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AudioKinesis Cabs Part VI...

#9,101
Surreal department: as I was writing that, our guitar player texted the drummer and I with an upcoming originals-band showcase/stage wardrobe question:

“Hey, can we wear all black like Danko Jones?”

The overlap areas on our particular music-interest Venn diagram seem a little small just now.

(Walks around in distracted circle smacking self in side of head).
 
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#9,110
Tonight I experienced my Birdhaus 48 being driven by a Crown Micro-Tech 600 power amp I just picked up. This puts out 750 watts into 4 ohms in bridge-mono mode (up from 210 watts/4 ohms with my old Peavey M-3000 power amp).

Wow! My urge to put some slam in my wham has been satisfied. The low notes definitely hit harder and more coherently, which makes it feel better to maintain a light touch with the plucking hand and devote more focus to how I start and stop notes.

We practice at the guitarist’s house, and his wife was adamant after practice tonight that the overall bass level in the mix coming up the stairs seemed a little lower, but that it had more low-end authority and she could hear more guitar and drum detail. I think she has good ears; that’s how it seemed in the room too. This is one little B48 in a basement with a 100-watt Marshall half stack and a loud drummer!

Man, I’m stoked. Even after realizing the power amp weighs as much as the cab. I’m going macro.
 
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#9,111
mexicanyella said:
Tonight I experienced my Birdhaus 48 being driven by a Crown Micro-Tech 600 power amp I just picked up. This puts out 750 watts into 4 ohms in bridge-mono mode (up from 210 watts/4 ohms with my old Peavey M-3000 power amp).

Wow! My urge to put some slam in my wham has been satisfied. The low notes definitely hit harder and more coherently, which makes it feel better to maintain a light touch with the plucking hand and devote more focus to how I start and stop notes.

We practice at the guitarist’s house, and his wife was adamant after practice tonight that the overall bass level in the mix coming up the stairs seemed a little lower, but that it had more low-end authority and she could hear more guitar and drum detail. I think she has good ears; that’s how it seemed in the room too. This is one little B48 in a basement with a 100-watt Marshall half stack and a loud drummer!

Man, I’m stoked. Even after realizing the power amp weighs as much as the cab. I’m going macro.
Click to expand...

There's definitely something to 8" speakers.
The old Henry the 8x8 that SWR made were super popular for good reason...SLAMMED.
 
#9,112
been_effected said:
There's definitely something to 8" speakers.
The old Henry the 8x8 that SWR made were super popular for good reason...SLAMMED.
Click to expand...

I never saw a Henry in the wild but I remember reading about them and being curious how well they worked.

I’ve only played through this B48 and the Peavey TKO 1 x 15 that preceded it (other than a few interim configurations involving a Scorpion 15-loaded PA cab with a blown horn). But I’ve been running my old power amp (Peavey M-3000) full out, hitting DDT, and it was just enough to pull my weight in the mix...so I was curious whether my shortfall was down to lack of speaker area or lack of watts.

Clearly lack of watts was a significant chunk of the problem. I didn’t get enough time to fully grok how my preamp is interacting with 0.775 V input sensitivity yet and am not yet sure how much “up” I still have above the levels I was running last night. Given my budget shortfalls I really do not want to blow any FaitalPRO 8PR200s. But I can tell a big difference in the authority of the lowest notes with the bigger power amp.

I asked Duke awhile back about speaker selection for a home brew 1 x 12 “helper cab” that would work with the Birdhaus and he had some driver reccomendations and offered to help with port tuning if I do it (as always, what a nice guy!) I’m not yet sure if I’ll need to do that, but I’m still stoked that the wattage increase made as much difference as it did.
 
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#9,113
mexicanyella said:
I asked Duke awhile back about speaker selection for a home brew 1 x 12 “helper cab” that would work with the Birdhaus and he had some driver reccomendations and offered to help with port tuning if I do it (as always, what a nice guy!) I’m not yet sure if I’ll need to do that, but I’m still stoked that the wattage increase made as much difference as it did.
Click to expand...

My TC112AF plus the first prototype Birdhaus 4X8 made a great combination, FWIW.
 
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#9,114
Until recently I played lots of chamber gigs and small venues with a Birdhaus 4x6. It's a great cabinet for moderate volume gigs. Unfortunately, Duke told me the Birdhaus cab's didn't sell well, so he moved on.
They were the perfect cabinet in combination with one of Dukes Changelings or Hathor's for the lows.
 
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#9,115
That’s good to know; thanks for the info.

As part of my “research” I have set the B48 on top of the aforementioned PA cab (Scorpion-loaded Peavey SP5ti, minus the horn) and run both cabs with my old power amp, which should be nearing 300 watts at 2.67 ohms overall.

There was a detectable increase in “sonic mass.” The B48’s detail was still apparent too. The PA cabinet did put out some BLLEAGHHH!!! but so does my overall band, so that wasn’t automatically a deal-breaker. I think I can see, though, that the B48 might benefit from an extra cab to boost the speaker area—even a dissimilar cab—if it was the right one.
 
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#9,117
Passinwind said:
My TC112AF plus the first prototype Birdhaus 4X8 made a great combination, FWIW.
Click to expand...

That's good to know. I have a prototype of the B48 (is there more than 1 in the wild?) and love how it sounds in the rehearsal room. Haven't taken it louder than that. I used to have a B46 and agree with the post above about how well it works in those quieter contexts (the B46 has the same surface area as a 12, if I'm calculating correctly, but not the same oomph due to its dispersal).
 
#9,118
Dee-man said:
That's good to know. I have a prototype of the B48 (is there more than 1 in the wild?) and love how it sounds in the rehearsal room. Haven't taken it louder than that. I used to have a B46 and agree with the post above about how well it works in those quieter contexts (the B46 has the same surface area as a 12, if I'm calculating correctly, but not the same oomph due to its dispersal).
Click to expand...

I suppose so, because you really can't count the two side firing 6" speakers together as a single 12", but you do have the equavelent surface area of a 2x12" cabinet if you add up all the speakers.
 
#9,119
Dee-man said:
That's good to know. I have a prototype of the B48 (is there more than 1 in the wild?) and love how it sounds in the rehearsal room. Haven't taken it louder than that. I used to have a B46 and agree with the post above about how well it works in those quieter contexts (the B46 has the same surface area as a 12, if I'm calculating correctly, but not the same oomph due to its dispersal).
Click to expand...

prototype, huh...is yours one of the sort of giant briefcase-shaped boxes, with the sidemount drivers about halfway up? Saw a photo of one of those somewhere on TB.

Mine is square, looking down at the top of the box, with the side speakers near the top.
 
#9,120
mexicanyella said:
prototype, huh...is yours one of the sort of giant briefcase-shaped boxes, with the sidemount drivers about halfway up? Saw a photo of one of those somewhere on TB.
Click to expand...

Like so?

Birdhaus48.1.JPG



That's the one I had here for testing for a while, in 2015 I think.
 

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