I see amp and speaker cab sims discussed here but I’ve never ventured into that space because I’m not a guitar player. This is probably a dumb question but does anyone make speaker sims for keyboard players? I love running my keyboards through an 18" and a horn. Can I get that 18" or even a 15" sound out of my little stage amp equipped with a 12"? If there is such a thing what would you guys recommend?
You won’t be able to outwit physics - making a 12’’ speaker sound like an 18’’ speaker will be difficult - it just doesn’t move as much air in the low end.
But TBH, a keyboard has no business in that low-end territory anyhow (unless you play keyboard bass or try to fill that space with low-end drones or pads). I clean out my piano / e-Piano and organ sounds below 150 Hz pretty radically.
Typically using speaker sims with keyboards is for coloring sound, but you need to be careful around guitar speakers - they tend to cut off pretty dramatically above 5000 Hz, so you typically won’t like them for most keyboard sounds. But some sounds (e.g. electric pianos, hammonds) actually profit from that kind of frequency response - try a Rhodes through a Fender Deluxe. Not only the speaker cabinet colors the sound, but also the tube drive warms things up quite a bit.
DL/DR: no clear-cut solution that fits all scenarios, but “warming up” electric pianos with a bit of tube amp drive and guitar speaker response can be very nice in a rock / blues context.
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Your answer is exactly what I had suspected but I had to ask to solve my curiosity.
Thank you!
My band is a prog rock band, when I compared subs, we selected a 12" sub, mostly because it reacted more “quickly” than a 15" and much more so than an 18" sub did. Those tended to sound a little flabby. Great maybe, for DJ, but make sure it’s really the sound you want,
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