Bill Fitzmaurice

[quote name='Nostromo' post='1274087' date='Jun 18 2011, 03:28 PM']I wouldn't know what effect that would have on the sound/tone/character of the cab ? . .[/quote]Not that much. They did manage to get a pretty good result with some of those old cabs. But it was all trial and error, and with a software designed cab there's no trial, and more important, no error. You can get the best possible result from the drivers used with the smallest possible cab. For example, the JBL 4625 electric bass cab loaded the E140 into a 127 liter (net) 40kG cab. It embodied the best of what designers knew circa 1980. It's twice the size and weight required.

[quote name='Mr. Foxen' post='1273870' date='Jun 18 2011, 11:03 AM']He is looking for a 70s design, not looking to design a new cab. A 70s speaker in a 70s design cab that would have had that speaker in will give you a 70s sound, which I would kind of hope is his design goal here. Suggesting he make a new design, with knowledge he doesn't have applied to specifications that aren't available is astoundingly unhelpful.[/quote] If advising someone to use an archaic intrinsically flawed design that doesn't bring out the best that the drivers used can offer is helpful I'll always choose to be unhelpful, astoundingly or otherwise. But I won't deny the value of those 60s cabs, having to suffer their inadequacies was the impetus for my learning how to design better cabs than I could buy.

You'd design a cab for D140s the same way as you would for any other driver, using a program like WinISD Alpha Pro and the driver T/S specs. Specs for the D140 are not available, unless you measure them yourself, but those for the D130 will be close enough, as it was almost identical. Copying a vintage cab wouldn't get you anywhere near as good as a result, as those cabs were all 'seat of the pants' designs that worked far from as well as possible. Take the Sunn, for instance. That is[i] not [/i] a rear-loaded folded horn. The designer, Conrad Sundholm, didn't even know what a rear-loaded folded horn was, let alone how to design one. He'd just seen the term and used it to describe the 200S, despite not having a clue what it meant.

[quote name='MatthewKeys' post='1269471' date='Jun 14 2011, 07:02 PM']Is there any problems with leaving a cabinet in a car for a long period of time? like, for weeks?[/quote]As long as you won't mind it when you find it gone.

[quote name='LawrenceH' post='1266057' date='Jun 12 2011, 08:53 AM']Manner, please! This isn't talkbass[/quote] Point of order, but acoustical engineers don't refer to accepted acoustical engineering practice as 'old wives tales', so clearly Phil does not earn his living designing loudspeakers. Not good speakers, anyway. And being named Phil I doubt that he is himself an old wife either. If she is her parents owe her an apology for giving her a gender inappropriate name.

[quote name='Phil Starr' post='1263233' date='Jun 9 2011, 03:40 PM']All this stuff about not mixing drivers is just an old wives tale.[/quote]And old acoustical engineers. From your response I gather you're neither. The advantage to identical drivers is that you always know what you'll get. With mixed drivers you never know what you'll get until you've got it, and that can turn out to be an expensive experiment.

[quote name='Wooks79' post='1263326' date='Jun 9 2011, 04:47 PM']SO I blew a speaker, and I dunno what I should get to replace it, as I always keep reading that they need to be specific for the dimensions of the cab etc..[/quote]You posted no dimensions, so no answer is possible. Complete internal dimensions, including ports if there are any, and what you're using for an amp are required.

[quote name='chris_b' post='1262444' date='Jun 9 2011, 06:13 AM']Are you telling me I can't hear every note?[/quote]Not every frequency. Depending on the rig you run you may be missing a full octave or more of content that passes you by south of the waistline.

[quote name='chris_b' post='1262093' date='Jun 8 2011, 06:27 PM']My cabs come up to my waist and I can hear every note.[/quote]If you play flats while wearing mittens with the high EQ all the way off, yes. Otherwise, no, due to the shrinking angle of dispersion as frequency increases. But then again, if you've got a spare pair of ears implanted on your arse... The same phenomena of a lack of butt-mounted ears is why guitar'd players are so damn loud, worsened by the fact that they don't play into the lower frequencies that have wider dispersion, while they do into frequencies with far narrower dispersion than those of the bass.

[quote name='escholl' post='1261153' date='Jun 8 2011, 08:23 AM']bet you wouldn't have much difficulty convincing them to stack two 4x12's though. mind you, the bass and drums would never be heard again. [/quote] Let's just say that if the average carpenter was as clueless about how his tools function as the average guitar'd player there would be a lot more guys nicknamed 'Lefty', and the prosthetics industry would dominate the Fortune 500.

[quote name='umph' post='1261118' date='Jun 8 2011, 08:04 AM']trying to persuade my guitarists to stack 2 2X12's vertically rather than use there 4X12's. Tis not working at all.[/quote] Getting guitar'd players to do what sounds best rather than what looks best is a fruitless quest. Doing so is a sign of intelligence, and so...

[quote name='paul h' post='1260419' date='Jun 7 2011, 05:24 PM']Slightly tangential but my guitarist doesn't like the sound of my Neutrik/VDC cables. They have less top end than his cable of choice.[/quote]Cables with excessive capacitance roll off highs. An engineer would call them defective; Monster calls them Bass Cables and charges a premium price. There's almost no correlation between cost and capacitance. [quote]They also have less top than my Planet Waves cable. I however prefer them for that same reason.[/quote]All you gain with high capacitance cables is a lower signal to noise ratio; that's not a plus. Want less highs? Turn down the high EQ on your amp, that's what it's there for, and so doing increases the signal to noise ratio. [quote]As for cables, I seem to recall certain 60's guitar gods using the long coily items without complaint:[/quote]They had gosh awful capacitance, and rolled off highs horribly. We used them anyway, being less than knowledgeable about what capacitance was, and just accepted the loss of highs for the convenience.

[quote name='Subthumper' post='1259144' date='Jun 6 2011, 06:44 PM']Not to mention the feeble wire often found lurking inside amps going from the pcb to the o/p jacks/speakons.[/quote] Still considerably more robust than the wire of the driver voice coils, which is what matters. If the cab contained more than a couple of feet of wire, or the amp more than a few inches, then it would be a different story.

[quote name='gafbass02' post='1258372' date='Jun 6 2011, 08:52 AM']Should/would popping the drivers out and re-wiring with the same obbm klotz stuff I use from head to cabs be a good plan do we think? Gaf[/quote]No, a waste of both time and money. [quote]We keep hearing how we should use decent speaker and instrument leads, yet the leads in the cabs that i have seen do seem pretty cheap.[/quote]Price is not an indicator of quality, and within the confines of a cab durability is hardly a concern.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='1258097' date='Jun 6 2011, 04:35 AM']If anyone thinks their bandmates are so clumsy that a tall stack will be knocked over... Well I can't see any band like that managing to get through a whole song without a cacophony of upended cymbal stands! [/quote] +1. It's a very lame argument, really, a 2x10 stack is no higher than an 810, while taking up less floor space than an 8x10, or for that matter a horizontal 2x10.

[quote name='Happy Jack' post='1257790' date='Jun 5 2011, 04:03 PM']Wow! Eight posts in before anyone mentions "combing".[/quote] Why would they? Vertically aligned drivers don't comb.

[quote name='alexclaber' post='1253585' date='Jun 2 2011, 04:49 AM']I'd take most sensitivity specs with a whole bucket of salt! [/quote] More like a lorry load. Doubling power gets you 3dB. Doubling your cab count gets you 6dB with the same amp. Unless your amp is severely underpowered, as in 1/4 or less than the power rating of your speakers, adding a second identical cab will usually be the better route.

[quote name='OzzyGreg' post='1256177' date='Jun 4 2011, 02:46 AM']. Guys, I'm not real handy with speaker box design software, I'm very much a beginner. I have just used WinISD to calculate the design of a new 15" bass cabinet I want to build using an old Etone 461 bass speaker I have lying around here. The speaker's parameters are, according to Etone: Fs : 35Hz Vas: 253 Qms: 6.1 Qes: 0.34 Qts: 0.322 PMax: 250 W (RMS)[/quote]Those specs alone are insufficient to determine driver suitability. Also required is xmax, to know the displacement limited power handling, and an SPL chart, for midrange response. Unfortunately Etone doesn't publish either xmax or SPL charts, so a proper simulation is not possible.

[quote name='Subthumper' post='1246754' date='May 27 2011, 05:21 AM']Was wondering if it would be any good in the BFM omni 15 cab.[/quote] Yes.

[quote name='fryer' post='1242562' date='May 24 2011, 02:11 AM']Thanks Bill, and all. But I do like the sound of the Peavey cab, and prefer it to the sound to my Epi UL 410. What makes the sound though - is it the speakers or the box ?[/quote]Both. But in this case mainly the drivers, which have a high Qts that results in a pronounced midbass response peak. It's not my response cup of tea, but if you like it all well and good. [quote]If I made a new cab from ply, to the same internal dimensions, with the Sheffield speakers, would it sound the same as it does now ?[/quote]Properly built with cross-bracing and internal damping, probably better.

[quote name='reggaemaster' post='1242353' date='May 23 2011, 05:07 PM']Thanks for the info, but will the fact that there is more power running to the the 2 110's make any difference?[/quote]Not if they lack the displacement to use it. The average ten runs out of excursion at about 100 watts. [quote]Epis are 99db. GKs, depending on which model are either 100db or 101db[/quote]Only in the imaginations of their respective advertising department schlockmeisters.

Volume is limited by the displacement of the drivers. The average twelve has more displacement than the average ten, so a 2x12 will usually have more output capability than two 1x10s. I say usually, as a particular ten may have more displacement than a particular twelve. Unfortunately manufacturers won't tell you what the displacement is of the drivers they use.

[quote name='deepbass5' post='1240034' date='May 22 2011, 04:38 AM'][b]No don't do it[/b] is the answer these mass produced cabs are made from fairly cheap light weight stuff anyway[/quote]Au contraire, price point gear like Peavey tends to be made from thick heavy materials with un-braced construction, as that's the most inexpensive method. I suspect this is made of 18mm MDF or the like, as the Sheffield tens only weigh 1.8kG each. Build of well braced 12mm plywood it's possible to reduce the cabinet weight by at least 15kG. But I wouldn't. The Sheffield drivers are mediocre quality, and the 4x10 format is perhaps the worst possible for an electric bass cab. If the OP has the skills to duplicate the Peavey cab he has the skills to build a pair of 2x10s, which will work better, and they could be loaded with far better drivers than the Sheffields.

Mine are whatever sounds best in the room I'm in. Since every room is different acoustically my settings are different in every room .

[quote name='JPJ' post='1228081' date='May 11 2011, 04:27 PM']At coppers short of £300 including delivery they weren't a cheap upgrade[/quote]If you plan to get more do so yesterday, that's a silly low price considering what's happened to the price of neo drivers in the last 6 weeks.