First, apologies. The initial responses were along the lines of "you're-doomed-to-failure" and "throw money at it" and the like. Bad timing for my mood, especially since previous to the post, I had spent, like, 3 weeks on an unrelated event where a gap in my knowledge was unerringly perceived as a opportunity for the other person to swing their dick at my face and try and sell me something rather than actually assist. But most y'all are trying to help, so if you're still willing, lets chat.
The cab dimensions I gave are interior measurements, no need (I think) to compensate for any wall thicknesses. I looked online for a modeler to plug my stats into, and was unable to find anything except for car speakers. The non-car-speaker calculators did not ask me for cab dimensions, just what volume I wanted at how many feet away, mostly. If someone could provide a link to a free calculator of the sort that considers the requested dimensions, thank you in advance.
I can spend a few bucks on this, but I am not mister moneybags. Like most musicians, I want the most bang for my buck. I would like to keep it under $300.
It is not necessarily what I am going for as a goal, but the most likely situation that I will apply the final solution to if feasible (and, in fact, the 'hmmmmmmm…..?' moment I had that started this thread) is using the Mark II as the gig amp, and using the K5 for home/practice and the occasional small-rooms. I have other rigs that are my go-to for certain venues and/or depending on which bass I am playing, so I don't have an interest in trying to 'sound like' something specific other than 'not-like-poopie.' Also figuring prominently, this is for sure an experiment in art. I don't need to be hyper-loud, needing only to be able to hear myself over the drummer. My impression is that when I need concert loud (should I ever actually go that route on this hypothetical rig), I am being mic'd up anyway through hopefully good quality full-range PA that can simply reproduces my sound without alteration except volume. It is also my impression this is common knowledge, so if you disagree, I would like to know exactly why you disagree (not so I can argue, but to get the perspective).
I am playing rock'n'roll punk style. Except for an occasional slow song, I am playing full throttle and run a robust (as opposed to mega-) pedalboard. To clarify, this to me is not about volume, its about clarity between those rapid fire triplets and 8th and 16th notes, I like fast decay to prevent that from turning into mud as there are stompboxes for when I need mud, but almost nothing that I know of or used except maybe compressors that effectively gleans precision from slop.
The Kustom rig is teal sparkle, which I am willing to believe most of you have at least seen. Its beautiful. For stage presence in smaller venues, I would like to use the Kustom amp.
However, and this is, as I see it, one of my 2 hard spots that I don't know if there is something I can do or if I am in an you-can't-get-there-from-here scenario and I need to just suck it up. And my hope here, lest there be doubt, is to find the can-do attitude rather than the doomed-to-fail attitude. Especially since, as this is so experimental, that I can't really truely fail except by doing nothing. Moving on, that Mark II has 2 knobs, VLE (vintage loudspeaker emulator) and VPF (variable pre-shape filter), which I affectionately refer to as 'The magic knobs of life.' They work best at higher gain, when I jack it into my higher-power cabs, its like miniature elven craftsmen have descended into my ear canals and are magically re-shaping my eardrums to accommodate that slice of audio heaven I am creating string-side. But for a venue large enough to accommodate this, nobody is even going to see my rig so I don't care about stage presence so much. Hard spot #1 is I love the VLE and VPF knobs way too much, but the teal sparkle gets the babes (so to speak, its just sexy as shag, and it initiates TONS of conversation with complete strangers, which is, like, reason #2 I am even a musician).
Hard spot #2, and to me a much bigger bump, is that the Kustom amp wants 8 ohms of impedance. On a technical level, this is arguable, with a lot of folks saying they can take 4 ohm => short story, I am 10000000% convinced they want 8 ohm. My 3 biggest reasons are, 1) Kustom schematics says so if you are willing to do the math, 2) I have actually broke open a virgin cab of this model and discovered 2 JBL goldbacks that were 16 ohms each and wired in parallel. And 3) even more compelling, the current speakers, which are presenting 4 ohm to the Kustom head, fart. Using other amps and cabs for reference, I have isolated the farting to impedance mismatch as near as I can tell. Admittedly, there must be a complicating issue with the head, I don't think it is handling power transients on the back end as it should, but definitely can blame speaker fart in this case on the impedance mismatch. What I take away from this is that if I want to use the Kustom head *AT ALL* then I need to have 2x 16 ohm in parallel or 2x 4 ohm in series. I am not liking the series idea, but would adopt it if there was a solution here and series was the only way to make it happen. But, who makes a stock 16 ohm 15" woofer, much less a 16 ohm 15" woofer in an appropriate power level with an SPL of at least 90-95 that doesn't cost a billion dollars? The answer is, nobody I have been able to find. This singular fact is the A-#1 reason (well, okay, A-#2) I am even considering an exotic rig => 'correct' speaker selection is almost non-existent.
And although I am slightly dubious about the idea, a friend suggested that as long as the power ratings of the 2 drivers matched, and the amp impedance matching was accounted for, I could operate - for example - 2 100W speakers in the same cab, one being a straight very-low-end woofer and another woofer that was more accommodating to midrange. But that friend says a lot of things. I know this is how normal PA-type speakers are cabbed, but kind of curious if anyone has tried something like this and liked the results, or otherwise discovered anything interesting.
I am not aware of a newer, updated version for a modern day Mac.
