example, how many playing hours did the Diezel pedal had when you started the test and could 300 hours on it possibly affect the tone?
So best thing would be, having two separate setups, one that is used for the break-in one for attaining the EQ-curves.

I know this sounds like splitting hairs, but I worked in the science field and this would usually be the questions that pop up when doing analytical work on this high level. General thinking is, if you don`t know if factor "X" is affecting your results, try to exclude it the best way possible from affecting your data.

Anyways, I`m not here for bashing you. Keep on going! I watch your stuff with high interest.
 
MetalHeadMike said:
Kind of like the magic a tube swap imparts on an amp..."like a completely different amp once I swapped tubes"...LOL! Subtle differences with this stuff to me, nothing significant.
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ive not done a whole lot of tube swapping, but thats mostly cause i heard very little if any difference in what i have tried. ive seen a few tests now on both these subjects that kind of affirm what i was hearing. i talked to our amp guru here whos certified by all the big companies when the big tube scare was going on months ago, he thinks the tube thing is overblown an said just get JJ"s :dunno: people are gonna hear what they are gonna hear though, to me being comfortable is most important so if a label on tube or a certain number of hours on a speaker is what gets you rocking you gotta do it
 
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