stevie

[quote name='molan' timestamp='1415309487' post='2599168'] I like both and would happily gig either. The MB feels a bit cleaner and articulate but it doesn't have the lovely vintagey warmth and roundness of the TH. [/quote] Brilliant - thanks!

[quote name='dood' timestamp='1415292300' post='2598903'] The later 15" XLs were indeed upgraded to 300W RMS as I understand it. £180 for a pair of speakers of this quality is actually very good and Korg are brilliant. Buying a pair will give you a 600W cabinet and it'll happily spank a lot of 2x15's out there. A single 3015LF from Lean is £175. Case dismissed [/quote] You're paying a premium for the neo magnets with the 3015LF. A driver with a ceramic magnet will cost half that. Case reopened. But yes, get the Celestions if you can.

You won't need to alter the tuning of the cab. Just leave it as it is. To find the volume of the cab, multiply the three internal dimensions - height, width and depth.

That looks pretty bad. If the coil is open circuit there's not a lot you can do yourself. If that were my cab, I'd get myself some new drivers. The cab looks well built, it's plywood, and £200 - £250 invested in premium drivers will get you a system that will outperform just about any 2x15 out there. It's unlikely that you'll have to retune the cabinet - you just have to find some drivers that suit the cab and perform well with bass. Most people, I realise, will just go for a new cab. Alternatively, check eBay for used drivers as Phil suggested. You can often pick up 15-inch drivers for peanuts. Interestingly, someone in your area (Exeter) is selling a pair of nice Celestions on eBay - collection only. They are not the latest and greatest, but they are in the same league as your Hartke's. Just over a day to go and still at 99p. Better not post the URL - just do an eBay search for Celestion K15-200. Those will get you up and running again and give you time to decide how to proceed.

Molan, what's the difference between the TH500 and the Little Mark 3, in your estimation?

Dunc bought a USB hard drive from me last week. A very easy man to do business with.

Dave came by to pick up a couple of electronic gizmos from me this week. It was a very straightforward transaction. Thanks, Dave.

As long as the coil is moving freely you can generally patch up a damaged cone. I obviously don't know how badly cracked it is, but you might consider using some Araldite on it.

I'd have a listen to them first. You can't believe everything you read on Basschat.

Try this: http://tinypic.com/?t=postupload Upload your image here and you'll get a URL to post in your message. Works great.

If you raise your cab off the floor too much, you will lose the bottom end lift you get from having the cab close to the floor. You might like to try tilting the front of the cab so that the speaker is pointing towards you. You'll hear yourself more clearly that way.

[quote name='sbrag' timestamp='1414501622' post='2589861'] completly agree only that mine is still original. Best value basses out there. [/quote] Because they are relatively cheap now, they are ideal for modding, but I believe they were more expensive than USA Precisions when they were new.

Anyone arriving at this thread at some time in the future hoping for sensible suggestions for repairing/upgrading their 2 x 10" cab is going to find a lot of conflicting and frankly erroneous information. I'd like to try to fix that if I can. Let's quickly look at the three most useful suggestions made so far: the Celestion BL 10-200X, the Beyma SM110, and the Fane Sovereign 10-300. Each of these would meet the OP's requirements for a good quality, reasonably priced 10-inch chassis. I think £10 separates the cheapest from the most expensive. So the price is right and they are very close in terms of performance too. If you model each of these in a 30-litre cab tuned to 50Hz (which is how I would expect them be used in practice) you get the following. [IMG]http://i58.tinypic.com/np2m2u.jpg[/IMG] I'm not even going to label the individual drivers - that's how close the small signal level performance is – at least below 200Hz where the modelling program is accurate. The reason the curves are different above 200Hz is that their sensitivities are slightly different. The Fs of these drivers is 43Hz, 58Hz and 73Hz, by the way. If we compare the power handling of the three drivers, it is again very close, at least in theory. To be sure we are comparing like with like, xmax must have been measured in the same way for each driver. Like Eminence, Fane do not publish the usual figure for voice coil overhang, preferring instead to use the more generous Klippel-derived xmax. However, (unlike Eminence) they do at least state the magnetic gap depth and coil winding height, from which we can deduce that the overhang is 4mm – exactly the same as the Beyma and the Celestion. In our test box, all three drivers need to travel 5mm to handle 200W of power. [IMG]http://i57.tinypic.com/2wn0eg3.jpg[/IMG] Given that a properly designed power speaker will cope with a signal that drives it 25% beyond xmax and that the signal from the bass guitar is not a sine wave anyway, I'd say that the two hundred watt drivers meet their spec. without too much problem and I wouldn't worry too much about whether the Fane handles 300 watts or not, as these speakers will be normally used in multiples anyway. Each of these three has its plus points: the Beyma has a cast chassis, the Fane has a generous power rating, and the Celestion has a very smooth midband response. There is, however, one particular figure hidden away in the Thiele-Small parameters that would make me favour one of these if I had to make a choice from the spec sheets alone. As for the two drivers Bill suggested, these are subwoofers and not suitable for use with bass guitar on their own. If you check out the manufacturer's curves you'll see that the midrange frequency responses looks like the hind leg of a donkey: that's because they were designed for maximum excursion at the exclusion of virtually anything else. The Eminence 3010LF driver costs £200 - four times the price of the others. So it's hardly a fair comparison (let's not even get into the fact that the comparison is also based on two different xmax measurements with boxes tuned to different frequencies which skews the results). Two of these Eminence drivers will cost £400. Then you need a midrange driver and a crossover, which will add at least another £100. If you had £500 to spend on drivers, which clearly the OP doesn't, there are better ways. My order of preference, having only heard the Celestion, would be Beyma, Celestion, Fane, although that could possibly change on audition. I hope that helps.

[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1414254787' post='2587589'] Stevie strikes again Now I'm going to have to run the models and investigate a bit more. I'd looked at Qts and Fs done a quick calculation of f3 the -3dB point and left it at that, dismissing a speaker that starts to roll off albeit gently at 150Hz ish. To a certain extent it depends upon whether you think 3dB is significant or not. I think it is, as I find in listening tests that the balance between high and low frequencies is something we really notice. It's also true that the 3012HO has a gentle roll off due to a moderately low Q. Comparing it with another speaker would yield a different result. I'd also be interested to know what size box you modeled Stevie. I'm only getting a plot this shape for the Celestion in a fairly large box. [/quote] Phil, from memory, I used a 35-litre box for the 10 and a 50-litre box for the 12, both tuned to 50Hz. That's pretty close to optimum in both cases. The comparison wasn't with the 3012HO but with the 3012LF.

Thanks for the clarification. This is already becoming quite informative.

You need a proper parametric equalizer. I'll be putting one of these on the For Sale board later today when I've sorted out a photo: http://www.zzounds.com/item--BEHPEQ2200 It works as a standalone bass preamp as well.

True, but that's why I said 'modify' - maybe bump them up from 12V. Or maybe that's impossible. I'm just here to learn .

This is probably a daft question, but couldn't you modify a PC switched power supply? They are relatively cheap and well proven.

[quote name='ebenezer' timestamp='1414509864' post='2590023'] I would agree with lemmywinks..the traveller 151p along with the ny 151p is the way to go..modern 15 inch drivers now have a half decent midrange along with good bottom end wallop,plus markbass drivers are made by b & c(pressed steel basket)but still good... swapping that tweeter out is a good move me thinks!!! [/quote] Markbass has been fitting Chinese copies of B&C drivers for some time.

I'm with grandad. Assuming the cab is up to it (it looks like it but it might need a bit of tweaking), the best thing you could do it put a premium quality Italian 15-inch driver in there. Something by B&C, Faital, 18sound, RCF. It will cost you between two and three hundred pounds. Doing that will give you a box that will vastly outperform any commercial cab you can buy. I know you won't though.