The shallow Peavey 215....new Faital drivers plus rehab

[cornfarmer]

Before you tell me to search, I did. There's no single definitive answer, just the usual subjective stuff....I will be rehabbing this cab and and I am looking for suggestions on good neo drivers to stick in it, probaby Eminence's of some kind, unless Faitals will work well here...? It will stay wired for 4 ohms plus I'll be insulating it, and maybe put some silicone on all the joints too.

 

[JimmyM]

Those Faital 15PR400's do sound good. I don't know if they'll work in your cab, but I've heard of folks throwing them into vintage cabs before and they sound good in them.

 

[cornfarmer]

I am kinda leaning towards those Faitals....I should just pull the dang trigger.

 

[Stumbo]

If you can get the internal volume of the cab and the size of the ports, maybe one of the speaker gurus may chime in.

 

[BBQV]

I went speaker hunting a little while ago and I ended up getting a pair of Fane Sovereign 15-400's. They work well in smallish cabs apparently.
Now, I'm in Europe which probably changes things around financially, but they were the best bang for the buck I could find.

 

[cornfarmer]

If you can get the internal volume of the cab and the size of the ports, maybe one of the speaker gurus may chime in.

Internally, each chamber (there's 2) of the cab is 11.5" deep, 24" wide, and about 19" tall. Each port is 6.5"x6.5"x9" and the speaker baffle is 3/4" thick.

Go to town WinISD nerds!

 

[deeptubes]

I bought a pair of 15" Kappa Pro LF-2s, with the intent of building a pair of 3-ways. After doing some math, I ended up putting them into my Peavey 215. My cab sections are within recommended volume by about 1/4 cu.ft. My cab is different than yours. It has 2 center flat ports. The original speakers have big square magnets. I typically run a tube amp into it, and it sounds big and full.

Only drawback is the weight. They're a little heavier than the originals.

 

[cornfarmer]

I just spent a few hours dicking around in WinISD Pro, kind of a pain in the a$$ when the auto calculator cries out and won't let you save the file. So for kicks I tried out the specs of the Faital 15PR400.

Tuning by port size is tricky with the triangle shape. Tuning the box for 35 Hz (this seems optimal vs. 40-45 Hz), the port length should be tuned to 6-7 inches (or is this depth??? it's not really clear) ....that results in a +3 dB bump around 75-100 Hz, and it rolls off pretty much -6 to -9 dB etc at 40-35 Hz.

For comparison, I tried a Kappalite 3015 tuned for 40 Hz and got a slightly smaller bump, and slightly more roll off. Somebody on TB did a shoot out between these 2 drivers and the Faitals sounded better to me.

yellow = Faital
blue = Kappalite

 

[Bill Whitehurst]

If you think the neo speakers are going to make it a light cab...
you are wrong.
You might drop 20 pounds, but it will still be heavy as sin.
No need to worry about sealing or reinforcing it.
It's already bullet proof.

I like the shelf port version better.
Years back I had one that I put a pair of EVM15Ls in
with no port change at all.
It kicked major booty.
I was glad it had wheels, though.
Too bad someone used them to roll it out of my life.

Years later I came into a triangle port cab and tried that agian.
They will fart out in the triangle cab.

 

[BogeyBass]

from the internal dimensions you have giving you have 3 cubic feet per driver, which is somewhat friendly to most 15" drivers. good for power handling. A smaller 3 cubic foot box is more designed for a speaker with lower Qts like .3 or lower so your vintage Jbl K-140 or EV 15L would work very well and not have such a big bump in the response.
likewise very suited for factory black widow 1502 with Qts of .32
probably why 3015 is working out better i think its Qts is in the .3 range and the ceramic legend should be as well

of course the port would need modifying since its tuned a little to high

if the triangle is 6.5 x6.5 x 9 inches that would be like having a 4.68 x 4.5 square port that is .75 inches deep. basically the depth of the baffle. which would give a tune of approx 60 hz possibly up to 70 hz so its little high tuned

 

[cornfarmer]

^^^ That's helpful, Bogey, I was trying to figure out the port size, and at least I know I am in the ballpark, or at least on the same block.

The Faitals JimmyM referred to above have about the same Qts of .32 so I've got 2 on the way that I got on the cheap. I've just got to figure out the ports....am I looking at enlarging them or making triangular tubez?

 

[cornfarmer]

If you think the neo speakers are going to make it a light cab...
you are wrong.
You might drop 20 pounds, but it will still be heavy as sin.
No need to worry about sealing or reinforcing it.
It's already bullet proof.

I like the shelf port version better.
Years back I had one that I put a pair of EVM15Ls in
with no port change at all.
It kicked major booty.
I was glad it had wheels, though.
Too bad someone used them to roll it out of my life.

Years later I came into a triangle port cab and tried that agian.
They will fart out in the triangle cab.

Thanks, but all that didn't help much. I'm not worried about weight here, but 20 lbs is 20 lbs, so I'll take what I can get. And it's actually not that heavy to me, even with the old drivers in it.

Feel free to go thread crap somewhere else.

 

[BogeyBass]

enlarging the port would raise the tuning, its more about increasing the length of the port, rather than having just the .75 baffle length. either add a piece inside to add length. or plug the triangle port and just drill and add 2 round ports. whatever is easier for you.

depends how much power you plan to put through the speakers, the single triangle could be a little to small. after so many watts of power. velocity gets really high and if its too high you can get chuffing.

im loading the faitals into my library and see what everything looks like, just need a bit to take a look. its little tricky getting things loaded into win isd sometimes, but something looked funny with the transfer function screen you uploaded. it almost looked like 2 drivers shoved in 3 cubic feet by mistake instead of one. cause the faital should work well in 3 cubic

likewise win isd isnt very good with being able to change correction factors, and since that triangle port is sharing one wall or basically the divider between the 2 compartments it could very well be tuned lower in the 40hz range and could be left as is.

if you up to doing a salt/rice test with whatever speakers you have now you could confirm the tuning frequency or Fb of the cab as it sits now before modifying it. and likewise could confirm Fb after mods were made

 

[Bill Whitehurst]

Not really trying to crap on your thread, just some quick comments
on my own experince with these.
Another thought is that at 3 cubic feet per chamber, that's fairly close to the
3.2 of a TL 606.
Maybe start there and tune down.
A little collective brain storming here could breath new life into the millions
of these old cabs that are probably sitting around unused in basements, garages, etc.

 

[cornfarmer]

I'd be interested to see what you find. It took a couple of attempts to get the Faital in WinISD without it complaining, so I might have borked a value somewhere.

It didn't seem to make any difference no matter what power I entered in from what I can tell. My amps range from 70 to 450 watts @ 4 ohms.

 

[cornfarmer]

Not really trying to crap on your thread, just some quick comments
on my own experince with these.
Another thought is that at 3 cubic feet per chamber, that's fairly close to the
3.2 of a TL 606.
Maybe start there and tune down.
A little collective brain storming here could breath new life into the millions
of these old cabs that are probably sitting around unused in basements, garages, etc.

Other folks seem to have done ok upgrading the shallow cab w/ a few different drivers, along with some lining and port tweaks, so I remain optimistic. The data is out there, it just takes sifting through a lot of overly redundant tropes about cabinet weight and guys who let themselves go to seed and now can't lift anything but a beer to their lips while sittin' in their Lay-z-boys.

 

[cornfarmer]

if the triangle is 6.5 x6.5 x 9 inches that would be like having a 4.68 x 4.5 square port that is .75 inches deep. basically the depth of the baffle. which would give a tune of approx 60 hz possibly up to 70 hz so its little high tuned

View attachment 1174223

Looking at your pic again, are you calculating this from both triangular ports combined? The top and bottom chambers each have just the one triangular port.

 

[BogeyBass]

just one port, for each 3 cubic foot section

its just showing one port in the drawing, if you split that single triangle in half and made a square it just shows what the dimensions would be so it can be calculated as a square port.

but yes one port per section

 

[BogeyBass]

Other folks seem to have done ok upgrading the shallow cab w/ a few different drivers, along with some lining and port tweaks, so I remain optimistic. The data is out there, it just takes sifting through a lot of overly redundant tropes about cabinet weight and guys who let themselves go to seed and now can't lift anything but a beer to their lips while sittin' in their Lay-z-boys.

lol yes i agree, a 2x15 isnt that heavy i would use 2 of them

and yes i can post a .wdr of the 15pr400 i used, what might have got you was Faital posted Vas in cubic feet on the data sheet, and win isd uses liters as default. so probably got a slew of errors for that. otherwise got few errors for Qts and Qms. only thing had to change was Qts from .32 to .322 lol :/ sometimes whats entered is correct win isd just wants to see a lower decimal point. often you can erase one parameter and let it auto calculate it. its a shuffle, eventually you learn what parameters will auto calculate and which ones wont. the data still has to be correct

 

[BogeyBass]

for the most part everthing looks fine 3 cubic feet is fine for the Faital and many othe 15" speakers
unless your data is really wrong, i think all that happened was you put 2 drivers inside 3 cubic feet by mistake
just one driver in 3 cubic feet.

only real issue is the actual port tune which could be 60 to 70 hz if you calculate it in win isd, but like i said you cant change
correction factors all to well and technically since it port lines up to the bottom divider, it might appear longer in reality than .75 inches
and be tuned little lower than 60 hz, maybe 55hz make more sense for a widow speaker. likewise its still to high for the faital
a BB4 alignment is 35hz and a QB3 alignment would be 42hz so if we can get that port to 35/40hz everthing will be fine.

as long as port velocity is within say 5 to 8% of speed of sound all good no chuffy duffy basically around 17ms would be great and a total maximum of 26ms would be red lining it.

at 200 watts i was seeing around 20ms for that single factory port, and thats where i was hitting xmax with these drivers. so a pair should be good for 400 watts at 10% distortion and you can push them little past that.

it wouldn't surprise me if peavey just did a basic 606 here 3/ 3.2 cubic at 55hz
and with a 120 /150 watt widow in there velocity is textbook at that power level.