black widow or eminence?
 

So, I decided not to buy the ampeg 2x10 and 1x15. I have this peavey cab with 1 good black widow in it. Should I buy a new black widow or is there a better speaker I should look at? Of course I would get 2 if I changed speakers.
Inside cab dementions are
24 wide
18.5 high
11.5 deep
Ports are
6.5
6.5
9
The chambers are sealed from eachother.

I play mostly rock covers from zz top and black crows on the light end to drowning pool and black sabbath on the heavy side. Drop C is the lowest tuning. But most are standard and half step. I like a punchy low tone. My amp is a crown xls1000 through a behringer bass v-amp pro.mostly on the svt and svt2 models. I play active keith Brawley basses.

I'd get another of the exact same BW model. Or whatever is closest if that's an older one, ping Peavey. Tney're perfectly good drivers.

Also, line the cab interior with either acoustic foam, mattress liner, or polyfill (about 1" thick) on the sides, top, bottom and back. Helps clean up the midrange.

That's a shallow cabinet. Please recheck the height.

Restoring it to original Peavey specs with black widows would be the easy way. People like those cabs and speakers.

You're type of music and that crown could do with a bit more though. For that you need more than different speakers: you need a proper tuned cab, not some holes in the baffle. Have a look into the thread's by Kjung on his closed diy 2*15 cabs with modern high power 15's. I think something like that might fit your needs and would be easy to do with that peavey cab.

I think he's giving the height of each internal chamber.

What is wrong with the one you have? May be you can just have it re coned.
Be careful how much power you throw at them and how you eq. A lot of low bass combined with the power of that Crown amp and you will be blowing speakers a lot.

Thanks. I'll check that out.

Yes, that's the height of each chamber.

This is the reason I asked. I see the black widows are rated at 300 watts. Some of the Eminence speakers are 500 or 600 watts. This cab is gonna have to last. Of course I'm not gonna use all 1100 watts of my amp all the time but I'd like to have the headroom. Any distortion I need, I can get from my V-amp.

You can rework your existing widows at home... the field kit is easy to install.

Call their customer service, they may have some "upgrade" options...

I got this cab off craigslist for $75. The other speaker in it is not a Black Widow. I can't figure out what it is. I googled all the numbers on it and didn't get anything. But I hooked it up to a 300 watt combo and it sounds like crap. No bass and lots of rattling. The black widow sounds fine.

Given those dimensions each chamber is pretty small for a vented 15", and with those open ports the tuning will be much too high.

Here's an example on the Eminence web site using the Basslite 2515 in a sealed cab. It shows the driver in 1.6 cu ft which is close to what you might have in each chamber once you close up the ports and front mount the driver.

Notice though that even with this design each driver would be excursion limited to 250W with an f3 of 78 Hz.

The Eminence ratings are based on the thermal limit of the voice coil. Bass speakers in a vented cab run out of excursion long before frying the voice coil. When a driver is made by the same company as the cabinet they'll list the power handling of the speaker in the cabinet rather than the bare driver.

And since the chambers are sealed from each other, there's no reason not to use different drivers.

my back of the envelope WinISD shows that each of those chambers is 2.95 cu ft, which is a good fit for most 15" bass guitar drivers.

If you have the 1505-8 BW then seal off that triangular port in each chamber, drop in a 4" diameter one of 3-4" long, adjusting length to taste, and that should be fine. This gives an Fb from 40 to 45 Hz.

If you have one of the 1502's which are the lower Xmax BWs, then you definitely have to be careful with how much power you feed them before fart out/burn out.

Well, you'd think they's do that. And - for the most part - you'd be wrong.

To start with they are often clueless or trust that their customers are, so they'll generally just add the thermal limit of the driivers.

Second, it's not possible to say what power a cab will handle safely since that will depend on at what frequencies that power is supplied.

why would you do that? Makes no sense, use matched drivers.

That'd be John Kallas (johnk_10), not Ken Jung.

yes, and I thought those were ported/tuned, not sealed.

I second this.

A port lengthening mod may be in order.

If you want deeper bass and cleaner output at high volume, check with Peavey and see if yours may be re-basketed with 1505-8DT cones. They'll stay cleaner run loud, have a different flavor up top and won't give you the grind of the 1502's. That may work for or against depending on tone goals. Just something to consider.