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Bill Fitzmaurice

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Everything posted by Bill Fitzmaurice

  1. Bill Fitzmaurice
    I have, though that's not what the thread is about. The issue in this case is using 1/4" phone plugs for speakers. That choice was made by Leo Fender in the 1950s, when 50 watts was a large amp, SS didn't exist, and there was no such thing as a connector specifically designed for the job. The deficiencies of 1/4" connections for speakers are well documented. If you're attitude is 'they've always worked for me' consider the man who jumped off a fifty story building who was heard to say as he passed by open windows on the way down "So far so good".
  2. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Not particularly, since the response of typical tens, twelves and fifteens in the low end isn't all that different. There are atypical drivers that do have not only lower frequency response but also longer excursion, which is another necessity, but by and large the usual sources don't use them. For that matter with the majority of usual sources you have no way of knowing what's inside the box.
  3. Bill Fitzmaurice
    I once managed with a '63 Chevrolet. I wouldn't want to do so again.
  4. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Well done Black and younger female voters, those who had the most to lose if Moore was elected. I'd not the slightest who Matt Dillahunty is until reading your post. I looked him up, he's no more representative of the average American than those the polar opposites of that particular spectrum.
  5. Bill Fitzmaurice
    You'd be best off to replace the 1/4" in the cab with Speakon, or have it done for you. 1/4" is fine in its original intended application, telephone switchboards, but where speakers are concerned there's nothing about them to recommend.
  6. Bill Fitzmaurice
    I'd put the percentage who hold that belief to be closer to five. Don't confuse religious fundamentalism with political conservatism. Even on that the percentage of American voters who are true conservatives is nowhere near half. As with true liberals it's more like 15%. The vast majority are actually centrist, with leanings one way or another, but not strict agendas. OTOH the percentage of Americans who are numbingly stupid probably does approach half, but occasionally something happens that reaffirms the potential for hope that we still have a future, yesterdays election result in Alabama, for instance.
  7. Bill Fitzmaurice
    It's not. Anything less than a fourfold increase in power isn't worthwhile. On that adding a second identical 8 ohm cab will have the exact same effect as quadrupling power, you'll get a 6dB increase.
  8. Bill Fitzmaurice
    If it's thermistor controlled it will come on at a set heatsink temperature. The amp power has nothing to do with it, there are 100 watt amps that need a fan, there are 1000 watt amps that don't. The advantage to a fan is that it allows smaller heatsinks.
  9. Bill Fitzmaurice
    The way that driver manufacturers test power handling is to feed them pink noise at a given voltage for a given time period. If the voice coil doesn't burn out they do it again at a higher voltage, and so on until it does burn out. I don't recommend you try that.
  10. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Even if you knew what it is there's no way to know the maximum output of the speakers. If what you're really asking is what is the maximum power input rating it doesn't matter all that much, it will distort long before that point is reached.
  11. Bill Fitzmaurice
    I doubt any of them has the slightest clue what they're talking about. What they're actually referring to is that using two cabs sounds better than one. That's the case 99 times out of 100, and it has nothing to do with the impedance load, everything to do with the increase in sensitivity when you use more than one cab. How many of them did side by side comparisons of the same amp with two 4 ohm cabs and with two otherwise identical 8 ohm cabs? I bet you couldn't find a single one of them who's understanding of how a speaker works goes beyond 'you plug it in to an amp'.
  12. Bill Fitzmaurice
    It doesn't run best at 2 ohms, it's just capable of running at 2 ohms, and running at 2 ohms doesn't maximize anything other than current draw, which isn't a good thing. You're wasting time and money going to 4 ohm cabs.
  13. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Chances are there's an open coil in one driver, but those four may be series wired, so when one won't pass signal they all stop. You'll need to pull and test the top four drivers to be sure.
  14. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Pretty much nothing, as specs only concern low frequency response, while what most refer to as tone comes from the mids and highs. You can use the SPL charts on driver data sheets to see the mid and HF response, but it does you little good if you don't know how what you see translates into what you'll hear.
  15. Bill Fitzmaurice
    The captain of the Titanic said pretty much the same thing when he ordered full speed ahead, in an iceberg zone, at night. Needless to say he was not prepared for the worst case scenario. It's one thing to emulate another captain, James T. Kirk, by boldly going where no man has gone before. But this particular voyage of discovery was completed by Theile and Small right around the same time that Kirk's first foray was, circa 1969. The OP has no need to reinvent the wheel, no matter how hard one tries it will always be round.
  16. Bill Fitzmaurice
    That's worst case, and would take a very large hole. Still, there is a science to this, and if you don't understand it don't mess with it.
  17. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Using all the maths etc. you can get it right the first time, and for that matter determine if it's worth doing at all. You'll also know why a small circular hole is probably a bad idea.
  18. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Paraphrasing a quote I saw in Speaker Builder Magazine many years ago, there's a thousand ways to make a ported cab. This is one of them. I shy away from claims of magical never before achieved results that aren't accompanied by hard data. That's especially the case when I see advertising blurbs like this: providing 600 watts of full range sound . Sound isn't measured in watts.
  19. Bill Fitzmaurice
    It won't work as well as standard construction. For instance, how do you fit the front and back?
  20. Bill Fitzmaurice
    I can't say without seeing the specs, but there are at least four that are more significant than impedance.
  21. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Again, you might get a better result with a different driver, but you may not. Before you can fix something you have to find out if it's broken. That means finding the specs and frequency response chart for the original driver, which amp manufacturers are loathe to reveal. That said, the drivers in most combos tend to be low end, and a pair of low end tens or twelves will work better than one low end twelve. They wouldn't work better than, say, an Eminence 3012HO, but drivers of that ilk aren't found in combos.
  22. Bill Fitzmaurice
    A driver upgrade may be possible, but you'd have to know the full set of T/S specs of the original to make that determination. As for a 212 versus a 112, the 212 will almost always sound better, no matter what the drivers are. For that matter virtually any two cabs together will sound better than either alone. That's a basic property of how speakers work. As for this: Changing from an 8 ohm to 4 ohm load will have little, if any, effect. Many factors can result in an improvement, but impedance is seldom one of them.
  23. Bill Fitzmaurice
    That's not true. In the same 2 cu ft ported cab tuned to 45Hz or in 2 cu ft sealed the Beta 12 and BP122 have virtually identical low frequency response. Neither will have very good low frequency sensitivity in a sealed cab, because it's a sealed cab.
  24. Bill Fitzmaurice
    Using a midrange driver with a BP122 isn't a bad idea, using a Beta 12 as a midrange driver is a very bad idea. It's not about response, it's about dispersion, and the midrange/HF dispersion of a twelve is horrid. That's why guitar cabs beam. The right tool for the job is a six or an eight.
  25. Bill Fitzmaurice
    It could be a microphonic tube. Gently tap on them with a pencil to find out.
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