I’ll try and answer pretty simply for you now, how do PA speakers work?

From your iPod head phones, listening to your TV, right through to listening to someone speak to you on your phone there are speakers everywhere in our lives, not only the ones that blast loud music at you at concerts, festivals and at pubs and taverns.

Also when explaining how do PA speakers work, I’ll not only give you an idea about the parts that make up a speaker system, I’ll also give you a bit of an insight into how pretty much every speaker in your home works.

So here we go!

From as early as 1874 Ernst Siemens was the first to describe the moving coil transducer with a circular coil of wire which was in a magnetic field and supported so it could move axially, this formed the start of the current speaker setup as we know it.

He then filed for a patent for a magneto electric apparatus for obtaining the mechanical movement of an electrical coil from electrical currents transmitted through it in this same year, he also was granted this patent the same year although he didn’t use his device for audible transmission at all.

It was Alexander Graham Bell that did though and we all know he was the man who invented and patented the telephone.

So these were the beginnings of the speaker as we know it today, sure there has been some major technology advances in design and material but the theory of how the system works is in essence intact.

[Read more…]

I have fond memories of Ibanez Guitars from very early on in my own guitar playing history, so I thought I’d do a bit of research and write about the history of Ibanez guitars to learn a bit more myself about this great Japanese guitar manufacturer that has and still produces great music equipment for musicians all over the world.

I still own two Ibanez Guitars, my second guitar was an Ibanez 540s and I have a 59’er Deluxe too from the 70’s as I’m a hoarder in regards to music equipment and don’t tend to throw out or sell off gear even if it doesn’t work anymore.

I can remember going into a guitar shop in Rotorua (In New Zealand’s North Island) and seeing this Ibanez 540s guitar for the first time, as I think things over a lot before acting when it comes to these types of things I think I went back quite a few times over, played it, looked at it, played Stairway to Heaven on it, whammy dived bombed it, played Smoke on the Water on it and finally purchased it for a tidy sum back in those days, $550 from memory.

So from that day onwards I have always had a soft spot for Ibanez guitars and have been keeping a bit of an eye on them.

So here is a brief history of the Ibanez story, with so much data on their history around it would be easy to write a 1000+ page novel but I have kept it relatively simple so you can see where they have come from and what they are today.

[Read more…]