Something fairly big - PA tops

[chris661]

So, having had some rather nice drivers sat around for months, I decided to make some mid-high cabinets for my PA system.

There's 2x Faital Pro 10FH520 midbass drivers, and an 18Sound ND1460 on an RCF HF94 horn, per side. TMM format, to get the tweeter high up.

http://www.faitalpro.com/en/products/LF ... =151040110
http://www.eighteensound.com/PRODUCTS45 ... wwU1kdUUf8
http://www.rcf.it/products/precision-tr ... horns/hf94

Cabinets are 12mm plywood, with lots of bracing:

They're fairly light, but the combined weight of the drivers means I wouldn't want to carry them too far.
Finish is a rosewood stain - I wanted to do something different to all the black boxes seen in 99.99% of PA systems.

Here's an average of on- and off-axis responses, with a little smoothing. I used this to calculate the final touches of EQ with REW.


More pictures coming soon. They've plenty of output down to ~80Hz, so need subs for a full-range sound, but fine for quite a lot of live music (low-E on a guitar is 82Hz). Amp will be a Behringer NU3000DSP a side, bi-amping with an active crossover at 800Hz. Most of the EQ required to get a nice smooth response, as well as time alignment, are handled within the amps. The 10"s are in parallel, and drop to 3ohm in places, so I'll be getting around 500w to each 10" driver. The NU3000 can drive 2ohm loads, so they'll be fairly comfortable here.
They'll see some power on Sunday - got a gig coming up at the Lescar, Sheffield.

Some pictures of the finished boxes coming soon.

Cheers
Chris

[steve s]

Nice work Chris, hope the gig goes well..
I made a very similar pair but just using 1 x orberton 10" driver per side, to keep the wieght down, mine are well damped open back cabs .. Nearly open baffles.. She uses them for her accoustic gigs on some low stands, they sound really good with a touch of eq on the bottom end

With twin drivers i bet yours do the business.. Good sound systems make all the difference at gigs

[chris661]

Cheers, Steve.
How do you like the Oberton drivers? - I've been eyeing those up for a while now. Impressive specs, for sure. I have some 8 and 12" coaxials I use for smaller gigs or monitoring, but they leave a bit to be desired, needing some very heavy-handed EQ to get them close to balanced sound-wise.

Having EQd these 2x10s for a flat response, the sound is really impressive. I'd take this over a lot of HiFi equipment, the only downside being the fan noise on the amps.

Chris

[steve s]

The oberton drivers are good.. i have the 2 x 10's and a 12"
Orginally i put the two 10's in a 50 watt acoustic combo that orginally had a couple of crap 8's in it, she then used it for playing bass and it sounded really good,if a little light at the very bottom end.. But you could really near the stings vibrating it was quite something, but far to heavy
Then I had the two 10's and a vintage rola celestion compression driver in a single cab but i could not lift that far at all... Then she started getting a few gigs so i split them up and bought a pair of nice compression drivers that work well enough.... but i can now carry one speaker in each hand reasonably easy now. And its important factor when the daughter is using them on her own.

I bought a couple of powered mixers that do the job well, but you cant beat decent drivers in any system

[chris661]

Definitely agree on having to use decent drivers.

I got away with the Fane drivers (Sov. Pro 12-500) for a while, but they're basic ferrite magnts with a pole-piece vent. They didn't do too well under serious power - the whole design was from a time when 200w was a lot of power, despite their 500w ratings.
These Faitals have demodulating rings to reduce distortion from the magnetics, and lots and lots of venting around the voicecoil, so I'm confident they'll hold up when I'm nudging into clip and still pushing.

I'd be very interested in having a look/listen to your setup - let me know if things are happening near Sheffield and I might well see you there.

All the best
Chris

[steve s]

Chris the pa is only used for local solo gigs .. And then the pa is supplied most of the time
She joined the ming city rockers in january so it just the bass amp most of the time now...
They are playing a 14000 seat stadium in seattle in june supporting iggy pop... You cant believe how excited they are and its taken over from the solo stuff

[chris661]

Wow, now that's a big gig!
Pass on my congratulations, it must feel incredible.

Chris