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Beta tester wanted for lightweight 2x12

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#62
Thanks for the information on the Berg horn. I suppose what constitutes a big horn in one context would be a small horn in another; paired with a 6" woofer that would be a "big horn" but with a 12" woofer in my opinion it's a "smal horn".

That big cab that Alex posted a picture of looks about right to me.

lbwdog, what I miss maybe even more than crawfish is a big oyster poboy. Whereabouts do you live?
 
#64
Long beach... [smacks forehead] duh, it's right there below your moniker.

I'm from New Orleans (also lived in Clinton, not far from McComb, for a number of years). Sorry we didn't cross paths when I was there, but I wasn't into prosound back then.

Lemme catch up on a few other things...

Ashtray, I suspect that the reason you didn't like those cabs had to do with something other than their magnet material. Maybe they were undersized? That's pretty much inevitable when pushing the "lightweight" end of the spectrum, and my lightweight cab is no exception. Still, you've sort of laid down a challenge, and I love a challenge...

CrUiSeR, I am relatively unskilled when it comes to skinning rats and strecthing their hides across bass cabs. I plan to use several coats of Duratex, and I'm thinking of including little cans of Duratex so that owners can do touch-up jobs as needed.

Rokkitt & dannster, yup I already got someone, but thank you very much for your offer.

Trevorus, thanks for the additional information. I bet that Berg cab is awewome; from what I understand, Jim is a superb crossover designer. In the two-way cabs I'm working on I probably won't shoot for a real extended top end - probably 7 or 9 kHz is all, this based on reading a lot of threads here where tweeters seem to often do more harm than good.
 
#67
DukeLeJeune said:
CrUiSeR, I am relatively unskilled when it comes to skinning rats and strecthing their hides across bass cabs. I plan to use several coats of Duratex, and I'm thinking of including little cans of Duratex so that owners can do touch-up jobs as needed.

Trevorus, thanks for the additional information. I bet that Berg cab is awewome; from what I understand, Jim is a superb crossover designer. In the two-way cabs I'm working on I probably won't shoot for a real extended top end - probably 7 or 9 kHz is all, this based on reading a lot of threads here where tweeters seem to often do more harm than good.
Click to expand...
Dang, I was hoping my test cab would come with blue checker tolex, or better yet, the long-lost and lamented navy random flair (anyone want to chip in on a mill run? Should only be a couple hundred thousand) ;) Oh well, Duratex is probably the way to go in this day and age. It looks good from the stage, and is almost indestructible.

BTW, good call on the 2-way with a 7-9k rolloff. I think that's plenty, at least for me. The 20k tweeter thing is great if you're Marcus Miller, and I really love his playing, but for me, it just causes irritation.
 
#68
alexclaber said:
Eye-test? ;)

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It's about 7" across at best!

Now this is a big horn tweeter:

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That's a 15" woofer below it, they cross over at 500Hz!

Alex
Click to expand...

Everything is relative. Let me restate, in all the bass cabs I've seen and owned (which is most of them:D) this series of Berg cabs has the largest horn in it I've ever seen (versus the small bullet tweeter used in 99% of other bass cabs I'm familiar with), and seems to have a much lower crossover point than anything else I've experienced in a classic '2 way cab with tweeter'. As a result, that line of Berg cabs had a unique tone.... very deep, somewhat mid shy (I assume due to the tuning and driver design), and a unique top end that had a lot of upper mid/lower treble coming out of the horn. If you turned that 'tweeter' off, many of the HT cabs sounded like a subwoofer. So, conceptually, IMO and IME, this cab was closer in concept to a three way design than a standard two way BASS cab (in that much of the higher frequency information, even the lower treble and top end of the mids, was handled by the horn, or in the case of a three way, the small mid driver, versus the top end of the woofer).

And, that horn MORE than kept up with the woofers.
 
#69
DukeLeJeune said:
Thanks for the information on the Berg horn. I suppose what constitutes a big horn in one context would be a small horn in another; paired with a 6" woofer that would be a "big horn" but with a 12" woofer in my opinion it's a "smal horn".

That big cab that Alex posted a picture of looks about right to me.
Click to expand...

+1 Per my post above, remember, we are talking about bass guitar cabs here, not PA boxes, which typically (to my ear) sound like dog with an electric bass.

I again was comparing this Berg design to BASS cabs, and that's the largest 'tweeter' I've yet seen in a bass cab, and also, to my ear, was crossed over quite low (don't know how low;.... 1k versus the typical 4K?).
 
#73
Hi Brad,

I've never actually heard a Schroeder... just admire the way Jorg identified a need and found innovative ways to meet it, apparently to the satisfaction of many people.

Tone-wise, well let's see... something has to give with a lightweight cab, so I'm giving up some deep bass extension in exchange for acceptable efficiency, and I've kept an eye on excursion-limited power handling so that a fair amount of bass boost can be cranked in if you're using a low-E tuning. With low-B, well we could run into problems if you boost that 31 Hz fundamental, but unboosted we'd have to get pretty loud before fartout. Across the rest of the spectrum I'm trying to avoid over-emphasizing any one frequency region while placing a higher priority on the reverberant field response than on the direct response. By "reverberant field", I mean the sound that's bouncing around the room, as opposed to the sound that reaches your ears straight from the cab. How all of this translates to "tone", I don't really have the vocabulary to say with any precision, so let me put it this way: If what I'm doing works as hoped, what people hear will sound a little more like a bass instrument and a little less like a cab, because the cab will be interacting with its environment more like a real instrument. That probably sounds like marketspeak at this point, but for now I'm keeping the details to myself (and my two beta testers, who are sworn to secrecy for now).
 
#75
Trevorus said:
That sounds like a difficult task given the myriad of situations and rooms that people tend to play in. Ought to be an interesting product!
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Trev, I can't say anything about it, but I can say it ought to be quite interesting to see how it works. I have to say though that Duke didn't just fall off the back of the turnip truck yesterday ;) He's approaching legendary status in the world of audiophile speakers (Google "audio kinesis" and you get nothing but glowing reviews of his cabs) and he's put a lot of thought into making these cabs, and if it works like he says it will, it should be badass. If it doesn't, oh well. But it won't be for lack of effort, that's for sure.
 
#76
DukeLeJeune said:
Hi Brad,

I've never actually heard a Schroeder... just admire the way Jorge identified a need and found innovative ways to meet it, apparently to the satisfaction of many people.

Tone-wise, well let's see... something has to give with a lightweight cab, so I'm giving up some deep bass extension in exchange for acceptable efficiency, and I've kept an eye on excursion-limited power handling so that a fair amount of bass boost can be cranked in if you're using a low-E tuning. With low-B, well we could run into problems if you boost that 31 Hz fundamental, but unboosted we'd have to get pretty loud before fartout. Across the rest of the spectrum I'm trying to avoid over-emphasizing any one frequency region while placing a higher priority on the reverberant field response than on the direct response. By "reverberant field", I mean the sound that's bouncing around the room, as opposed to the sound that reaches your ears straight from the cab. How all of this translates to "tone", I don't really have the vocabulary to say with any precision, so let me put it this way: If what I'm doing works as hoped, what people hear will sound a little more like a bass instrument and a little less like a cab, because the cab will be interacting with its environment more like a real instrument. That probably sounds like marketspeak at this point, but for now I'm keeping the details to myself (and my two beta testers, who are sworn to secrecy for now).
Click to expand...

Duke, that's the brunt of what my current Bag End rig is doing (coax 1-15, coax 1-10). It doesn't sound like a couple of boxes, it sounds like my basses. It would be interesting to see if it could be improved on in a useful way. Hence my interest in your project. I'm perfectly happy with what I have but if someone could achieve the next to impossible...;)

BTW I mainly use fives and sixes. My Bag Ends were designed before the current lightweight thing but since they're small, they're relatively light.

Low end reproduction is one of those things that many builders attain at the expense of something else... it overpowers other frequencies in many cases and while some bassists like that, I never have... unless I was a dub player. I still want to move some air but not in the "Jeep with a big sub cranked up two blocks away" fashion. What I have is something that sounds great across the bass guitar sound spectrum and if I want to dial in more of anything I can easily accomplish that.

Good luck.
 
#77
Trevorus, the ideal implementation of my concept calls for a two-way cab, which is what JimmyM's beta-test cab will be. But the driver I'm using fullrange in the lightweight cab has characteristics that make it well-suited for its job.

I keep using the word "lightweight", which of course is a relative term; what's lightweight in one application is too heavy in another. In this case the weight is 36 pounds, which is lighter than some but not as light as others.

Brad, your description makes a lot of sense to me, as one thing coaxials are exceptionally good at is the reverberant field response. Unfortunately no off-the-shelf coaxial drivers have the parameters I'm looking for, or else they're too darned expensive (B&C has a NICE 15" coaxial, but it's very expensive).
 
#78
DukeLeJeune said:
Trevorus, the ideal implementation of my concept calls for a two-way cab, which is what JimmyM's beta-test cab will be. But the driver I'm using fullrange in the lightweight cab has characteristics that make it well-suited for its job.

I keep using the word "lightweight", which of course is a relative term; what's lightweight in one application is too heavy in another. In this case the weight is 36 pounds, which is lighter than some but not as light as others.

Brad, your description makes a lot of sense to me, as one thing coaxials are exceptionally good at is the reverberant field response. Unfortunately no off-the-shelf coaxial drivers have the parameters I'm looking for, or else they're too darned expensive (B&C has a NICE 15" coaxial, but it's very expensive).
Click to expand...

The B&C 12 coaxial is WONDERFUL (and you are correct... expensive!). I had a small 112 made by Don at Low Down with that speaker, and it just sounded beautiful! TBer Vision is using it now. It's a very warm driver with a very natural top end.

With bass backline, my feeling and experience is that speaker placement, etc. is a bit over-emphasized by some. I went the coax route to get the box as small as I could. The high end sounded like all my other non coax cabs to my ear, both on and off axis.

+1 to Brad above. Deep low end is GREATLY over-rated when talking about bass backline in a mix.
 
#79
KJung said:
With bass backline, my feeling and experience is that speaker placement, etc. is a bit over-emphasized by some.
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On larger stages and with good PA support that is true, but on smaller and often poorly designed and constructed stages, placement can make or break ya. People from one side of the divide often don't seem to get what the other side is talking about...

Same with LF response. It isn't necessarily cabs with a deep reach that are "boomy" or "muddy" - more often than not it's cabs with big midbass humps and LESS LF extension, and less midrange dispersion, that earn that notoriety. Even power response and headroom throughout the spectrum alleviates that.

I'm certain that Duke is aiming for a smooth curve at the low end, and good power response that makes the sound off-axis much like it is on-axis.
 
#80
DukeLeJeune said:
Trevorus, the ideal implementation of my concept calls for a two-way cab, which is what JimmyM's beta-test cab will be. But the driver I'm using fullrange in the lightweight cab has characteristics that make it well-suited for its job.

I keep using the word "lightweight", which of course is a relative term; what's lightweight in one application is too heavy in another. In this case the weight is 36 pounds, which is lighter than some but not as light as others.

Brad, your description makes a lot of sense to me, as one thing coaxials are exceptionally good at is the reverberant field response. Unfortunately no off-the-shelf coaxial drivers have the parameters I'm looking for, or else they're too darned expensive (B&C has a NICE 15" coaxial, but it's very expensive).
Click to expand...

I'm really looking forward to whatever you come up with. Sounds like we're on the same mission.
:D
 
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