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Gauss 5842 for a cab?

BassNeo

BassNeo

Guest
May 10, 2011
439
14
Kingston, ON, Canada
#1
I was given a custom built speaker enclosure by a relative who had no time or use for it. He said it had a speaker in it, but didn't know what it was or if it worked.

Last night I took the enclosure apart and found a Gauss 5842 that wasn't hooked up to the cab.

The enclosure measures 14 X 16 X 24 and has a 3" port. I have tried the speaker and it works cleanly, but haven't pushed it as of yet. I am having no luck on the specs of this speaker, other than it is a 400 watt, 8 ohm speaker with an xmax of .040"

Would this be suitable for use as a bass cab, am I building another enclosure or is this a lost cause entirely?
 
#2
The Gauss were very good drivers IMHO. I have long since lost my spec sheets. Gauss or Cetec Gauss folded some time ago, University Sound were the first one to pickup the patents from Gauss (University was then bought by Electro Voice). I don't know if EV kept the spec sheets from University Sound.
 
#3
I seem to recall Gauss being a premium speaker. 400 watts isn't much today but in the seventies that was a lot. I recall Tim Bogart bragging about a 1000 watt system. I think you needed a small truck to move it. It was a monster.

Now most stacks can do that.
 
#5
gene beauchamp said:
Gauss are great. I used to have a marshall 4-12 with 4 of them and it killed. The fact of the cabinet being ported gives you a lot of room. The speaker don't have to match the cabinet perfect like a sealed cabinet.
Click to expand...

Uh, no. Just no. :rollno: :scowl: :bawl: :hmm: :eyebrow: :atoz: :crying:

To the OP:

Try it out and use your ears. If the cab starts to fart out back off the volume. IMHO an xMax of 0.04" is very very low. You should not expect to get a who lot of low end volume out of that particular speaker before it is hitting its mechanical limits.

For reference, the full range 15" speaker I would be looking to use has an xMax of 0.23" (5.9 mm).
 
#10
B-string said:
The Gauss were very good drivers IMHO. I have long since lost my spec sheets. Gauss or Cetec Gauss folded some time ago, University Sound were the first one to pickup the patents from Gauss (University was then bought by Electro Voice). I don't know if EV kept the spec sheets from University Sound.
Click to expand...

There used to be a nice Telex archive site with a lot of that stuff on there, not sure if it still is up though.

I'm not familiar with that driver, but I did gig with a horn-loaded Gauss 18 for a while back in the 80s quite happily.
 
#12
As far as the Xmax spec I was given, it was a hand-typed chart from a random forum I found while trying to search for info, not an actual technical spec. I too thought that seemed to be really shallow, especially given the size of this monster. I've hooked it up and played it a bit, but I haven't pushed it very hard... Yet... I just don't want to start really working it and smoke it..
 

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