Comment 36 for bug 486154

I also am affected by this. After lots of playing around I got it to do the horrible system bell, which in my case is better than a nice sounding one, but still.

Here's the steps I took to get the workaround:
1) Unblacklist pcspkr in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
2) Reboot (or modprobe, whatever)
3) alsamixer, make sure PC Beep isn't muted
4) xset b on
5) xset b 8 (nice and low so it doesn't make my ears bleed)
6) echo -e '\a' (should work)