House Jam Micro Cab

[Pea Turgh]

2 hours ago, Mediocre Polymath said:

So I've been tinkering away on a mini speaker project very similar to this one, something small enough that my dad could easily take it to open mics and house jam things. It was going to be a christmas present, hence me working on it today.

 

Like CBD, my attempts to model a flat response curve with the Fane speaker were a bust – I'm guessing they've changed the specs since the original House Jam cabs were made. No matter how I played around with cabinet volume and port tuning, it always had a pronounced 4–5-dB spike around the tuning port frequency and then a drop in efficiency between 100–160 hz. WinISD twiddling suggested I'd have better results with a Faital 6FE100 and a slightly larger cab (about 13.5 litres) tuned to about 65 hz, so I went with that.

 

I built the cab and finally wired it up this morning and while it sounded good for about two minutes, it quickly started distorting, then crackling, then cut out entirely. I was only driving it with a MarkBass 250-watt amp, running at 8 ohms and about 1/4 volume, but yeah, it dead.

 

Any idea where I blundered here? Was my port tuning too low? 

Oh no!  Must have been a duff driver?

[Mediocre Polymath]

Just now, Pea Turgh said:

Oh no!  Must have been a duff driver?

I'm inclined to assume it was something I did, I've never had problems with Faital drivers in the past. Might try again with the 6FE200 and a port tuned to about 80hz.

[RhythmJunky]

12 minutes ago, Mediocre Polymath said:

I'm inclined to assume it was something I did, I've never had problems with Faital drivers in the past. Might try again with the 6FE200 and a port tuned to about 80hz.

 

Is it working again or has something died ?

 

I'm no expert on cab building, but do have some electrical experience and don't really see how a cab could cause that. I'd have thought a duff driver, or maybe a wiring issue somewhere. Have you tested the speaker impedance with a DVM since this experience?  

 

Anyway, I'm sure one of the grown ups with real experience will be along to help soon. 

[bremen]

The excursion would have been huge below 65Hz with more than a few watts, easy to kill a driver that way. (I've learned from my mistakes and can repeat them perfectly)

Edited December 24, 2024 by bremen
corrected as it's not 80Hz tuning

[Mediocre Polymath]

1 hour ago, bremen said:

The excursion would have been huge below 65Hz with more than a few watts, easy to kill a driver that way. (I've learned from my mistakes and can repeat them perfectly)

Yeah, I think I probably over-reached with what I could reasonably get out of a 6-inch speaker. Interesting learning experience though, and it wasn't particularly expensive to learn. I'm mostly just pleased with how the cab itself has turned out. It was more a sewing exercise than a can building one. The speaker/wiring is the most straightforward part of the process.

 

 

 

Look! built in cable pockets!

Edited December 24, 2024 by Mediocre Polymath

[Chienmortbb]

Faital Pro’s FE range of drivers is not really good enough for bass drivers IMHO.

 

@Phil Starris right about Piezo tweeters however Motorola, the inventors have convinced everyone that you only need a resistor in series to crossover. Not true, the  resistor protects the Piezo but does little to the response. To successfully use a Piezo you do have to use a traditional crossover which does take many of their perceived benefits away. In addition the small round one, as shown in the pictures above are only good above 4KHz, way past where most LF drivers start beaming. This makes it very difficult to get a decent dispersion and the dip, off axis, is right in the area that the ears are most sensitive to. 
 

more piezo information here https://www.grc.com/acoustics/CTS_Piezo_Tweeter_AppNote.pdf

 

[bremen]

I've never heard a system involving piezos that hasn't had that dreaded tizz and boom quality, redolent of village hall discos, karaoke and cheap lager.

 

Apparently it can be done though, I think BFM knows the secret...

[Beer of the Bass]

12 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Faital Pro’s FE range of drivers is not really good enough for bass drivers IMHO.

 

A little bigger than the ones discussed here, but I built a compact cab a few years ago with the 4ohm 10FE200 that's been quite continuously useful, and to my surprise it's still going despite being pushed quite hard on a few occasions. There's an 8 ohm version too, but the specs are a little different such that the 4-ohm works better for a ported cab.

I intended it to be a small cab for low volume double bass use, but it's come along for messy parties and festivals with the electric bass where I don't want to carry anything larger around too. It's not huge in the lows, but at least as good as the Euphonic Audio Wizzy 10 I was using before that, and smoother in the upper mids.

Edited December 25, 2024 by Beer of the Bass

[Chienmortbb]

9 hours ago, bremen said:

I've never heard a system involving piezos that hasn't had that dreaded tizz and boom quality, redolent of village hall discos, karaoke and cheap lager.

 

Apparently it can be done though, I think BFM knows the secret...

I know someone that tried BFMs approach and was very underwhelmed.
 

I suspect they arrived too early as with DSP you could iron out most of the problems, but then are you solving problems that do not exist with other drivers?

[RhythmJunky]

On 24/12/2024 at 13:12, Mediocre Polymath said:

 

Like CBD, my attempts to model a flat response curve with the Fane speaker were a bust – I'm guessing they've changed the specs since the original House Jam cabs were made. No matter how I played around with cabinet volume and port tuning, it always had a pronounced 4–5-dB spike around the tuning port frequency and then a drop in efficiency between 100–160 hz. 

 

I've just spent a leisurely couple of hours this Boxing Day morning, whilst waiting for the rest of the family to get up, modeling this on WINISD and had the same problem. 

 

Looks like I'll have to look elsewhere.  😓 

 

 

[Phil Starr]

On 24/12/2024 at 15:15, Pea Turgh said:

I built the cab and finally wired it up this morning and while it sounded good for about two minutes, it quickly started distorting, then crackling, then cut out entirely. I was only driving it with a MarkBass 250-watt amp, running at 8 ohms and about 1/4 volume, but yeah, it dead.

 

Any idea where I blundered here? Was my port tuning too low? 

Obviously the amp would be 'enough' to push the speaker into over excursion and knowing the power you were sending to the speaker is impossible unless you actually measured it. Settings like a '1/4 power' aren't really a reliable guide. However 'started distorting, crackling and cutting out' unless you were cranking it up further and further doesn't sound normal and may have been a faulty driver.

 

WINisd will tell you the excursion and maximum power limits and which frequencies are likely to cause problems

[Phil Starr]

Apologies to @cbd and @Mediocre Polymath 

 

One person getting different results from mine in Winisd is unfortunate two looks like carelessness. In this case mine. I've just checked the current Fane 6-100 on Fane's website and the specs are entirely different from mine. Fane have clearly changed the cone and suspension and I think the voice coil since I built my cab. It is effectively a different speaker. I'm going to have to have another look at this design and maybe find another driver to recommend.

[Mediocre Polymath]

49 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Apologies to @cbd and @Mediocre Polymath 

 

One person getting different results from mine in Winisd is unfortunate two looks like carelessness. In this case mine. I've just checked the current Fane 6-100 on Fane's website and the specs are entirely different from mine. Fane have clearly changed the cone and suspension and I think the voice coil since I built my cab. It is effectively a different speaker. I'm going to have to have another look at this design and maybe find another driver to recommend.

 

Ah, that's reassuring. From a more detailed look at the many variables (you spurred me to actually figure out more than the tiny fraction of WinISD's functionality I'd been using up to now) it looks like the Faital 6FE200 might work well. Requires a slightly bigger box, and its higher frequency drop off is more pronounced, but it otherwise looks to be reasonably solid. I'm making this cab for someone who uses an 1970s EB3 though, so high frequency response isn't particularly important for my purposes.

[Mediocre Polymath]

So the 6FE200 arrived today (along with the handle that I'd forgotten to get). I recut the tuning port and wired it all up. It sounds much better than the 6FE100, and is noticeably much louder for the same power. I think that might be a consequence of tweaking the port tuning.

 

I had the gain on the markbass at noon, and all eq knobs flat. Got it up to about 12 o'clock on the master volume before my ears started to hurt. Speaker seemed fine, if a little farty in the low end, distorting a little, but not in an unmusical way. The speaker excursion wasn't visible to the naked eye at that volume. With the low end boosted (destruction testing, I suppose) and the low pass filter turned up it did a great impression of the "Ampeg fliptop running flat out" sound you get on Otis Redding live recordings.

[RhythmJunky]

On 31/12/2024 at 16:00, Mediocre Polymath said:

So the 6FE200 arrived today (along with the handle that I'd forgotten to get). I recut the tuning port and wired it all up. It sounds much better than the 6FE100, and is noticeably much louder for the same power. I think that might be a consequence of tweaking the port tuning.

 

I had the gain on the markbass at noon, and all eq knobs flat. Got it up to about 12 o'clock on the master volume before my ears started to hurt. Speaker seemed fine, if a little farty in the low end, distorting a little, but not in an unmusical way. The speaker excursion wasn't visible to the naked eye at that volume. With the low end boosted (destruction testing, I suppose) and the low pass filter turned up it did a great impression of the "Ampeg fliptop running flat out" sound you get on Otis Redding live recordings.

 

Thanks Polymath. 

So just be be clear, this is the Faital 6FE200 in the same size cab as the Fane,but a modified port ? 

[Mediocre Polymath]

2 hours ago, RhythmJunky said:

 

Thanks Polymath. 

So just be be clear, this is the Faital 6FE200 in the same size cab as the Fane,but a modified port ? 

Slightly bigger box on my build, volume of about 13.5 litres, but it looks like it would work reasonably well with the 10 litre box with a ~8 cm long port tube, you'd just lose a bit of oomph from the low end. That said, I'm not anything like an expert on this sort of thing, so if you're considering making your own I'd suggest that you wait for Phil to get time to have a proper think.

[Phil Starr]

Gigging on NYE and recovering today. I had a Quick Look  at the Faital 6FE200 and it looks like a nice little speaker. I’ll report back on alternatives to the Fane when I get some time

[tauzero]

The Faital is a tenner cheaper than the Fane too. I'm tempted to get one and knock up another cab, and do a better job of it than the first one.

[bremen]

I just tried to load its thiele-small parameters into WinISD from https://loudspeakerdatabase.com/Faital/6FE200_8Ω  and got 'floating point division by zero'

 

 

[tauzero]

On 16/12/2024 at 06:52, Phil Starr said:

 

The problem was probably excessive excursion. The cab is an awful lot safer with those sort of powers if you use an HPF at 50Hz or even higher.  The output is very limited below 80Hz by design so there's no point letting anything through below that.  The coil may have been smacking against the back of the magnet and if it over excurts (is that a word?) it loses the cooling effect of being in the magnetic gap. If i'm playing that loud I pretty much always put the cab right in a corner and roll off the bass which corner placing reinforces. I'm glad it's mended, the BAM will be a perfect match and does have some bass roll off built in which helps.

 

Running back over this thread, I forgot to say at the time that I normally use an MS-60B with low bass rolled off in an EQ section but I'd just unplugged it and plugged their bass in. That's another thing to remember for the future.

[tauzero]

36 minutes ago, bremen said:

I just tried to load its thiele-small parameters into WinISD from https://loudspeakerdatabase.com/Faital/6FE200_8Ω  and got 'floating point division by zero'

 

 

 

I put the parameters in myself, got a whinge (well, several whinges) about inconsistency. If anyone would like to try them and check if there's anything obvious wrong, they're attached. They seem to produce a reasonable curve with the cab given as 10.5l and tuned to somewhere round 90Hz (92 seems quite good).

Faital 6FE200.wdr

[Phil Starr]

15 hours ago, bremen said:

I just tried to load its thiele-small parameters into WinISD from https://loudspeakerdatabase.com/Faital/6FE200_8Ω  and got 'floating point division by zero'

 

 

I've had this message a few times, it is worth checking the units when entering the values. the default values are often not the same as the units used on the manufacturers spec sheets using m instead of mm for example. Clicking on the units lets you scroll through them to get a match. I also sometimes get WINisd 'losing' the box tuning when I'm recalculating. Going back and starting again usually clears that fault which may be down to operator error

 

[Phil Starr]

Still not time to actually play with WINisd and I'm looking at a few drivers at the moment but the 6FE200 is looking favourite at the moment and possibly better than the original Fane. I have to say I'm impressed generally with some of the offerings from Faital at the moment. The price is wicked

 

[cbd]

On 24/12/2024 at 13:12, Mediocre Polymath said:

So I've been tinkering away on a mini speaker project very similar to this one, something small enough that my dad could easily take it to open mics and house jam things. It was going to be a christmas present, hence me working on it today.

 

Like CBD, my attempts to model a flat response curve with the Fane speaker were a bust – I'm guessing they've changed the specs since the original House Jam cabs were made. No matter how I played around with cabinet volume and port tuning, it always had a pronounced 4–5-dB spike around the tuning port frequency and then a drop in efficiency between 100–160 hz. WinISD twiddling suggested I'd have better results with a Faital 6FE100 and a slightly larger cab (about 13.5 litres) tuned to about 65 hz, so I went with that.

 

I built the cab and finally wired it up this morning and while it sounded good for about two minutes, it quickly started distorting, then crackling, then cut out entirely. I was only driving it with a MarkBass 250-watt amp, running at 8 ohms and about 1/4 volume, but yeah, it dead.

 

Any idea where I blundered here? Was my port tuning too low? 

 

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.

[Mediocre Polymath]

On 03/01/2025 at 16:23, cbd said:

 

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.

 

I suspect it was a combination of slightly iffy port tuning and the driver being potentially a bit of a wrongun. Like I said, I'm not particularly bothered – the 6FE200 works and while I'm not a independently wealthy gentleman of leisure I can eat the cost of a busted speaker without feeling bad.

Edited 1 hour ago by Mediocre Polymath