Brad Sarno

The 1501 and 1502 BW's were used in steel amps up until the mid '90's when we introduced our BW KEVLAR impregnated cones. The latest 1501 version originated in approximately 1995-96. The complete BW line of speakers was switched over to KEVLAR except the 1501.

I've told this story many, many times and it is true. I was asked to bring my steel to work one day to try out a new speaker design but I didn't know why I was asked to do so. I work in the same building as our transtucer engineering team and they had taken the 1501-4 and wanted to make sure that they were still on track with our quality standard 1501 BW. But, they had "tweaked" the design a bit to make it easier to manufacture, since all other BW's were of the KEVLAR design. So, I was brought into a sound room with two speaker cabinets with unidentified speakers in them. I played awhile and was asked which one I preferred for steel guitar. I told the engineer that I preferred the speaker on the right. Later that day, Hollis Calvert(Peavey steel player sales rep) came in and I asked him to sit down and play and he came out and stated that he preferred the speaker on the right. Later that same day, a steel playing buddy of mine named James Thrasher visited this facility. So, I thought that this was a great time for him to provide an opinion. He came out of that room and stated that he liked the speaker on the right. At the end of the day, I asked the engineers just what speakers we were comparing. The speaker on the left turned out to be a JBL and the speaker on the right was the BW 1501-4 ohm shallow basket! That's the origin of the 1501-4 ohm BW shallow basket.

I'm not sure if we own the patent on the design or not. But, the way that our patented DDT(distortion detection technique) circuit works is that it sense oncoming clipping and activates the circuit so the signal remains clean. However, if you keep driving the power amp with the DDT light continuously lit, the speaker could fail or the voice coil would burn.

The aluminum dust cap is preferred by steel guitarists. That's all that I can say about that particular feature.

We often wonder why our competitors haven't provided a solution such as this for their speakers. It makes sense to me that if a speaker fails, that the most economical way to have it repaired is to replace the cone/ voice coil portion only because the magnet literally never fails. This is the beauty of the replacable basket design and it has been a great success story on its own.

Does the factory have any baskets in old stock they will sell?

Larry, the 1501-4DT is no longer active in our product line. We previously used the 1502-4DT in some of our bass amps also, but they were converted to our Sheffield series of speakers. We chose to continue the 1501-4sb paper cone and discontinue the 1501-4 DT KEVLAR because the paper cone was preferred.