cbd

Sorry to hear about this! My only idea (which admittedly is wild speculation) is that your port tuning may have been too _high_ - you might have sent into uncontrolled overexcursion below the tuning frequency with the reasonably powerful markbass head. My 2x6FE100 cab has been through a lot of abuse over 10 years or so - I've used it on full whack with a GK MB200 and been asked to turn down at 100 person weddings. But it's tuned to something like 45Hz. The 1x6 in my other thread is tuned slightly higher so maybe that's something I should watch out for.

OK yep their cat6 ones look like the right thing, and come in more lengths than 1m and 2m unlike the one I linked before. https://www.thomann.co.uk/pro_snake_cat6e_cable_10m.htm The reviews also say they're shielded and have connectivity all the way through which is what you need for those snake boxes to work (1 twisted pair per channel + shared ground).

Thomann's ethercon cables look pretty good - although I don't know how long you can get them: https://www.thomann.co.uk/pro_snake_cat5e_cable_2m.htm I've got a pair of these boxes for my home music room to run cables from the drum kit to the interface on the other side of the room, but it never moves so I just have a cheap shielded ethernet cable (flat in fact so it looks unobtrusive) that I definitely wouldn't want to take out the house. The boxes themselves are really solid though.

Stapled some fabric to the new baffle, couple of coats of tuff-cab, and it's pretty much done! I'll measure the final dimensions and put it here if anyone's interested, but basically this is the 6FE100 in an 8.5L box with a flared 27cm long 68mm OD downpipe port. The box is tuned to about 60Hz I think. Really pleased with the sound, although unfortunately my grill cloth isn't quite thin enough so there's a bit of rattle from that, even if I tighten it up with a heat gun and glue it to the baffle. So I've ordered some different stuff that'll hopefully arrive early next year.

I played a wedding this summer where an ABBA tribute act did a set between our two function band sets. It was sort of sprung on us so we were a bit grumpy about it, but they were in fact thoroughly lovely, and I'm pretty sure it was the same guys (unless there are multiple Abbaholics...). I too was blown away with how good their HD-12's sounded, and had a similar conversation with them. I was doing sound (and bass obviously) for my band that night and was a bit envious of how good they sounded - I've had the HD-12s in my thomann wishlist ever since.

Port noise is much better with the 68mm downpipe. After swapping between the two drivers, I've decided to go with the 6FE100. It does require an enormous port, which presumably takes away from already-limited 8.5L internal volume, but somehow it still works. There's not loads in it between the two, but the 6FE100 sounds a bit fuller on the lower strings (even works with a low B) and is a bit lighter. Having made that decision I've glued the port in and rounded the edge over with the router, which takes the port noise down to close to inaudible. Unfortunately it does mean cutting a new baffle, as the 6FE100 is a 6-hole mount and I'd put 4 T-nuts in the baffle for the Fane 6-100. I did the first one with a jigsaw but it came out a bit wobbly so I thought I'd go fancy and use the router and a jig: After getting most of the way through the board I cut through close to the line with a jig saw and used a flush trim bit to clean it up:

If you don't mind then absolutely!

Ha thanks - fortunately not! Music is my hobby-gone-way-too-far that people for some reason pay me for, which means I can treat fettling around like this as a proper hobby, where I can get away with stuff like this without worrying about being judged too much...

Seamless plugging of the old port hole - cut out a circle approximately the right size with a different hole saw then JB-welded in place (epoxy being much better at filling the enormous gaps my terrible carpentry left): Looks better after some sanding: Cutting a new bigger hole with a 68mm hole saw. Had to clamp on another bit of ply for support as there was a massive hole just where I wanted to put the drill bit... Massive port for the 6FE100 installed. Hopefully under a load of tuff-cab no-one will ever know I didn't design it this way from the start:

The local screwfix has sorted me out with 2.5m of guttering high performance acoustic port material - hopefully that'll do the trick. I don't think I could go much wider with this design unfortunately - with 68mm I can just about tune it to 60Hz with the 6FE100 with a 27cm long tube, any wider and the port would have to be longer than the box (about 32cm long). Obviously the Faital would work just fine as at 87Hz tuning it doesn't need such a long port.