Marshall speakers 100w 4 x 12 any good for a hi fi?

Billy Joel once wrote a song about listening to rock and roll thru a "cheap set of speakers". I guarantee that it will be LOUD. So, the system will probably be a little lack-luster at low volumes especially when listening to such programs as St. Martin in the Fields. I sure hope the playroom is in the basement or in the garage and well insulated at that. Kids - yeah, well.........

Hi Buddy So at reasonable volume we could get a decent sound or do you think it would be pants?#

Because these are guitar speakers, I believe the roll-off of lower freqs. will be somewhat evident. With enough power, these cabinets will ROCK.

You will probably need some tweeters with a simple capacitor-coupling to keep the lower freqs from the tweeter. Hey, won't hurt to give it a try.......

Long time ago I had to move from parental home to bedsitland - which meant selling off my Marshall guitar amp & stack.

When a prospective buyer came, I'd connected the Marshall to the line out of my hi-fi amp, put "Who do you love?", by Juicy Lucy on the turntable and turned it up.

Sold before the vocals started. Price offered doubled when the first bottleneck break started.

You won't get hi-fi, but the kids'll love it!

You can use these speakers and get decent sound. For good reproduction of higher frequencies, you should throw in a couple of 2, 3or 4 inch speakers. The heavy mass of the 12" speakers won't allow them to reproduce the higher freqs.

Be sure that the speaker impedance matches the amplifier.

Party on!

You might want to include a crossover to reduce the lower frequencies to the tweeters. Add an A/B switch to remove the tweeters when they play their guitars.

I've just picked a up a 5 channel surround sound to go with a plasma tv to go in the same room, 100 watt rms per channel. I guess if we used the Marshalls for the side speakers we could use a voice speaker at the front and a couple of hi fi speakers to the rear and not have a need for a crossover......there speaks the voice of the man who has not a clue..

Kick around here, It may help:
The Thiele-Small Loudspeaker Database

Kick around here:

The Thiele-Small Loudspeaker Database

It will help. AH is right, designing enclosures is extremely complex.

They will work, but they are no where near hi-fi quality. The cones are too stiff to reproduce the full dynamic range. At high volume levels, the amplifier could "clip" and even shut down. Those Marshal's were just not designed for hi-fi use. Guitar amps use vacuum tubes to produce lots of db's, something a solid state amp can't do with good fidelity.

Ronseto and AH,

You both get a GA from me. Electric guitar speakers will not produce anything close to High Fidelity quality. High fidelity tends to be what musicians call a colorless sound. High Fidelity strides to reproduce the sound as unaltered as possible. Guitar speakers and cabinets are deliberately colored by having a resonant frequency and other attributes to give the musician the tone he/she desires This is why one musician prefers a Marshall speaker stack over a HiWatt or Fender etc. The same is true for the tube amplifiers used to drive these speakers. Also tube guitar amplifiers are designed to deliberately distort when desired in the front end or output drive of the amplifier depending on the settings chosen by the musician. High Fidelity amplifiers should not distort the sound unless the sound is way too loud.

But as someone said, you will get sound using these speakers and presumably a lot of sound. But it will sound more like sound through a conical megaphone at times.

Hi Team I am amazed by the response and I am very grateful . What do I do.... the cross over kit looks like it might do the job (but i 'll have to get it shipped over UK),it may sound pants but it would look brilliant... what a dilemma? This is a boys room and what would you have dreamed of when you were 15 years old,looks like the Marshall cabinets are on the way!!! I am very grateful for all your inputs. thank you

Why not find a Marshall full stack cab and but stereo speakers in it.

Or even better get two Marshall full stack cabs, put stereo speakers in the bottom half, and guitar speakers in the top half then attach the guitar amp to the top half speakers, and the stereo to the bottom half speakers. You could probably fit tweeters in the cab as well.

Then you would be good either way. Just make sure to match impedance.

That would rock....

By "stereo", I think you mean hi-fi or a speaker capable of producing sounds in high fidelity. Hi-fi speakers and enclosures have to be designed as an integral unit. Putting a hi-fi- speaker in a cabinet designed for another speaker, will not produce a hi-fi sound.

Yes, but have you listened to the music that kids are into today. Hi Fi is not necessary.....

In this case the only issue is not blowing out speakers I think. I am starting lean back toward the idea that the Marshall speakers will do fine....

As a Guitar player and amp designer it would be better to buy a 5.1 surround sound 200W with all the speakers and have a better than stereo system. RCA has a 200W unit for about $100 @ Wallmart. I put (2) together for 400W. The Marshall cabinet is really a guitar speaker and is not Hi Fi because it does not cover the full frequency spectrum 20-20kHz. It will not sound good and it is worth a lot of money if you sell it to a musician. It is for a Marshall 100W head or amplifier which if you have that is very suited for guitar playing. If it is a cabinet it is also monaural so it is not stereo.

So where are you moving too ???

Head phones are someting to consider in the same house with you or maybe a barn about 2 miles from the house for your son to do what he wants. As long as the cops never are called for noise.

I've been out of the music biz for too long now, but I do remember that you can buy small piezoelectric tweeters for ~$10 (I think Radio Shack has them) that will add some high frequencies that the 12" speakers won't reproduce. If I remember correctly they don't require crossovers. This won't be hi-fi, but it will be noticeably better, and it will be hard to beat for price and simplicity. If you want to get fancy you can mount them in your half-stack (in the unused space around the speakers) using a circular door-knob saw in your electric drill, and include an on-off switch to disconnect them when playing guitar.

http://members.misty.com/don/pzfix.html

Whatta opportunity...! Thisizza Engineering Forum, yes? Give the boys a real head start, here. They want BIG sound, no? Get out yer jig-saws, caulking guns and pipe clamps, and work on some "Variations-on-this-theme":

http://passdiy.com/pdf/KleinHorn.pdf

http://www.passdiy.com/pdf/KleinHorn2.pdf

They'll be the envy of the county, and you'll be the best Dad in the wurld...!

Now that's a pair of horns!. An excellent pair of write ups, too. Please, oh please register with this forum. This is precisely the spirit we need. (No offence meant to the rest of us.)

Those Klein horns are really impressive to look at. I can only imagine what they sound like. I can see the resemblance to a Klein bottle. Back in the early 50's, when high fidelity was emerging and stereo was still a long way off, I was a student (not actually) of G.A.Briggs, the renowned British designer of loudspeakers. In those days, hi-fi sound meant a lot of experimenting with raw materials and relatively low power electronics. One of my projects was putting a Wharfdale woofer in a folded horn enclosure. The enclosure was made from 3/4" plywood. The speaker was a direct radiator mounted on a speaker board composed of two pieces of plywood with a sand core to reduce the resonance. In those days I can remember my first amplifier was a Bogen PH-10 with 6V6's in push/pull operation. I fooled around with stereo tape recording and binaural sound. I was going to school at the time, but not to study audio or sound engineering. I have followed the progress and trends in sound engineering up to the present. Unfortunately finances has always kept me away from the real high end equipment, so I have had to make do with what I could. I still enjoy hearing a Bach Fugue blasting out at me with gut rumbling bass. Welcome to this forum. Hope to hear from you soon.