Replacing a speaker in a Yorkville combo

Putzaroni1 · #1 02-27-2011, 02:53 PM

Hey !
Thanks for all the great info on this board. I have learned a ton already. I inherited a Yorkville 200B combo with the amp removed. The guy said that he used it as a 1-15" cab and in combination with a 210B Yorkville cab.
I would like to do the same thing but when I plug the 1-15" cab in, nothing.

I pulled the speaker out and ran an ohmmeter across the two leads and it registered nothing. I'm guessing this means that the speaker is toast
Is it worth replacing the 15" speaker if it's blown or am I nuts going to all this trouble ?

I can see that Carvin has replacement 15" Speakers for $69 or their Neo 15" woofer is $99. There is no tweeter in this box so it's just a 1/4 to the connectors that go directly on to the speaker. Is this an OK way of doing this or should I do some stuff to make this even better ?

The amp will be a original GK 400RB which is 4 ohms so if I want to run this in parallel with the 210B it will need to be an 8 ohm replacement speaker.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Pat

craig.p · #2 02-27-2011, 07:13 PM

That's the PS15 you're referring to. Nothing special. It's a reasonably good speaker that'll work almost anywhere. Post the INSIDE dimensions of the cab the speaker's mounted in, and tell us the dimensions of the slot vent at the bottom: height, width, and how far back the shelf (top part of the vent) extends into the cab. One of us can run a model for you and let you know whether there'll be any nasty peaks. (Sometimes these smaller vented cabs perform better when converted to sealed.) You'll also want to line the inside of the cab with sound absorbing material, if it hasn't already been done at the factory; there are already dozens of threads here on that topic.

Putzaroni1 · #3 02-27-2011, 08:11 PM

Thanks Craig.P for your response.

If there are other resources on this site regarding this I'm searching in the wrong places. I did try to dig first but .......
Please direct me if there is.

So here is a picture of the enclosure with the internal dimensions.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...Dimensions.jpg

The vents are about 2" at the front of the cabinet but taper down to 1" in the back. There is no padding or sound absorbing material of any kind on the inside but the entire box is carpeted in the lovely Yorkville blue carpet.

Any suggestions are appreciated.
Pat

MuthaFunk · #4 02-27-2011, 10:58 PM

I can't really make any suggestions about different speakers but I can tell you that is a Yorkville 400B bass combo cab and not the 200B. It used to have a Eminence driver rated at 300 Watts in it. I don't know if it's still available today through an Eminence dealer but Yorkville prides themselves on supporting their old products. I'm sure you can get one through them.

If I were you, I'd put the stock Eminence driver back in. It's not a bad sounding cab. I had 2 of them with extension 15's under each for a total of 4 15" and 800Watts. I blew one and at the time I think the replacement was $125. Even one cab puts out a lot of sound but not particularly deep 20 Hz kind of stuff. I don't think the Carvin 15 will perform any better than the Eminence.

craig.p · #5 02-28-2011, 05:17 AM

I ran a few rough models, and I recommend you seal off those ports. Use anything you want as long as it gives you an airtight seal. Even an old towel jammed TIGHT down into each port should work, at least temporarily as an initial test. Sealing off the ports will get rid of the 100-125 Hz response peak and thus cut back on the cab's tubbiness. That, along with interior sound absorbent, will give you a great 2.3 (more or less) cu. ft. sealed cab that will run much flatter down into the bass region and will gracefully "EQ up" in the bass without sounding like a boom box. Again, this is necessarily a very rough estimate because of the tapered vents, but I have done this port seal-off work personally with tapered vents and I can tell you it does work and it does give a huge improvement.

See the following graph. (The image is clickable for better resolution.) The white lines represent various popular Eminence drivers and the Carvin PS15 running inside that ported cab. The yellow line represents the PS15 running inside that box with the ports sealed off. Look at the nice, flat response.

Putzaroni1 · #6 02-28-2011, 04:55 PM

Thanks Craig.p for the detail. I will play around with this now. I have a guy locally selling a Peavey Black Widow 15" driver for $50. It's suppose to be almost new so I'll give it a whirl and play around a little bit with plugging the venting and putting in some sound deadening material on the back and sides.

Much appreciated.

craig.p · #7 02-28-2011, 05:30 PM

A Black Widow will probably want to run in a vented, not sealed, cab. So, if you use that driver, leave the vents alone, but definitely line the cab.

Putzaroni1 · #8 02-28-2011, 09:29 PM

Sounds like I would be better off with the PS15 and closing off the vents from what you recommend. For $50 I may buy the Black Widow anyhow to try it and so I can experiment a bit with vented, not vented and different drives.
Once again thanks a bunch !

Putzaroni1 · #9 04-06-2011, 10:22 PM

Well I went with the NE15-8 600W NEODYMIUN 15 INCH WOOFER. Plugged it in to the vented cabinet and it sounded pretty good. I then pulled it all apart and put some egg crate foam. I covered every side, top back and bottom inside, plugged off the venting and put it all back together. It definitely sounds much better. Thank you craig.p for your recommendations. I am going to work with it for a while and continue tweeking but it should work well for me.

I am now looking for some kind of plate to allow me to mount the female 1/4 inch input so that I can plug a speaker cable into it instead of having the 1/4 inch male plug with 18/2 speaker cable plugged directly into the speaker. If anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.
Thanks again.