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AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...
- Thread starter Thor
- Start date
- Nov 24, 2008
- 4,343
- 7,163
- Disclosures
- Owner & designer, AudioKinesis; Auth. mfg, Big E (Home Audio only)
I assume you mean the 22 pound cab... the 4x6. It's another function-over-form approach, fairly utilitarian in this case; if people like it, I'll go into more detail.
I'm not going to get the switch added to the Hathor 1855 in time for the Seattle GTG after all. I got the circuit figured out last night (actually ended up with two switches), but I think that cutting a hole in the cabinet to install the switchplate is too much of a high-risk procedure, in that I won't have time to fix any screw-ups before having to hit the road in a few hours.
- Nov 24, 2008
- 4,343
- 7,163
- Disclosures
- Owner & designer, AudioKinesis; Auth. mfg, Big E (Home Audio only)
That was quick!
What I mean is, if people at the GTG in Seattle like it, then I'll show pictures and describe. If not, then I may want to rework it before I go public with the details, or turn it into a birdhouse.
- Apr 3, 2003
- 35,516
- 19,950
- Disclosures
- Editor-in-Chief, Bass Gear Magazine
I played through one for a bit, and I think that Duke is making some tweaks to the design. My order is already placed.
I'm eager to hear any reports about the stuff Duke brought to the get together. You can never have too many AudioKinesis cabinets!
Thanks,
Bob
Thanks,
Bob
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,069
- 46,012
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
Just got back home from the GTG, where I got to play quite a bit through most of the five cabs that Duke brought along. Didn't get much time on the Hathor 1203 because people were moving it around all over the place to try it with their stuff, but I really liked what I heard of it -- it's quite a different flavor from the TC cabs. Beyond that:
New version TC112AF 8 ohm: just as described; better vertical dispersion than the original ones, slightly more bottom, and I'd say a little more BG-friendly bent. Near the end of the GTG Spencer from 3Leaf Audio was playing some slap bass though it that just sounded exceptionally sweet. A pair would make a really great and versatile rig.
TC118: the Faital 18 in this is just a monster, and laughed at anything we could throw at it. I love the new waveguide/compression driver too, and if I still did rock gigs at all I would buy one of these cabs in a heartbeat. Duke set it up with a pair of port blockers and it would still do absolutely crushing lows. This was probably my favorite out of all of them, especially from my perspective as mainly an EUB player.
Hathor 1855: brutal! Skip put his 13Hz (low G#) Knuckle through it at one point and the whole venue sort of went into the twilight zone. I'd love to hear the smoothing switch option that Duke worked up but didn't have time to implement before the GTG. Duke: was this the 4 ohm version? Sensory overload kicked in and keeping track of everything became kind of difficult. This cab could tolerate stupid amounts of EQ abuse and a whole lot of stick perfectly happily in any case. To me, this acted a lot like a really good old school 215 stack, assuming you have the power available to really light it up.
Birdhaus/6666: very successful, I'd say. I think this would be ultra-cool for acoustic upright, but again, it handled all kinds of torture really well, and I could make it work on lots of the sort of gigs I do. My 250 watt@8ohm head started to give up before the cab ever did, even with all kinds of silly EQ'in being applied. Duke was very gracious in letting me indulge every whim with my newly built DIY head, which only had an hour or so of testing on it before the GTG. We also used my bigger DIY rig that does 600@8, 1000+ @4, driven by my tube preamp, for a lot of the listening. I'll defer to the guys who used their G-Ks and other standards, the Vivid Amp guys (cool amps and people BTW), etc., on their impressions on performance with "normal" amp rigs.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,069
- 46,012
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
I didn't try moving any of the bigger cabs around Monster, but maybe someone else will chip in on that. Lots of people were checking Duke's stuff out, for sure, and I was spread kind of thin with my busy social butterfly ways...
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,069
- 46,012
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
That good??? Impressive... Does it stack up well against a pair of 3012LF woofers or is the voicing quite different so that it's a matter of taste and not a straight up comparison?I played through one for a bit, and I think that Duke is making some tweaks to the design. My order is already placed.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,069
- 46,012
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
There are some pics in the Seattle GTG thread and more on the GTG Facebook page. I expect there will be some more surfacing in a bit as attendees get home from work tonight, and when Duke gets home maybe he'll work out posting some here. He had a very long drive home (~14 hours, I think he said) and I'm not sure if he was going to try to do it all in one shot. I stayed over in Seattle and only had a 4 hour return trip this afternoon.
I should also mention that the GTG host's wife plays solidbody violin and she tried that through both the TC cabs with totally stellar results. The 112AF's back tweeter seemed really helpful in that scenario.
Charlie, how would you compare the TC118 to the Hathor 1855? I would be using it for rock gigs. Thanks.
I'll chime in, as I threw the GTG and played through these, and my wife was the one who played her violin through them.
From a BG perspective, I played my Bongo 6 HS, roundwound strings on it, using two of Charlie's amps. These cabs are studs, and there's really nothing at all that I can find as a negative for them. Even with half of the ports plugged, the TC118 was just ridiculous. The overall response of it was insane, and it "takes" EQ changes nicely. Of course, part of that is the amazing work of Charlie's amps as well, but if the cab can't reproduce what it is being fed, then the best pre in the world won't help you. Even just slight fiddles of the knobs came true. I didn't get to move around a whole lot, but the little that I did had me convinced that the tone across the board is fairly even regardless of your position relative to the cab.
The TC118 is also crazy light. I can pick it up and move it around with one hand. I think Duke said it weighs in at 43 lbs. The form factor isn't much bigger than my 2x 2x10 setup that I sometimes use. Portability with that is astounding - the 115 and 112 have to be even better for sure. Heck, the 112 looked like a toy sitting on top of the 118
.
My wife brought along her NS Design CR violin as well. She's a classically trained violinist, who studied at Julliard when she was 11 (by invitation). It goes without saying that she's no slouch or a hack by any means, and was a great test for this. While not a typical instrument that would be put through these by any means, it was a great test of the high frequency extension. The open high E (highest string on a violin) has a fundamental of 659-ish Hz. The highest note (fundamental) on that string is somewhere around 4.4Khz, IIRC. Just to give you an idea of what we were doing, and how far outside the norm for us low end dwellers this is.
We tried several cabs of Duke's designs. My wife and I were both completely, entirely blown away by what those cabs were doing. I never thought I'd see/hear a cab with a primary driver 18" diameter, long excursion do violin any justice. However, the TC118 was super, super impressive. Very rich, full bodied tone. Nothing harsh even on the highest notes. And, much to my surprise, you'd see the woofer moving as well, so it wasn't all just going through the compression driver! All of the other cabs were equally as impressive as well. Some of the cool design aspects made it more interesting, especially for small stage areas - which, I felt bad as I had the vendors here pretty much crammed in along with everyone else, so not a whole lot of room for things to "fill out", as it were.
With all of that said, I don't mean to down talk Greenboy/fEarful designs or anything, but Duke's cabs were much more pleasing to my ears than fEarful offerings for both bass guitar and electric violin. Both are leagues beyond my 2x10 Ampeg cabs I've been using, and it was a great ear opener. I've been on the fence about getting a fEarful for a few months now, but they are no longer on my radar. I will be getting an Audio Kinesis - I just have to decide which one and talk to Duke.
If anyone has any other questions, I can't promise to watch this thread too closely (at least not until I get my own), so feel free to PM me directly.
Edit:
Here's a couple of photos, thank you to Marial. I think the first one is the Hathor 1203, and the 2nd is the TC118:
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
I think/hope there's more pics floating around, but I can't find any at the moment.
From a BG perspective, I played my Bongo 6 HS, roundwound strings on it, using two of Charlie's amps. These cabs are studs, and there's really nothing at all that I can find as a negative for them. Even with half of the ports plugged, the TC118 was just ridiculous. The overall response of it was insane, and it "takes" EQ changes nicely. Of course, part of that is the amazing work of Charlie's amps as well, but if the cab can't reproduce what it is being fed, then the best pre in the world won't help you. Even just slight fiddles of the knobs came true. I didn't get to move around a whole lot, but the little that I did had me convinced that the tone across the board is fairly even regardless of your position relative to the cab.
The TC118 is also crazy light. I can pick it up and move it around with one hand. I think Duke said it weighs in at 43 lbs. The form factor isn't much bigger than my 2x 2x10 setup that I sometimes use. Portability with that is astounding - the 115 and 112 have to be even better for sure. Heck, the 112 looked like a toy sitting on top of the 118
.My wife brought along her NS Design CR violin as well. She's a classically trained violinist, who studied at Julliard when she was 11 (by invitation). It goes without saying that she's no slouch or a hack by any means, and was a great test for this. While not a typical instrument that would be put through these by any means, it was a great test of the high frequency extension. The open high E (highest string on a violin) has a fundamental of 659-ish Hz. The highest note (fundamental) on that string is somewhere around 4.4Khz, IIRC. Just to give you an idea of what we were doing, and how far outside the norm for us low end dwellers this is.
We tried several cabs of Duke's designs. My wife and I were both completely, entirely blown away by what those cabs were doing. I never thought I'd see/hear a cab with a primary driver 18" diameter, long excursion do violin any justice. However, the TC118 was super, super impressive. Very rich, full bodied tone. Nothing harsh even on the highest notes. And, much to my surprise, you'd see the woofer moving as well, so it wasn't all just going through the compression driver! All of the other cabs were equally as impressive as well. Some of the cool design aspects made it more interesting, especially for small stage areas - which, I felt bad as I had the vendors here pretty much crammed in along with everyone else, so not a whole lot of room for things to "fill out", as it were.
With all of that said, I don't mean to down talk Greenboy/fEarful designs or anything, but Duke's cabs were much more pleasing to my ears than fEarful offerings for both bass guitar and electric violin. Both are leagues beyond my 2x10 Ampeg cabs I've been using, and it was a great ear opener. I've been on the fence about getting a fEarful for a few months now, but they are no longer on my radar. I will be getting an Audio Kinesis - I just have to decide which one and talk to Duke.
If anyone has any other questions, I can't promise to watch this thread too closely (at least not until I get my own), so feel free to PM me directly.
Edit:
Here's a couple of photos, thank you to Marial. I think the first one is the Hathor 1203, and the 2nd is the TC118:
Invalid Link Removed
Invalid Link Removed
I think/hope there's more pics floating around, but I can't find any at the moment.
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
- 23,069
- 46,012
- Disclosures
- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
Duke had them set up really differently, so I'm not sure I could compare low end confidently. It was about as noisy as NAMM in there too. The GTG host (Selta) was playing metal riffs with a pick through the TC118 and my tube preamp and 600 watts @ 8 ohm amp and there was actually plenty of grind and it got stupid loud, but the two fives seem like a no brainer if you want grind and growl from the cab itself, and/or if you just want a "bass cab" vibe as compared to the studio monitor thing the TC cabs bring. I'd expect fuzz pedals and whatnot to work better through those 5s too, although the tweeter in the TC cab is exceptional even by Duke's standards. Tom Bowlus could probably tell you more about that aspect of the 1855.
One other big factor you might weigh in: the TC118 is 8 ohm only and in some cases might need a bridged power amp for fullest effect if you need to get seriously loud or just crave massive headroom, while a 4 ohm 1855 would be pretty much perfect with the 800-1000 watt @ 4 ohm class amps. Duke mentioned that he'd love to get Faital to do a version of the TC woofer in 4 ohms, but that's not currently happening.
