Speaker Studies: Peavey Black Widow 1501 vs. 1503

[Rasmus Broegaard]

Hi all,

I just wanna share my recent findings. I am not a steel player, just a 6 string strat player.

I fell in love with the Black widow (BW) 1501 flat mag, spiderweb speaker. To me it is the best sounding speaker I have ever heard in my life, surpassing EV's and JBL's.

I have been searching for now 3 years to find one, but still with no luck.

But I recently got a 1503 that looks almost identital to the 1501, but I have to conclude it does not have the sweet sound of the 1501. It sounds a bit more similar to the JBL E130, although still the 1503 sounds better than the JBL.

I have notiched these differences in the visual appearance. The 1501 speaker cone is a bit darker, almost black (hard to tell from the pictures). And there is 4 grooves between gasket and cone on the 1503 and only 2 on the 1501. My guitar tech said this might be the reason for the sound difference, as the 1501 should then have a bit of a more stiff cone which might translate to better efficiency and thus better tone.

Let me know what you think, and also where on earth I can find a BW 1501 - 8 ohm speaker (preferable in europe). The 1501's I tried comes from a peavey 115 bw continental, but all the ones I have found so far has either 1503 or the SuperStructure Magnet (not the flat spider web ones).

Let me know if you have any questions !

[Jerry Overstreet]

Greetings Rasmus. Interesting entry. I'm a bit of a BW freak also. I've been studying the thiele/small and characteristics of them for several years, both 12 and 15 drivers, but mostly for steel guitar applications. I concur concerning the Spider Web flat mags. I still have a couple of 1201-8 Spider 12" drivers but foolishly let all my 1501s go.

Your chances of finding a 1501-8 I'd say are very slim. Due both to the rarity and attrition over the years as most of them were 4 ohm. I'm not even sure if the 8 ohm version had a guitar, steel guitar application as those very early years of Spider Webs had different uses that I'm not wise to.

Concerning the differences among the 1501 and 1503 you have pictured there, I'm not qualified to make any comparison. I see that due to the suspension, it has less cone area if that matters. There are many theile/small paramaters that go into the makeup of a speaker that determine the response curve and also other characteristics such as cone material, voice coil etc. I do not recall the application for the 1503 but I'm pretty sure it was designed for use other than guitar or steel guitar instruments.

Good luck latching on to one of those Spider Web 1501s.

[Dennis Detweiler]

The 1503 was used in PA cabinets. I had them in a pair of early SP-2 cabinets. I had a pair of 1505's 8ohm that I used for steel and powered with a 1976 Session 400. They sounded great. The 1505 was also built for use in PA cabinets. They had a very smooth frequency curve.