AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

[Thumper]

Sorry gang, that was meant for the Dingwall thread, not sure how it ended up here.

 

[Selta]

Sorry gang, that was meant for the Dingwall thread, not sure how it ended up here.

It's because AK cabs are the best match with Dingwalls

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Did some interesting work utilizing my TC118 the past two weekends, and wrapped it up tonight.
One cool thing we can easily do in the digital realm now is reamping. For those un-initiated: you record one or two tracks of your guitar simultaneously. The first track is "dry", essentially identical to what comes out of your guitar with nothing happening to the signal when it's recorded. The 2nd track is your "wet" track that has you effects, amp and so on.
We weren't thrilled with the original tone that we had recorded. Instead of setting up another signal chain and having to spend time to re-record the part, we just grab the dry track and run that through the chain. Boom, completely different tone, same exact playing.

Well, I had three guitar tracks to reamp using my Axe-Fx. Over the past couple of weeks we met at the studio and couldn't really nail down the tone we wanted... until I took the TC118 and used that to monitor. Once we did that, we had the tone locked in within 15 minutes. Tonight, I did the actual reamping, doing some very minor, last minute tweaks (that, once again, I only was able to clearly hear thanks to the AK cab!).

So, thanks @DukeLeJeune! I continue to use your cabs in ways that you likely didn't have in mind when you designed and built them. Everytime I come up with a new use case, the TC118 I have here is always impressive.

That story is going in my scrapbook. Thank you so much Selta!

 

[alaskaleftybass]

A couple of clips from the 'Classics 50th Reunion' show a couple of weeks ago. One 1203. Got the wife to hold the zoom q3hd. What we lack in talent we compensate with frivolity.

That was excellent @nutdog ! And there is NO lack of talent here!
You know, so funny--your tone is exactly the tone I love to get from my bass and amp. By chance, are you using an Ibanez? And what amp are you using?
Bravo!

 

[DukeLeJeune]

I wonder if I could get you guys' advice on something.

I've been sneaking in an hour here and there to work on the successor(s) to the Hathor 1855, and have come to a fork in the road:

I can make the cab 33" tall and get really optimum horizontal dispersion by having the mid and high frequency drivers in a vertical line. The downside is, the box ends up being taller and heavier than is necessary for the woofer to perform well.

Or I can put the tweets (either a Thunderchild-style horn or two 3" 1203-style cones) alongside the 6" mid, resulting in a more compact and lighter 27" tall cab. The width and depth would be the same 14" in either case. The downside is, in the crossover region, the horizontal radiation pattern goes asymmetrical. I can minimize that by using a steep-slope crossover between mids and tweets, but that introduces other compromises.

So what I want to do of course is the taller cab with the better horizontal radiation pattern and therefore better sound quality, but I recognize that the market probably cares more about weight and portability than about radiation patterns.

If you have a minute or two, let me know what your thinking is.

Thanks!

 

[Selta]

Hey Duke,
I'm all for data driven decisions. Can you answer, or speculate on:
1) Weight difference? Are we talking 5 lbs, or 15?
2) What difference a person standing off-axis of the cab would "hear" between the two designs?

For me, 6" and a few lbs means nothing if I get noticeably improved performance.

 

[nutdog]

That was excellent @nutdog ! And there is NO lack of talent here!
You know, so funny--your tone is exactly the tone I love to get from my bass and amp. By chance, are you using an Ibanez? And what amp are you using?
Bravo!

Thanks. It's a joy to play with those guys.

That's a Fender P Lyte that's tricked out to look retro but it's got EMG PJ and preamp. For the oldies group it's usually on the P and that's the Mesa subway.

 

[shrigg]

I wonder if I could get you guys' advice on something.

I've been sneaking in an hour here and there to work on the successor(s) to the Hathor 1855, and have come to a fork in the road:

I can make the cab 33" tall and get really optimum horizontal dispersion by having the mid and high frequency drivers in a vertical line. The downside is, the box ends up being taller and heavier than is necessary for the woofer to perform well.

Or I can put the tweets (either a Thunderchild-style horn or two 3" 1203-style cones) alongside the 6" mid, resulting in a more compact and lighter 27" tall cab. The width and depth would be the same 14" in either case. The downside is, in the crossover region, the horizontal radiation pattern goes asymmetrical. I can minimize that by using a steep-slope crossover between mids and tweets, but that introduces other compromises.

So what I want to do of course is the taller cab with the better horizontal radiation pattern and therefore better sound quality, but I recognize that the market probably cares more about weight and portability than about radiation patterns.

If you have a minute or two, let me know what your thinking is.

Thanks!

"Best sound" is the distinguishing quality of all AK cabs, and if your taller solution accomplishes that it certainly gets my vote. For those that want something smaller yet quite loud there's the new 1505. That cab is absolutely amazing! I will be posting additional 1505 player reports next week.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Hey Duke,
I'm all for data driven decisions. Can you answer, or speculate on:
1) Weight difference? Are we talking 5 lbs, or 15?
2) What difference a person standing off-axis of the cab would "hear" between the two designs?

Excellent approach! Thanks for asking for data.

The weight difference would be about 5 pounds, so we're talking about going from about 50 pounds to about 55 pounds.

A person standing off-axis who was paying attention would hear the difference. There would be an off-axis suckout in the crossover region between mid and tweet(s).

 

[DukeLeJeune]

"Best sound" is the distinguishing quality of all AK cabs, and if your taller solution accomplishes that it certainly gets my vote. For those that want something smaller yet quite loud there's the new 1505. That cab is absolutely amazing! I will be posting additional 1505 player reports next week.

Great point, I hadn't thought of the 1505 as already filling that "smaller and lighter niche". See, you guys are much smarter than me and my slide-rule.

 

[Selta]

In that case, to me, it is an easy choice . That's 10% increase in weight - very acceptable in my opinion. I'd vote go with the 33" tall version. That also has the benefit of putting some volume up higher, too, which may get to ears a bit better/easier?

 

[Marial]

Yep, I'm with shrigg and Selta. I wouldn't want to have off-axis weirdness just to save five lbs and a few inches of height. I like taller cabs anyway.

 

[Selta]

By the way, Duke, one thing I really, really appreciate is your involvement here. Just the fact that you would come here and ask us for our opinion on it is amazing.

 

[Matt Morgan]

I'm for the taller, heavier, better performing cab.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

In that case, to me, it is an easy choice . That's 10% increase in weight - very acceptable in my opinion. I'd vote go with the 33" tall version. That also has the benefit of putting some volume up higher, too, which may get to ears a bit better/easier?

Yep, I'm with shrigg and Selta. I wouldn't want to have off-axis weirdness just to save five lbs and a few inches of height. I like taller cabs anyway.

Yeah I was planning on doing the 27" version but that cabinet shape poll thread made me start to rethink it a bit. Not only was there a significant preference for a taller cab for the sake of hearing yourself, but tall guys were saying they get tired of bending over to adjust their amps.

 

[nutdog]

None of the above. I'd get 2 1203's.

 

[Marial]

None of the above. I'd get 2 1203's.

 

[tombowlus]

I wonder if I could get you guys' advice on something.

I've been sneaking in an hour here and there to work on the successor(s) to the Hathor 1855, and have come to a fork in the road:

I can make the cab 33" tall and get really optimum horizontal dispersion by having the mid and high frequency drivers in a vertical line. The downside is, the box ends up being taller and heavier than is necessary for the woofer to perform well.

Or I can put the tweets (either a Thunderchild-style horn or two 3" 1203-style cones) alongside the 6" mid, resulting in a more compact and lighter 27" tall cab. The width and depth would be the same 14" in either case. The downside is, in the crossover region, the horizontal radiation pattern goes asymmetrical. I can minimize that by using a steep-slope crossover between mids and tweets, but that introduces other compromises.

So what I want to do of course is the taller cab with the better horizontal radiation pattern and therefore better sound quality, but I recognize that the market probably cares more about weight and portability than about radiation patterns.

If you have a minute or two, let me know what your thinking is.

Thanks!

So, 6" in height and 5 lbs in weight gets me better sound quality? I'd make that trade off, for sure.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

By the way, Duke, one thing I really, really appreciate is your involvement here. Just the fact that you would come here and ask us for our opinion on it is amazing.

You guys are smarter than me in many areas, especially collectively. I can probably still hold my own in a crossover design shootout, except against Passinwind. I'm just lucky his day job pays well enough that it's not worth his time to manufacture bass cabs.

I'm for the taller, heavier, better performing cab.

Thank you Matt, the bottom end looks a bit better in the bigger box as well, whether you want "really deep" or "only enough for a solid low-B", selectable via port pluggage.

So, 6" in height and 5 lbs in weight gets me better sound quality? I'd make that trade off, for sure.

It is so cool to me that so many bass players REALLY CARE about sound quality! Over in the home audio world "sound quality" gets a lot of lip service, but most audiophiles listen with their eyes. They see a horn and even if it doesn't sound anything like a horn, they still can't get past their eyes and their prejudices.

 

[Selta]

That's why I'm going to bug you about some home audio stuff when I get settled into my new house, Duke.