penningtron wrote: Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:17 pm Is it possible to use a noise gate pedal in a side chain-y manner? Here's what I want to do: say I have a..

(KICK DRUM HIT)---------------->
DRONE SOURCE ----------------> NOISE GATE ---------------> OTHER STUFF/AMP, and I want the noise gate to open up on kick drum hits (fed by either a contact mic or a mic with a 1/4" line transformer). I think I could get away with having the drum hit significantly hotter than the drone source, which would be below the kick threshold. However that also means the blown out kick blip will be a part of the sound too. Is there a more elegant way to essentially trigger the drone source with the kick?

I do tricks like this all the time with Drawer gates. They're amazing. I just did a mix where I wanted it super blown out sounding in a section so among other things I had the kick as the key set it to duck and had the guitars and overheads duck on every kick hit.

You have control over how many decibels of reduction it's doing as well as attack, release, hold, and threshold. This can also help do more transparent work like reducing a weird ring or overtone by however many db without totally killing the feed between hits. Sometime minus 6 db between attacks makes an annoying artifact fade into the background without hearing the artificial sound of the gate working.

I think mine was pretty cheap used (it's been a few years) and it's both saved mixes and been a creative tool.

I'm thinking of grabbing a speaker off ebay and the dude has a pic of the multimeter reading 8.9 (for an 8 Ohm speaker).
I get that the "8 ohms" is nominal, but I thought the values generally read under, and not over?

Yeah, you'll generally see a lower DC resistance than the rated AC impedance. However, there a bunch of factors.

Is it marked as 8 ohm, or is the seller assuming that it's 8 ohm based on their measurement?

Nate Dort wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 7:45 am Yeah, you'll generally see a lower DC resistance than the rated AC impedance. However, there a bunch of factors.

Is it marked as 8 ohm, or is the seller assuming that it's 8 ohm based on their measurement?

It's an 8 ohm greenback

This brings up a question I've always wondered: does anyone know what part of the manufacturing process determines the resistance of the speaker? As in how does a MFG have two speakers of the same model but one is 16 ohms and the other is 8?

Before I get LMGTFY, search results only showing how to test for it w/ a multi-meter which I am already well-familiar with not sure how to re-word my terms to not bother y'all.

The coil wire diameter and the number of turns sets the power handling capability and impedance. So more turns will bring you from 8 to 16 ohms. Thicker diameter wire allows more power. It's all a balancing act though, because you only have so much room to work with without impacting the mass of the cone.

Nate Dort wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:14 am The coil wire diameter and the number of turns sets the power handling capability and impedance. So more turns will bring you from 8 to 16 ohms. Thicker diameter wire allows more power. It's all a balancing act though, because you only have so much room to work with without impacting the mass of the cone.

Cool, that's what I thought since those are the same attributes that affect impedance of pickups.

Y'know, I'm surprised tonemojos haven't started in on claims that "oh the 16 ohm hempslags sound so much better than the 8 ohms cuz more copper bro." Then again they could be saying that and I just avoid that kinda of dipshittery...or I could be wrong and there are measurable, discernible differences between two speakers of the same make w/ different ohm ratings and I'm the asshole here...

There are definitely measurable differences between impedance variants within the same speaker family. As I mentioned, changing the wire gauge and the number of turns will impact the mass of the cone, which impacts a host of other measurable/audible parameters.

In the grand scheme of things, the impedance has much lower impact than any of the other knobs you could turn in a speaker design, i.e. cone material, suspension material, magnet gap, magnet material, basket construction, etc.

There are also the guys who insist on using 16 ohm speakers on their amps because it uses more turns of the output transformer, and therefore they get more transformer sound. I call BS on that one, because you can't hear the difference of a few extra feet of wire, even if it is wound around a magnetic core.

Nate Dort wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:35 am I call BS on that one, because you can't hear the difference of a few extra feet of wire, even if it is wound around a magnetic core.

I call BS on a lot of Transformer makes a sound claims.

Nate Dort wrote: Fri Feb 11, 2022 8:35 am There are also the guys who insist on using 16 ohm speakers on their amps because it uses more turns of the output transformer, and therefore they get more transformer sound. I call BS on that one, because you can't hear the difference of a few extra feet of wire, even if it is wound around a magnetic core.

It's definitely overblown. I can hear a slight difference (SLIGHT!) with my amps on 4 vs 16 ohms with a Marshall cab that has switchable impedance. I personally think that has more to do with the speaker wiring (all parallel vs series/parallel) rather than the transformer windings though.