stevie

Nice work! That Beyma driver is a classic and works well in that box. I agree about getting straight, square cuts - it's so important but not easy. If you're short of clamps, you can always use panel pins or self-drilling screws - remove and fill the the holes once the glue has dried.

The bass needs to be more forward. The whole thing sounds like it's in mono. Otherwise, it sounds pretty good to me. I'm no expert though.

I'd be very careful with this if I were you, @B.Flat. There's a very good chance that the lowpass circuit Bill has suggested will drop the impedance of your speaker to 2.5 ohms. Your Yamaha is 2-ohm stable - so you should be all right. However, you should be aware that the circuit will probably also induce a nasty peak at 2kHz, which won't be very nice. Just sayin'.

The cheaper cabs in this list, @stewblack (the first four) all have ceramic magnet drivers. Barefaced also use ceramic magnets. The more expensive ones are fitted with neo drivers, which is what you'd expect. Those Harley Bentons are ridiculously cheap. As a DIY'er, it would be difficult to build a poplar ply cab for those prices - never mind buying the drivers.

I can't imagine that there is a more friendly, better organised bass bash than this. I'll be there!

It looks like an interesting project. However, if you want to by bypass the passive crossover in the BC12 cab you'll need to be able to programme the crossover and DSP. I've no idea if that's possible. Simply bypassing the passive crossover with the Mackie one will not work properly and will definately sound worse (as Chienmortbb has already said). To adjust the active crossover, you'll have to time align the drivers by delaying the woofer. Then set the crossover (24dB L/R) to 2kHz and use the parametric function to equalise the response of the CD horn. If you're going to use the separate 50W amp for the HF, you'd need to adjust the sensitivity to compensate for the higher sensitivity of the HF driver. Even if you can do all this, chances are that the passive crossover will sound better anyway. So I'd agree that connecting a full range signal to the regular input on your cab is probably the best solution. Should be good.

Graham bought a cab from me and drove all the way from Kent to collect it. It was nice to have a chat about basses. Lovely chap and a delight to deal with.

Mark bought a cab from me. He was a delight to deal with and is a credit to Basschat.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Agreed. I looked at the 15" cab and the porting is the first thing I noticed. I don't think you can manufacture for those prices without cutting corners. I would imagine that being outside a customs union would make returning a faulty product quite complicated.

Well spotted!

It was used because it was well recorded. IGY in particular was a favourite of hi-fi shops because it made the gear sound good. Hell Freezes Over was another hi-fi shop favourite a decade later.

I've found Madonna's Greatest Hits useful. It takes a well balanced system to get the voice right and you should be able to differentiate clearly between the different bass instruments used on the different tracks.

Much as I enjoy my Ashdown RM500, the compressor isn't in the same class as the optical compressor I used to have. I sold it because the Ashdown had a built-in compressor, but I'll be getting another when the time is right. It would be interesting to know which head manufacturer fits a genuinely high quality compressor to their product.

Or get a 300W amp that has a properly designed fan cooling system.☺️

Two things on the vent. Thin ports are generally bad for turbulence. If you can't use a round port, try increasing the height of the port from 25mm. Say, 90 x 50mm. The 70Hz tuning frequency concerns me a bit. I'd ideally like to see it at 60Hz (or lower), as a low-E 42Hz signal could overwhelm the drivers. This is the big problem with porting small, high power cabs. The length of port you've specified is more or less ideal for the internal depth you're working with. My home-use-practice cab is a similar size to this and it has a 50mm vent. At home practice levels, it's not a problem. What I'd tentatively suggest is that you build as-is, then reduce the width of the vent by adding pieces of wood to it to lower the tuning frequency. Then see what it sounds like. As I'm sure you know, a lower tuning frequency will improve power handling at low frequencies but the smaller vent will make chuffing worse. This way, you get to choose which you prefer based on the volume levels you intend to play at.