LDS 2x12 Large horn

[kringle77]

Im having lds build me a cab using a pair of kappalite 3012ho woofers, an eminence psd:2002 driver and a 12x6 horn crossed over at around 1.6khz.

I don't really care for the extended low end of the 3-ways and some sound too smooth in the upper mids so, I think this design could be better for me. Any thoughts a horn lens? Any other thoughts?

[KJung]

Seems a shame to crossover the HO that low to me. The beauty to my ear of the HO drivers is that you can have a one way cab that has lots of upper mid, low treble extension without using a tweeter. Have the cab made in a vertical configuration, and the mid dispersion will be fine for EB.

That being said, Ralf Patterson (Don's crossover/design expert) is, I believe, a big fan of deeply voiced drivers and a big horn crossed over relatively low (I played a nice 212 that he made a couple of years ago with this type of design), so he knows how to do it. Just doesn't seem that the HO's are the driver for that execution to me.

If you want a bit more upper treble, a simple Eminence tweeter crossed over at the typical 3.5K or whatever would save you money and size.

IMO there. I know Audiokinesis is coming out with an LF-loaded 212 with horn, and THAT one will be smokin' IMO.

[billfitzmaurice]

Originally Posted by KJung

Seems a shame to crossover the HO that low to me.

Not to me. The 3012HO dispersion dies above 1.2kHz. I know that you don't care if only 5% of the audience can hear the mids, but those who do still should use a mid driver with a direct radiating 3012HO.
OP, the horn used is far less important than the crossover, and getting that right requires a very high skill set. Off the shelf doesn't make the grade.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by billfitzmaurice

Not to me. The 3012HO dispersion dies above 1.2kHz. I know that you don't care if only 5% of the audience can hear the mids, but those who do still should use a mid driver with a direct radiating 3012HO.
OP, the horn used is far less important than the crossover, and getting that right requires a very high skill set. Off the shelf doesn't make the grade.

While I continue to find your statements regarding upper midrange dispersion overstated when it comes to bass guitar, I agree with you that putting a big, low crossed over horn in a cab with relatively mid voiced drivers can result in a very ganky, upper mid present tone if the crossover isn't just right, and I would not really consider this design if I was doing a one-off custom.

I VERY much like the sound of the one way 3012HO loaded cabs though. If dispersion was a primary concern, I would save up and buy from Audiokinesis if I wanted a dual 12 with big horn execution.

[kringle77]

Thanks for the input. I have thought about the 2x12 TC but with the pair of lf's and even lower x-over, it doesn't sound like there would be any grit left to be had in the sound. I really don't like super deep low end. I just figured that the 3012ho x-overed at 1.6k would leave alittle grind in the woofer while still giving me the horizontal dispersion, which IS important to me. I have owned and used cabs with mids. Im not sold on the tone of the 18sound (alittle ganky), most of the eminence don't have the sensativity, the faital driver was low on sensativity and probably alittle too smooth, it may be fine if would have had a higher sensativity. The dispersion was/is great on them. I have used a cheap yamaha cv112 pa speaker and one with a 3012ho stuff in it (x-over about 2k) and they sounded great, just needed to be in a bigger, lower tuned box. Please, any other suggestions would be seriously considered. As always, the cab would be vertical.

[kringle77]

If I was sitting directly in front of the cab, a small tweet crossed high would be fine but, I find in the small clubs and weird shaped rooms that I play, you need a cab that will throw the sound horizontally. IME a big horn crossed at least around 2k removes the gank from alot of woofers and gets the mids out into the room better. Just my experience, and I appreciate the input.

[rpsands]

I think this is a fantastic idea, but like has been said requires a lot of attention to detail in the crossover.

I think you'd wind up happier with biamp inputs, unless Ralf is designing you something custom and paying attention to the resonant peaks of the horn.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by kringle77

If I was sitting directly in front of the cab, a small tweet crossed high would be fine but, I find in the small clubs and weird shaped rooms that I play, you need a cab that will throw the sound horizontally. IME a big horn crossed at least around 2k removes the gank from alot of woofers and gets the mids out into the room better. Just my experience, and I appreciate the input.

It might work out just fine. The HO's are VERY ganky, which I kind of like. I guess I'd get Ralf Patterson involved in a big way on this. It's one thing to put mids through a paper cone mid driver designed for mids... no need for rocket science there. It is another thing to get a big horn crossed over low to not sound like a low end PA cab up top, which is about the worst thing I can think of for amplifying a bass guitar.

Duke's Thunderchild horn is a complete thing of beauty, but the crossover looks like something you could run a small nuclear power plant with (I took a look with a flashlight through the lower rear port, become frightened, and never looked again)! Not a simple task IMO (i.e., to make the upper mids sound 'natural' coming out of a horn, and to get the balance of upper mids, lower treble and upper treble right).

[bobcruz]

Originally Posted by kringle77

... I have used a cheap yamaha cv112 pa speaker and one with a 3012ho stuff in it (x-over about 2k) and they sounded great, just needed to be in a bigger, lower tuned box. Please, any other suggestions would be seriously considered....

What about putting the 3012 together with the Yamaha crossover and horn in a bigger, lower tuned box?

[greenboy]

Originally Posted by KJung

It's one thing to put mids through a paper cone mid driver designed for mids... no need for rocket science there.

It takes the same amount of work and smarts to do a crossover for either range well - or badly. Neither is less demanding. It's meticulous stuff that Duke spends many tens of hours and several months on for a single design, with many hundreds of hours of design and measurement and critical listening experiences on similar drivers and horns behind it all - and the same amount of time into acoustics design research done as groundwork.

The problem for LDS is that on one-off cab sales there is no incentive to spend many tens of hours during or a month or more, designing / evaluating / measuring a crossover in a cab from every angle. And the tempting QUICKIE solution of putting a variable L-pad / attenuator on the network rather than designing the circuit with specific padding values right there at the ground floor ensures that even an otherwise good design is going to be dragged down.

Using a variable part doesn't matter much for bass guitar up at 3.5K Hz or 5K Hz or above so much because bass doesn't make much harmonic content above that frequency anyway, and it's not in the critical midrange where every detail and sonic cue is important. Mainly it's about string noise and percussive inharmonic content.

Bottom line: if you want good crossovers they have to be individually addressed for the particular drivers AND CABINETS - as the baffles, baffle placement of drivers, and the in-box impedances which are different from free-air impedances all have to be accounted for. This all takes the kind of time Duke spends on it, and that time he can amortize in his pricing.

[billfitzmaurice]

Originally Posted by greenboy

It takes the same amount of work and smarts to do a crossover for either range well - or badly. Neither is less demanding. It's meticulous stuff that Duke spends many tens of hours and several months on for a single design

+1. Compared to designing a good crossover designing a speaker cab is child's play. In the DIY hi-fi genre the preferred mounting spot for the crossover is the exterior of the cab, where the components are easily accessible for tweaking, a process than can take weeks, or months, or in the case of the really serious prefectionists, forever.

[kringle77]

Ralph is definitely doing the x-over. i've done some experimenting at home with my driverack, 3012ho and yamaha horn. The yamaha is pretty the same as the horn and driver that I listed at the beginning of the thread. The only real drawback is not having the correct tuned cab for the 3012ho but, i got a pretty good idea how it would sound. I found that an x-over point between 1.5k and 2k was just fine for me and my paticular bass. (yamaha attitude, soon to be have a custom stambaugh version with an added j pickup for more treble)

[KJung]

Originally Posted by kringle77

Ralph is definitely doing the x-over. i've done some experimenting at home with my driverack, 3012ho and yamaha horn. The yamaha is pretty the same as the horn and driver that I listed at the beginning of the thread. The only real drawback is not having the correct tuned cab for the 3012ho but, i got a pretty good idea how it would sound. I found that an x-over point between 1.5k and 2k was just fine for me and my paticular bass. (yamaha attitude, soon to be have a custom stambaugh version with an added j pickup for more treble)

Very cool! Let us know how it turns out. Should be a punchy beast!

[kringle77]

Don won't be starting until middle of february most likely. But of course, a review will happen. More advice?

By the way, when I set the pair of yamaha pa cabs up next to my ampeg 8x10(4 jensens, 4 b810 drivers) they sounded tonaly similar to eachother. The pa cabs of course had way better dispersion. Thats what got me going with this design. I talked to don about doing a 2x12 LF version awhile back, before any TC designs popped up on here but started to realize that the super deep low end thing wasn't working for me live. So, Im definitley not trying to save money or do a knock off version of dukes cabs. I have very few hobbies that cost any money so, money isn't an issue for me when it comes to gear, and that actually makes some of the cash back! I went through the 3-way design phase and decided that it's great for pa and not so much, for me, for bass. I think that I want the 2-way sound. Kind of a 1 way sound with alittle more top end. The 3012ho doesn't have enough top end on it's own for me.

[kringle77]

Oh yeah, my idea to do a 1.6k x-over was to remove gank. Great word.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by kringle77

Don won't be starting until middle of february most likely. But of course, a review will happen. More advice?

By the way, when I set the pair of yamaha pa cabs up next to my ampeg 8x10(4 jensens, 4 b810 drivers) they sounded tonaly similar to eachother. The pa cabs of course had way better dispersion. Thats what got me going with this design. I talked to don about doing a 2x12 LF version awhile back, before any TC designs popped up on here but started to realize that the super deep low end thing wasn't working for me live. So, Im definitley not trying to save money or do a knock off version of dukes cabs. I have very few hobbies that cost any money so, money isn't an issue for me when it comes to gear, and that actually makes some of the cash back! I went through the 3-way design phase and decided that it's great for pa and not so much, for me, for bass. I think that I want the 2-way sound. Kind of a 1 way sound with alittle more top end. The 3012ho doesn't have enough top end on it's own for me.

I know what you mean about the low end... having too much is often MUCH worse than not having enough. I like those HO drivers. It is one of the things I love so much about Duke's little Thunderchild... it is kind of 'HO tone with LF mechanical specs'. FYI, Duke is introducing a Thunderchild 15 in a few months.. again, custom 4ohm 3015LF that has the 'tighter low end' that you are talking about, the 4ohm impedance to increase the sensitivity (i.e., crank with a small amp), and an even more heavy duty compression driver and a crossover tuned even lower. Around 43 pounds, and kind of in between the size of the Thunderchild and a small 212.

Might be worth thinking about. However, I am impressed with most of the cabs that Don makes and the Patterson crossovers are typically first rate. His 12/6 and 15/6 cabs (and one way HO cabs) sound fantastic to me (even though they are not really my thing) with a variety of crossovers and mid drivers. However, getting a warm upper mid tone from a horn seems to be a more complicated task, which is why you are getting my slight push back. However, crossovers can be swapped and tweaked, so not a huge deal I guess as long as you are the DIY type (or have some cash!).

[billfitzmaurice]

Originally Posted by KJung

I know what you mean about the low end... having too much is often MUCH worse than not having enough. I like those HO drivers. It is one of the things I love so much about Duke's little Thunderchild... it is kind of 'HO tone with LF mechanical specs'. .

If comparisons are going to be made 3012 OEMs are much closer to the HO than to the LF. I've had 3012 OEM prototypes since six months before the 3012LF and 3012HO were introduced. The difference between them and the HO isn't mechanical, as they have the same xmax. The main difference is that the HO cone is lighter, and suspension softer, the result being a higher sensitivity driver that doesn't go quite as low, better suited to use in PA tops than electric bass cabs. That was a wise move by Eminence, as the demand for components for DIY PA is at least four times that for DIY electric bass cabs, and they didn't want to carry three 3012SKUs to cover all the bases.

[rpsands]

Honestly, I find the 3012HO to be more than adequate for most bass needs (4-stringers!). Does a good job of sounding kinda like a 4x10 cabinet. A 2x12 with 3012HOs does pretty close to what any 4x10 on the market will do in a tiny box (and then some). I find my Jack 12 will do approximately what I would expect out of a 4x10 also, which is another damned fine use of a 3012HO.

I would tend to not recommend it for 5-string bass though. The falloff by 60hz is a little much. Hence Duke's custom 3012 being a big winner in my book; just enough extra to get down to 60hz well, with a small sensitivity sacrifice.

[KJung]

Originally Posted by billfitzmaurice

If comparisons are going to be made 3012 OEMs are much closer to the HO than to the LF. I've had 3012 OEM prototypes since six months before the 3012LF and 3012HO were introduced. The difference between them and the HO isn't mechanical, as they have the same xmax. The main difference is that the HO cone is lighter, and suspension softer, the result being a higher sensitivity driver that doesn't go quite as low, better suited to use in PA tops than electric bass cabs. That was a wise move by Eminence, as the demand for components for DIY PA is at least four times that for DIY electric bass cabs, and they didn't want to carry three 3012SKUs to cover all the bases.

Thanks for the clarification... they sound kind of 'in between' to me. I can only comment on Duke's OEM version (which supposedly has similar xmax to the LF... but I might be misreading his specs), since that is the only 'non stock' 3012I've heard. It definitely is more upper bass present than the stock 3012LF's I've heard, but also seems more meaty and full than the HO's I've heard down low. However, cab tunings, etc. can probably be the cause there.

Whatever it is, I sure do like it.

[kringle77]

Good points and discusion. I too thought the dual 3012ho's would sound very 4x10 like. Punchy but alittle rounder. Please don't go into tuning, etc, I can't argue it intelligently.