does anyone even make w bin bass cabinets anymore?

[Steve Dallman]

I gigged with a big Carvin 2x15 folded horn cabinet in the mid to late 70’s….first driven with a Carbon bass head, and soon with an SVT head. I loved it and was young enough to schlep it. It filled a room nicely and I could hear it just fine onstage. We practiced in my living room and it was fine there too.

 

[bobfarabaugh]

I played one of the Ampeg V4-B cabinets, interesting tone, but you couldn't hear it very well, standing next to it, but 20 or so feet in front, it would liquidize internal organs, the throw of those cabinets is pretty amazing, for an outside gig, maybe yes, small/medium bar/club, hell no, gotta have a pick-up truck or Suburban, to haul one around, there are a few, still around, if your willing to wait, in your search, to build one, you'll need some good cabinetry skills, to build the horn section

View attachment 4433316

I remember pushing mine down the sidewalk a couple blocks to high school once with the V4 head on top. Band director looked really scared when he saw it. It was indeed louder the further you got away from it. I got mine for a $200 with the V4 head in about 1985 because they were not in vogue at the time. People had moved to bi-amped rigs.

 

[pie_man_25]

I've read some old papers on horns, I believe by dinsdale and Olson. Frankly, they're great for tweeters, probably midrange too, within the frequencies they're designed to work with they're great, they'll go louder and have less distortion within those frequencies with less power than a regular system. What's not to like? Well, I wouldn't particularly want to lug one of those to a crappy bar show. The lower the frequencies go, the bigger the horn needs to be, which also increases weight, manufacturing complexity, and material cost.

granted, and having wanted to look into a similar thing at one point, their size dictates a certain rule of cool. I'll take my 115

that doesn't mean that these old cabs or horns in general are all bad either, I can see them working very well for pa stuff and larger shows.

 

[DJ Bebop]

At least up until recently, the revamped Acoustic (that is, the real Acoustic, not the GC house brand) was making a modernized version of the folded horn cabinets from yore.

Acoustic USA Launches With Revamped 360/361 Bass Rig

Some were sold here that Flea own.
SOLD - Acoustic 360/ 361 Bass Rigs USA Made w/ Cases (LAST 1 Available) Freight shipping available for 0

 

[iammr2]

View attachment 4433488 My first decent bass rig, about a thousand years ago, included a Sunn 215SH like the one pictured. I didn't love it. It put the loudness in the back of the room. The sound guys were pointing their fingers down and I couldn't hear myself. They said it also sounded boomy.

Jim Bergantino doesn't make a folded horn bass cab. Coincidence?

I had two rigs like this, except mine had the center brace in the horn. Need some wind? Coming right up!

Used an SVT with them one night. THAT was a tone monster!

 

[bertthebassist]

I had an old Sunn B115 that I use to roll into the back of a '77 Honda Civic. (After I slid it up the carpeted stairs, because I lived in the basement.)
I loved the sound, and it weighed less when I was younger and lifting.

 

[funkinbottom]

Maybe you can find a ‘50s version like one of these, only 2/3 the size of an Acoustic 18” folded horn. Still awkward to cart around.
View attachment 4433104

A Karlson? That's really dated! Although Acoustic did put out the Karlson-based BC-2 combo. I liked it when I tried it, but there was no way I was taking it home on the bus.
View attachment 4433414

Ahhh, the Karlson. I still have some Jurasic stuff hangin' around.

 

[bertthebassist]

I found a picture!

and I powered it with a Sunn Beta Bass head

No wonder the new stuff doesn't seem to sound "right"

 

[Johnny Fingers]

When using an Ampeg SVT with two 8/10 cabinets I was never asked to turn down.

When using an Acoustic 370 with two 371 18” cabinets I kept getting asked to turn down.

If I needed them and had room I would still have both; with two roadies and a one ton van to move the suckers.

Since I don’t I’ll keep what I have now which is enough of a workout.

 

[hennessybass]

Steamboat Amps in Houston TX has one - custom made.
I played it along with a custom amp - 60w take on a B15.

Pretty rad set up... but BIG!

 

[Tom Kinter]

Back in 1971 I had spent 2 summers in college working for a pipe organ restoration guy who was a real snob audiophile (strictly McIntosh and Bozak... he and his buds were fanatical on the reproduction of E. Power Biggs' organ recordings which were done on instruments that got down to the 20hz range (stopped 32' pipes e.g.). one dude whose system I worked on had the speakers in the wall with long chambers under the floor...

Anyway for my last year in college, off campus with two room-mates, I built a pair of these (3-way w/ jensen crossovers) just because I must have been nuts. I mean from scratch with hand power tools, not from any kit. They were refrigerators. And they sounded great. I had a really nice Sherwood amp running them and I often used to play my bass through that stereo rig and it was amazing... but moving the pair of them??? What was I thinking?

 

[ctmullins]

Ah, the days before Thiele/Small….

 

[D.A.R.K.]

Horn loaded systems (for Reggae sound systems and DJ use) are actually alive and well, and there's quite a revival of it in sound clash and rave culture. Lots of designs available, and builders making the stuff if you look around. While wood costs are crazy, it's still relatively inexpensive to have these designs built and loading them yourself, compared to purchasing many modern name brand cabs.
Here's a huge brand name in that world, I've actually mixed bands on these systems a few times and it was awesome, check the product page and look at the subs: Funktion-One | Products

 

[Rip Van Dan]

I had a Standel MCIIb/SAM30b that I toured with in 1970. It was not a real big amp although it was quite deep, easily twice as deep as the 1966 Fender Bassman amp I traded in for it. Original price was $1150 and I got it for $850 plus, they gave me $400 trade in for my blackface Bassman amp. It was really an unusual amp. Similar to the acoustic 360 it had a preamp head plus powered speakers. The speaker cab had two 15" CTS speakers in it with a reflex channel behind the speakers to channel anything coming out the back around the side of the speakers and out of the 4 circular ports mounted vertically next to the speakers. Each of those 15" CTS speakers had its own 100-watt amp driving it for a total of 200-watts. The head was just a preamp. The speakers were perfectly matched to that power though. The amp was crazy LOUD with absolutely no distortion at all.

That was another one of those speaker cabs that projected and blossomed out front. There was a huge amount of air coming out of the ports next to the speakers and they would make my bell-bottoms flap if I got within about 3-feet of them. Yet it wasn't very loud on the stage itself. First night I used it instead of my Bassman amp I turned it half way up. Used to turn my Bassman up to 7 but above that the speakers would fart. Well this was clear as a bell and sounded good on the stage of this 700-person occupancy club.

Pretty soon, I noticed that the folks in the tables at the back wall all had their hands over their ears. So our female vocalist walked back there and told me I needed to turn down, that I was way too loud. So I dropped down to #4 on the dial and that was still too loud. Finally turned it down to #3 (9 o'clock) and played the rest of our 2-week engagement at that level. I found out I couldn't run it over #3 on the volume dial indoors anywhere we played for the next almost 3-years. I would turn it half way up at an outdoor festival where there was nothing but open fields around, but 3 was the limit indoors. After touring for 3-years with this amp and my '65 Jazz Bass, I still used it for weekend gigs while I had a normal job raising a family. Then in 1976 all my touring gear was stolen. Would probably still use that amp at least from time to time if I still had it.

You can see part of it in the pic below from 1971:

 

[agedhorse]

Horn loaded systems (for Reggae sound systems and DJ use) are actually alive and well, and there's quite a revival of it in sound clash and rave culture. Lots of designs available, and builders making the stuff if you look around. While wood costs are crazy, it's still relatively inexpensive to have these designs built and loading them yourself, compared to purchasing many modern name brand cabs.
Here's a huge brand name in that world, I've actually mixed bands on these systems a few times and it was awesome, check the product page and look at the subs: Funktion-One | Products

Of course many of the home brew products are abysmal with terrible linear response (one-ish note bass). In fact, good low frequency horn designs take a fair amount of math and compromise (along with being quite large by necessity)

Funktion-One came out of Tony Andrews and John Newsham's work after they left TurboSound. Both are experienced designers, much of the experience initially gained from practical experimentation but later became much more scientific.

 

[D.A.R.K.]

Of course many of the home brew products are abysmal with terrible linear response (one-ish note bass). In fact, good low frequency horn designs take a fair amount of math and compromise (along with being quite large by necessity)

Funktion-One came out of Tony Andrews and John Newsham's work after they left TurboSound. Both are experienced designers, much of the experience initially gained from practical experimentation but later became much more scientific.

Yes indeed, it's really nice that in that world, so much of the hard work has been done already, proven and is available to the public. There's also the advent of listening rooms becoming popular, and seeing the high end of the designs appear in public spaces. I'm a big fan of it, as long as I don't have to move it. I follow a lot of sound system folks in the UK, it's going off there like mad, starting to see more and more here in the US.

 

[Iristone]

The Acoustic 360/370 system had very well-designed heads (or preamp + power amp combos), and could output to more than one cabinet - the low end could come from the folded horn, and the high end from a regular cabinet. John Entwistle used to play his Sunn (and later Ashdown) rig this way, too.
IIRC the Acoustic design later evolved into SWR (Steve Rabe used to work for Acoustic), and then Eden. Maybe you could start from there and fine tune your sound.

 

[LiquidMidnight]

Acoustic USA Launches With Revamped 360/361 Bass Rig

Some were sold here that Flea own.
https://reverb.com/item/17823529-acoustic-usa-360-361m-bass-stack

Apparently there's one up for sale on Reverb: SOLD - Acoustic 360/ 361 Bass Rigs USA Made w/ Cases (LAST 1 Available) Freight shipping available for 0

Even with S&H, that's a pretty good price, especially considering what they were going for brand new when they first came out.

 

[GreyBeard]

Back in the 70's I was playing Trombone in a BS&T/Chicago cover band called MALE BOX. Roger, the bass player, had a Kustom 200 with the tall 3x15 cab loaded with JBL's and a Sun 200S with 2x15 JBL's. The guitar player Jimmy had a Marshall 100w with 4x12's and the vocals came through 4 Altec A7's. Roger was pushing close to 300 watts into 5x15's and was having a hard time keeping up. He traded it all in for an Acoustic 360/361. He had no more problem keeping up.

 

[Pdaddy1978]

I played through a folded horn cab, with an 18 in Cerwin Vega in it, for about 4 years back in the late 70s.
My band mates named it " The Pig ", after helping me schlep it around.
I went through 3 sets of handles and 3 sets of casters.
It did boom! ....God, did it ever boom...
But,..no....never again.