Simplex 12 cabs

[REV]

I'm considering building a Simplex 12 speaker cabinet and I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's built one (how did the build go? ) and what speaker they used.

 

[silky smoove]

I built a 212 using Eminence 3012HO speakers, which were recommended in the assembly documentation. I did not include a high frequency driver and ran the speakers full range. The build came out pretty well. I chose corners that never quite sat right despite all of the angles being 90-degrees. I could have swapped them out for something different and it would have been fine. I opted for a grill cloth rather than a metal speaker grill as a means of not blocking the triangular ports. I built a cloth frame that looked like a big plywood number 8 and stretched the cloth around it. It worked reasonably well, but admittedly I ended up with some waviness in the final cloth after it had settled. I considered removing it and re-stretching it once it settled, but never bothered. The total volume output was positively massive. The tone with the speakers running full range was very throaty and aggressive without considerably EQ. The tone is what made me sell it. I was constantly painting myself into a corner with a lot of EQ moves to get to a similar starting point as my smaller cab I was using at that point, which was a Bergantino HD210. The Bergantino sounded great, but on some large gigs it didn't have enough power, hence me building the Simplex 212. That Bergantino, to this day, is still my favorite sounding cab I've ever owned. I was constantly trying to make the Simplex sound like the Bergantino, and it was ultimately a very a different thing. As far as cabinets that act like a sonic wrecking ball were concerned, it was great. Just not what I was looking for at the time. I sold it to a buddy who still uses it. My recommendation would be to include a high frequency driver and a suitable crossover to keep the drivers working in a more optimal frequency bandwidth for each, which I think would ultimately yield a more pleasant tone than what I ended up with going full range.