Double Bass 8" speaker recommendations

[neddyrow]

Wouldn't 3 speakers give you a wackadoodle impedance, or make the wiring a bit unconventional to get a standard impedance?

yes...i fear it may throw off the impedance, especially if i wire them in series. i am curious if a crossover will help. i am thinking of going back to the 4x8" design or maybe just going 2x8" - i bet the 2x8" will be enough for most of my gigs. that way i can get the 8ohm version and have a 4 ohm load if wired in series.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

i bet the 2x8" will be enough for most of my gigs. that way i can get the 8ohm version and have a 4 ohm load if wired in series.

Wiring in series adds the impedances, wiring in parallel half a the impedances if both are the same.

 

[neddyrow]

Wiring in series adds the impedances, wiring in parallel half a the impedances if both are the same.

duh...right. thanks for the correction.

 

[neddyrow]

still working out the details and looking at the faital pro 8fe200 versus the 8rs250 - the rs seems to have some better features like 200w vs 130w handling....but the price tag difference of $48 vs $169 makes it tough to go for the rs. anyone experience with both of these?

 

[mikeGJ]

By the time you build out a 2x8 cab you will have hit something over 22 lbs.
Now you are in the territory of the Hathor 1203, which is still the answer (for me) to "which lightweight 8 or 10 inch" is best for URB.

My Wizzy 10 was not the answer (I always grabbed the Wizzy 12, in spite of the weight differential), a Crazy 8 got closer, but now reach for the Hathor when loading up.

The new Upshot from Acoustic Image weighs in at about 12 lbs, has a 10", and might be your solution at a cost close what your 2x8 build will be.

 

[M0ses]

Yeah it's very tough to make a cab with an odd number of speakers come out to a nice 4 or 8 ohms. Of course a high quality solid state amp can probably handle most of what's thrown at if if it's somewhere in the middle.

Something I think would be very cool would be a 3x8 with the top 8 firing up and the bottom two firing horizontally.

Most electric players are not happy with the bass extension available on sealed cabs, ported cabs are almost always the rule and it does seem to be mostly that way on the DB side, too. Then again, a lot of 8 inch speakers don't have enough XMAX to handle the kind of excursion a port allows, anyway. YMMV, you're the only one who knows how many lows you really need to be pumping out.

 

[neddyrow]

my cabinet builder buddy is going to be busy through the holidays so i decided to order a crazy 88.

i asked greenboy if they would be able to build me a 3x8. they said maybe some day. mark, from greenboy said he'd been thinking about building a 3x8 or a 4x8 with one speaker firing down. i am interested in both ideas - firing up or down.

i see that the crazy 88 uses faital pro 8pr200s in their cab. it also seems to be ported.

my custom build will be on hold for a couple months. so now i will have a crazy 88 for a control in my experiment when we start the custom cabinet.

so that brings up the question: could you put 3 - 4 ohm speakers and wire them in parallel? would you be able to power a 12 ohm load?

 

[M0ses]

I don't think there are many solid state amps out there that can do 12ohm - with SS amps, lower loads are easier to drive. It's not uncommon for tube amps to get up to 16, though, so there's a chance there.

If you have three you can wire two in series (8 ohm pair) and wire the third in parallel which would bring the total load down to something like 5.3 (??? I dunno I really didn't do the math) but that results in a lopsided cab where one speaker is going to be receiving more power, and thus be producing more volume, relative to the other two. That could tie in nicely to my upwards firing speaker idea ;P

IIRC correctly Mesa Boogie makes a 5 or 6 ohm cab, I think it has mixed sized speakers or something goofy like that. So it's not unheard of.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

Wiring in parallel brings the impedance below the smallest one. In that case below 4 Ohms. The only way to use three 4 ohms speakers with a min. 4 ohms amp output would be wiring all three in series for 12 Ohms. But you won't get more out of them than out of a single one if a single has enough wattage for the amp. With speakers in series the wattage gets distributed over the speakers, so for a 600 watt amp and three 200 watts speakers in series the 600 watts get distributed to 200 watts for each speaker. BUT (!) you only get the full power if the resulting impedance of the speakers is the minimally allowed load impedance for the amp. In my example before that would have been 4 ohms, not 12 ohms. With 12 ohms the current is much lower (a third) and therefor the wattage gets also only a third which brings you back to the wattage of a single speaker.
So that doesn't make sense unless you can find speakers with other impedances.