Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...
- Thread starter Thor
- Start date
Pics and info from here
Dimensions are 36" tall by 18" wide by 22" deep, as I recall. Weight clocked in at 66 pounds. That's probably not too bad for a 215 cab, but as you can see, this isn't a 215.
Yes, there's a fourth 15" woofer on the other side. It's a compact wide-dispersion lightweight midless tweetless 415. I think that's a first. The idea of course is to get 215-class tone across a wide listening area.
In this shot, through that top port, you can see the motors of the top three woofers clustered together. It's pretty crowded in there!
The ports are simply holes cut in the back of the cabinet, they are adequate for airflow given the specifics.
You can see a single switch below the upper port. The woofer I'm using has a substantial upper-mid peak, which often sounds great on electric bass, but not necessarily all the time. So you can flip the switch down and that smoothes out the peak.
Fifteen inch woofers aren't known for having much top end and this one is no exception, but I use some sneaky circuitry to get a bit more top-end extension than the woofer normally has right out of the box. And of course fifteens beam badly up high, but getting wider and more uniform coverage is what the Birdhaus configuration is all about.
The cabinet is undersized for four 15" woofers, and here is how we get away with it: The lows from those side-firing woofers wrap around and reinforce out front, but the mids and highs do not. So we get, in effect, +6 dB from the two side woofers down low because they are adding in-phase, but only +3 higher up because their contribution to the reverberant field adds in random phase. We do trade off some efficiency on paper, but we actually get more sound out into the room in the mids and highs than with a normal 4x15 cluster because we have less cancellation up there.
The woofer is the Eminence Basslite C2515. It's a 4-ohm woofer based on the Deltalite motor, but with a different cone that gives us that magnificent peak at about 1.5 kHz. To my ears, this is the best-sounding off-the-shelf woofer for electric bass. That peak is in EXACTLY the right spot. It shares the drawback of all 15" woofers in a bass guitar application: It beams. And since it uses a Deltalite motor, it is outclassed in raw numbers by the new generation of "uberwoofers" that are out there. But it sounds better as a stand-alone than any of these uberwoofers! So I use four of them in series-parallel, keeping that 4-ohm load, and the Birdhaus configuration gives us far better dispersion than a pair of uber-fifteens in a vertical stack.
The build eats up a lot of time and a lot of expensive lightweight plywood, so if this cab goes into my line-up it will be special-order-only with a long lead time, and it will not be cheap. But I felt like the idea had to at least be tried.
edit: I cut it too close on the enclosure size, and this cab doesn't deliver a strong enough low-B. But it works well with low-E tuning.
Dimensions are 36" tall by 18" wide by 22" deep, as I recall. Weight clocked in at 66 pounds. That's probably not too bad for a 215 cab, but as you can see, this isn't a 215.
Yes, there's a fourth 15" woofer on the other side. It's a compact wide-dispersion lightweight midless tweetless 415. I think that's a first. The idea of course is to get 215-class tone across a wide listening area.
In this shot, through that top port, you can see the motors of the top three woofers clustered together. It's pretty crowded in there!
The ports are simply holes cut in the back of the cabinet, they are adequate for airflow given the specifics.
You can see a single switch below the upper port. The woofer I'm using has a substantial upper-mid peak, which often sounds great on electric bass, but not necessarily all the time. So you can flip the switch down and that smoothes out the peak.
Fifteen inch woofers aren't known for having much top end and this one is no exception, but I use some sneaky circuitry to get a bit more top-end extension than the woofer normally has right out of the box. And of course fifteens beam badly up high, but getting wider and more uniform coverage is what the Birdhaus configuration is all about.
The cabinet is undersized for four 15" woofers, and here is how we get away with it: The lows from those side-firing woofers wrap around and reinforce out front, but the mids and highs do not. So we get, in effect, +6 dB from the two side woofers down low because they are adding in-phase, but only +3 higher up because their contribution to the reverberant field adds in random phase. We do trade off some efficiency on paper, but we actually get more sound out into the room in the mids and highs than with a normal 4x15 cluster because we have less cancellation up there.
The woofer is the Eminence Basslite C2515. It's a 4-ohm woofer based on the Deltalite motor, but with a different cone that gives us that magnificent peak at about 1.5 kHz. To my ears, this is the best-sounding off-the-shelf woofer for electric bass. That peak is in EXACTLY the right spot. It shares the drawback of all 15" woofers in a bass guitar application: It beams. And since it uses a Deltalite motor, it is outclassed in raw numbers by the new generation of "uberwoofers" that are out there. But it sounds better as a stand-alone than any of these uberwoofers! So I use four of them in series-parallel, keeping that 4-ohm load, and the Birdhaus configuration gives us far better dispersion than a pair of uber-fifteens in a vertical stack.
The build eats up a lot of time and a lot of expensive lightweight plywood, so if this cab goes into my line-up it will be special-order-only with a long lead time, and it will not be cheap. But I felt like the idea had to at least be tried.
edit: I cut it too close on the enclosure size, and this cab doesn't deliver a strong enough low-B. But it works well with low-E tuning.
I've been gigging the TC112v1 and Hathor1203 for years and love it. For me it' the best of both worlds. You get the clean, articulate, beefy lows of the Thunderchild, mixed with the mid forward 1203 which I leave in "mid-forward" mode.
I think this combination makes a lot of sense.
Pretty sure the only time I could get away with the Hathor 1203 + ThunderChild 212 would be outdoor gigs.
I guess I need three cabs - the two you have plus the ThunderChild 212.
I've been contemplating getting a Fractal Audio AX8 & I think the smaller &/or larger ThunderChild would work better using that front end.
Hathor 1203 for practice &/or very small gigs.
That Birdhaus 415 looks pretty sneaky: pretty portable box--at 66 lb. I bet my old Peavey TKO combo weighs signifcantly more--but 4 quality drivers in it. Really cool; hope you'll report back with performance comments and maybe soundclips.
Thanks for copying Duke's design details into a post too; I find his ability to explain technical details in a straightforward, conversational way to be a rare treat to read. It comes off as friendly but never patronizing or seeming dumbed down. Little to no hyperbole...very refreshing.
Thanks for copying Duke's design details into a post too; I find his ability to explain technical details in a straightforward, conversational way to be a rare treat to read. It comes off as friendly but never patronizing or seeming dumbed down. Little to no hyperbole...very refreshing.
Last edited:
Yes I can’t wait to hear it. Should be perfect for my needs. I imagine it will sound similar to a Bag End 15 but on a grand scale. Four 15s is gonna move a lot of air.
This is a unique cab that is not going into production due to the driver being discontinued.
I can see a similar Birdhaus 412 being a possible hit - esp. if it covers low 'B' in a rolled off, but tight kind of way.
I think the cab will need to be a lot bigger for a decent low B. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure that one of the disadvantages of stuffing a driver into too small of a box is that is compromises the low frequency extension. You can kind of get away with that with 15s, but Duke said the 415 is not a low B box and the 412 would be even worse.
The Birdhaus cabs should be put on a rotisserie setup. Slap some LEDs and lasers on it and you've got an instant partyMachine!
Years ago I had a Bagend 15 stack. It had great tone, lots of punch and spl, and was grindy midrange cannon. It was lacking in the lows for my taste though.
Question for you 1203 owners -
With the 3012lf shoehorned into such a diminutive cab, does it give a more responsive and quick feel? The bags were small boxes (18” cube for a 15), and felt very quick like a sealed cab.
Question for you 1203 owners -
With the 3012lf shoehorned into such a diminutive cab, does it give a more responsive and quick feel? The bags were small boxes (18” cube for a 15), and felt very quick like a sealed cab.
