Peavey's First Folded Horn.

It's probably the FH-1. The style is called a W Horn or W Bin. There were a lot of them in the 60s and 70s from the likes of JBL and EV and Ampeg too. One of the first was the Klipsch LaScala in 1963.

 

Yes, IIRC the FH 1 and the bottom of the SP-1, they were quite efficient from about 60Hz on up which was beneficial at that point in evolutionary time. They had poor extension below 60Hz, but this could be improved somewhat by coupling multiple cabinets together.

 

58-500 hz!

PEAVEY FH 1 SPECIFICATIONS Pdf Download.

 

So Peavey used a 4 ohm driver in this 8ohm nominally rated cabinet which did cause some problems since there was a significant region of bandwidth in the 6 ohm range which could cause some amps to go into protective VI limiting (exclusive to linear (class AB/G/H) amps of the day) which sounds particularly nasty.

There were also many different versions of the FH1 and SP1 using different drivers, so my comments should be taken in context.

 

The FH1 didn't have a grill cloth. They did have a box that was similar to the Acoustic 360 cabinet, a d to the EV Eliminator PA box. We got a used one into our store which had a Cerwin Vega driver. We swapped it for a BW for a buddy of mine. Sounded pretty good with my Music Man HD-130, and with a Marshall Major too

 

i also remember the big peavey W bin, the FH-2. one of my first soundgigs was working for a guy who had a couple of these as subs.

stupid things had two 15s facing each other deep inside the box, which meant that as big and bulky as they were i couldn't stand them up vertically to get the tops any height over them! turns out in bars and such stray foosballs and bottle caps and other junk would find their way inside the bins, then if you stood them up tallways the detritus would bounce around on the lower 15, eventually puncturing it, at which point it would lose air loading and quickly blow, followed by the other 15

 

A lot of bands used the FH-2 for stage extension.

 

They are pretty sturdy, make a good front edge of a stage.

 

Where do you think the FH and SP bottoms evolved from? This was a common format in pro audio of the day, so Peavey adopting it for bass guitar (like Sunn and Cerwin Vega) was a no brainer. It then evolved into their PA line. We mentioned those because they are FAR more common and players here would be familiar with them.

Peavey started with guitar and bass amps primarily, then expanded into PA. Their early PA speakers were simply their guitar speaker re-purposed.

 

The cab you are asking about was Peaveys take on the Cerwin Vega B-48 that had the Cerwin Vega 18" driver . Very much like the Acousic 360- 371 cabs . It was named B-48 partly because it was 48 inches tall . Kustom had one and Fender also had a cab very much like it all with Cerwin Vega 18" speakers . I had a pair of the smaller 18" loaded Peavey cabs back then and a buddy of mine got a gig in Minneapolis with a fairly big name band and wanted to use my two smaller cabs with them and traded me his bigger Peavey cab , the one you are asking about for my two cabinets . I used that cab with my SVT in 1984 for a house gig I had for about 9 months . Great cab , better mids than you would think and would take anything my SVT would put out . Very good cabs for that time.

I would not trade my newer cabs for those for anything though , the newer cabs sound way more full range with better mids and highs and still have great low end . Back in the early 70's you either used cabs with JBL D 140s to get great full range sound or used cabs with Cerwin Vega 18s . The Cerwin Vega loaded cabs would kill on the low E but weren't very even on the mids . The JBL loaded cabs gave way more full range sound with mids and low end but you had to use quite a few to really keep up and the amps back then weren't real powerhouses . The Cerwin Vega loaded cabs were the best comprimise at the time for me , Made quite a bit of money with them back then .

 

i’ll take “gear nobody misses today” for 800 please alex

 

I had the rig in that ad, a then-current Bass head on top of that folded 18. It was one of those things that I thought I just had to have until I bought it and gigged with it for a while . . . . . . It was like all Peavey bass rigs back then: It had the tone of a box of corn flakes, but if it fell off a 6-story building, it would probably still work.

Did I say it was heavy ? No ? It was heavy.

A real sleeper in the Peavey PA bins in those days was the later SP2 sitting on top of a single 18 front-firing bass or PA cab (the same thing in two different parts of the price list . . . . . ). Made a killer keyboard rig for the Yamaha portable grands and synths, a high-end bass rig, or a great small to medium Elks Lodge PA, and if you biamped it, the smallest PA that would handle drums, if used sensibly.

I shudder to think how many mom and pop music store owners made a killing with Peavey in those days.

 

I played through a lot of folded horns back in the day. I still own a Cerwin-Vega B-36 MF, and a Sunn 2-15 SH. I personally prefer 36" 'J' boxes, over 48" 'W' boxes. I played a 36" Mitchell FH, that kicked butt.
Those Peavey's were VERY large, deep cabs.. a bit deeper than the 360/ 301, and the CV-B-48 cabs, If I remember correctly. Maybe it was just perceived.. it might be the Traynor 1-18 FH a friend had that was really big. It seems like as I look around, they all were similar... The biggest, deepest one I remember, was the Marshall 1-18 Folded horn. And those sounded awful.
The Ampeg V4B's (2-15's) seemed to be even larger. There is nothing quite like the low end response with horns, for bass. Even the best cabs I own now, do not have that 'whip-snap punch' as I used to call it, that a low 'E' has through one at volume. My most 'boutique' cabs will fart at power levels I routinely sent to my folded horns. My C-V B-36 MF, with an added tweeter, is perhaps my favorite stand alone cab of all time. Sadly, it's unusable in almost every musical situation nowadays. And, it's way too big to haul around- although when I was younger, it was nothing too big at all.

 

I believe this was the first folded horn Peavey had. It was made late 60's, the cabs for the Peavey Dyna Bsaa amp. A 250 watt head and two matching cabs. The top was square, unlike some pictured above. the head and one cab had the same serial number, and the other cab had the next sequential number.

 

I remember having 2 of these monsters but they had 2 long throw 12s in them.

 

If memory serves me correctly - they made the tall 1x18 folded horn cab as shown in the pictures, and also a short 1x18 folded horn cabinet

 

I've always thought that the popularity of horns back then, when power was expensive, was because they would get very loud with a minimum of power - 200 solid-state watts or so.

 

It was also about the limitations of the drivers. The same driver in a horn could equal at least four of them in a direct radiating cab. Better drivers and cheaper watts made horns less popular, but in PA at least they've come back strong. Danley Sound Labs is one example, but most of the major players in touring PA are heavily into horns again.