Couple questions/ideas about cabs/beaming/driver size

Low frequencies should be from a single source. Placing them apart (if not done properly) can result in cancellations (areas of no bass in the room).

 

More like the crest of one wave hitting the trough of the other wave, giving you nothing.

 

Dispersion is determined by the width of all your drivers. So an 810 works like a 19" driver (Taking in to account the surround of the driver that doesnt move). Hence you 215 has the best dispersion, followed by your 808...

 

If you want to use non-matching cabs, IMHO the best way is to have two separate amps so you can dial in complimentary sounds rather than having one cab at the mercy of however you set your favorite cab.

 

Closer to 22 or 23 inches. Need to add the distance between the drivers.

 

It may seem counterintuitive at first, but the skinny speaker (or array of speakers) spreads the mid and upper frequencies wider than the wide speaker (or array of speakers).

When you stack speakers in a tall, narrow array, you're shifting the beaming to the vertical plane, which usually isn't a bad idea, seeing as audiences can be quite wide, yet the difference in ear level between a short person sitting and a tall person standing might still only be 4 feet.

The tall, skinny stack spreads it wide like a single speaker would, but has narrower directivity (dispersion, beaming, generally same thing here) in the vertical. That's ok because there aren't any ears on the ceiling and the ones on the floor are having so much fun it doesn't matter what you sound like.

 

Man, you have great taste in cabs! I like every single one of those

Your safest bet for even dispersion throughout the room is the Mesa 215. Putting cabs on either side of the drums looks way cooler than it sounds out in the room, sadly.

Played two gigs last night. A guy in the band before us at one of the clubs was using an Ampeg PF800 into an SWR 8x8 and it really did sound good. No PA support and dispersion wasn't perfect, but certainly wasn't terrible. I liked the sound of the cab. Helped him take it offstage and forgot how dang heavy those things are!

The Big Ben doesn't get much love but I always liked them. Trace Elliot made an 118 I liked even more. Buddy of mine rocked two of them back in the day and sounded awesome.

Lately I've been playing a sealed 118 with two mid drivers in an attempt to get the best of a couple worlds. The tight, punchy sealed thing with better power handling, lighter weight and the HF extension of modern cabs. At some point, I'll build myself a second one as well as a 218, just for fun and experimentation

 

The Henry is indeed a big little punch machine.

Always liked those cabs.

Got a sweet spot for the Mesa/EV 15's too. One of my favorites for lower power tube amps.

 

Yep! That Henry 8x8 is my favorite SWR cab. As a kid, the Mesa215 was my favorite...still love em, but yeah, they have their limits

 

Let's say you have two 10" woofers side by side. Imagine you stand ten feet in front of them, and measure the distance from the center of the cone to your ears. The distance is the same for both speakers. So their outputs will add perfectly "in phase" along that axis, for maximum loudness.

Now imagine that you take several steps to one side. Now if you measure the distance to the center of each cone, it is different by several inches. Let's say the difference is four inches. This corresponds to 1/2 wavelength at about 1.6 kHz. So now the output of the far woofer will arrive 1/2 wavelength behind that of the near woofer, which puts it 180 degrees out-of-phase with the near woofer at that frequency, thus their outputs will cancel, and you'll get a big dip in the response.

This has been a somewhat simplified example, but it illustrates the mechanism by which "beaming" occurs. The wider the driver spacing (or larger the cone, as the same thing happens with radiation from the left and right sides of the cone), the narrower the radiation pattern at any given frequency. So if you have two widely spaced cabs, you can get beaming down into the lower midrange and even bass region.

Probably the most obvious example of beaming is the on-axis "icepick" of a 4x12 guitar cab. Move 15 degrees off-axis, and it sounds a lot more balanced. Move 30 degrees off-axis, and it sounds too dull.

Here are some techniques that can minimize beaming in the horizontal plane: Use vertical arrays; use smaller diameter cones; use splayed arrays (like two vertical 210s either splayed out a bit or crossfiring a bit); use a big cone for the low frequencies then cross over to a smaller cone for the mids.

Not everyone will agree with me on this, but imo if you care about "what the audience is hearing", and you're not in the PA, then you cab's radiation pattern matters.

All else being equal, a narrow-pattern cab will "thump" more up close. Out in the audience, the difference is negligible. By way of analogy, imagine a garden hose with a spray nozzle. Set the nozzle for a narrow pattern and it "hits harder" within that small area, while the wide pattern hits more uniformly across a wider area. But both put out the same total amount of water.