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In Reply to: RE: Very interesting... be great to know more posted by Audio Mind on February 21, 2015 at 22:26:47
Dont get me wrong. Ive learned a good deal reading your posts. And you do let everyone know a rough idea what your after and doing.
I was asking, and hoping, you might tell us just what your using driver wise on horn. Also amp setup and whatever else.
Here Ill get the ball rolling for example.
TAD 2001 on Edgar 650hz wood horns
JBL 2441 on Edgar 350hz wood horns
EV Force 12" on J horn mid bass / have many others including JBL Alnico 12" and other EVs. These sound OK and produce some decent lower mid bass
JBL 18" I no longer remember on the Fridge sub. Been too long.
I still have some JBL LE175. Sold my LE15A and LE85 alnico drivers long ago. Sorry... I didnt know... Still have allot of JBL alnico woofers. A130 and some real rare D131. Maybe I should try the D131 in the J horn in your view??? Never did try that yet.
I liked the results most when using an active 3 way either ashly or rane xover. I have a custom made marchand active Xover where I had him add his bassis EQ board into the unit. I wish he did more of these mainstream as a product.
I like and dont mind higher powered SS on the sub and mid bass. Have many different amps to play around with. My Mcintosh MC250 sound nice on the horns along with any number of other tube amps.
Similar setup on the 3 way direct radiator. Just with that I find high powered SS really sounds amazing. And just the 3 way active xover.
Of the JBL direct radiator speakers I really like. My JBL 240Ti, 120Ti, L20T3, really miss the L100T I had but the 240Ti more than make up for their departure. Have others but you get the idea.
Its completely fine you and I may have different tastes in drivers and or speakers. I think we both like our horn systems.
In a nut shell, I see you as being far more experienced and have a deeper understanding how drivers work and you go about getting that sound on a level I haven't the knowledge to do or likely the play money needed to achieve it. I really like the fact I have and use these active Xovers and good EQs to tweak my larger systems to their peak for me. Im sure some of a higher technical level would say its a low end or lazy way. Hey fine with me. Call it what some will. It works for me and gets me some decent sound. I can tweak the system to its maximum performance for my tastes. IMO with good revealing speakers and amps, many setups can really show some detail few normally do. Can a person get a more refined and revealing sound with less electrical or mainstream gear. Im absolutely sure. But I have a 6 y/o to raise and far more to get done outside my hobby. And the fun money is in short supply these days. So I feel more than happy and quite lucky.
Again lots of ways to have fun and make a killer sounding rig.
Best of luck with all your adventures. Again I hope to read more about the specifics of what you like and are playing around with. Youve clearly been around the block and then some.
Follow Ups:
Electronic crossovers....hmm....got some stories, my buddies system had the not exactly cheap 4 way Ashly xr4001 which is 24db slopes.
He sent it back to the factory, still noisy....shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh......
we tried hard to get unity gain for lowest noise in the signal chain, no luck, Ashly just makes some noisy beast's I guess. Not for use on 109 db or high sensitivity horns in a domestic environment. Guess all that "steep slope" circuitry in there is causing quite a bit of noise.
Anyway I have found steep slopes 24db and up on horns does several things.
1. sound fake as hell
2. never allows drivers to blend as a whole speaker, you always seem to hear woofer, mid, tweeter, super tweeter all as separate drivers.
3. Lets sound guys doing live music "get loud". 48db slopes get REALLY loud for the amount of power and speakers and sounds REALLY fake.
With the best drivers and horns you do 6db slopes either active or passive
for amazing sound but really things need to be pretty sorted out to do the 6db thing. Worth the struggle in my opinion though.
I hate to recommend such an old and sometimes worn out piece of gear with early ic cheese ball chips and everything but the 1970's Furman TX series of crossovers are probably something you would like the sound of...when they are cleaned up and working well.
Since you are on a budget I think you can sell the Ashly or other low end crossover and get some Furman's. I buy the TX-2's and 3's for around $50 each and run them mono three way to get a dual mono design. The 3-5 way mono Tx's sometimes bring some more money depending on the condition as any other piece of vintage gear and the prices are all over the place on them. Worn input pot is usually the main problem with all these old Furmans though.
As far as the low end pro crossovers go, Ashly, Rane, DBX, etc, etc, the silly old Furmans just sound so clear and natural to me compared to any of those and even though the Furmans are not exactly quiet being unbalanced and a very old solid state design, they are not distraction like the Ashly on the high sensitivity speakers.
For little money the Furmans are fun, not really a marchand, bryston quality level here, but the Furmans are cheaper and adjustable and will fit your budget.
My buddy has racks and racks of Furmans for his studio and live gear.
Most all the Furmans need the electrolytic caps replaced in them because most of the caps are starting to leak at this point causing noise.
When I replace the electrolytic caps it makes the old Furmans pretty quiet for what they are. Don't go replacing anything that you don't have to, the circuit boards have very thin traces.
Some of the earliest Furmans have phase switches inside, you need to make sure these are in the correct positions. Almost all the Furmans need to be sprayed out with pro pot cleaner, just takes one scratchy pot to blow a speaker. I think you can guess how I learned that years ago.
I don't care if this info drives up the cost of Furman tx crossovers, people need to hear how good that cheesy old design sounds and make sure they are not doing worse with newer or better known gear. Also lets save some of the Furmans from the trash heap. ;)
You have quite a bit of stuff that in my opinion is ready for ebay.
Le175's, lovely drivers but as with the even better LE85, the Le175's rolloff too early and need a super tweeter for me at least.
One of the commercial things I am experimenting with took a 2420(le85)and put in a new phase plug, goes to about 16k now instead of starting to roll at 12-13k like the factory phase plug.
Get rid of all those ring radiators if you have them laying around, you are right they are not quite there for what you are doing.
You may want to cull the JBL ti herd, do you really use them all?
Ok you get the idea, you have a bunch of stuff that could be sold and the money used to get your horn system to lets compete with $50,000 speakers level.
Sorry I can't give you all the details on my latest systems, thinking of a commercial venture so I hope you understand. I do want to help you because you have all the decent stuff I was playing with years ago and you are really close to making something world class great with most of what you already have.
I know where you are, in the "its all good" phase. I actually do appreciate some lost cost gear and use it on the tv, computer to hide horrible source material but lets have some separation here, your bad boy Edgar system should not be lumped in to the same category as the cheap stuff and lower end gear at least it won't after I help you tweak it.
1.First thing, Bruce told me many many years ago is that tractrix horns beam badly at 20x the flare rate so 650 cutoff x20=13000 hz.
The horn on your TAD 2001 is much too large for good dispersion
and probably has a bit of a tunnel effect for the highs. I would recommend around a 2000hz or higher cut off wood tractrix horn for your TAD2001. Round wood horn is preferred but if you are pressed for time and money Parts Express has a metal elliptical tracrix STH100 by fatial pro for around $31 each that sound pretty good for 5000k and up. I cross them at 5-6k or above on a buddies system with 2440's on mids.(I know, metal horn=cow bell), mount them to wood and use a little bit of clay and they won't attract any cows. (don't go crazy with clay just a handful) Also use with wide part of ellipse going vertical towards ceiling for best imaging.
2.Do what you have to by selling some of your unused gear for money to get some beryllium truextent diaphragms for your 2441's. Will blend better with your 2001's even if you have some decent sounding diaphragms's in your 2441's now. I have heard the Truextent diaphragms in the Classic Loudspeaker's room many times. First time the dynamics were so real they actually scared me. I was not facing the speakers and a trumpet solo came on, I thought someone was playing a joke with a real trumpet behind me!!! Fun stuff.
3. Time align your drivers voice coils, especially on the highs.
4. Now the mid bass and bass is what separates good horns from great horns. An Ev force on j horn, hmm guessing Bruces "show" horn. That is a "not bad" set up but I think you will be very happy if you spend a little time changing things in this area. My favorite mid bass and bass horn driver was also what Bruce used before field coil, the JBL 2220 15", and yes in alnico of course. You will end up with a straight horn in the 80-120 to 500hz area eventually but in the mean time find some nearly free Peavey Fh-1's, stick some JBL 2220's in there and make every LaScala owner so very jealous. I think this set up will out do the Force/j combo.
A 2220 with a heavy aftermarket cone and lower fs actually worked better using it on a 35hz-100 bass horn. (Might be the only time ever I liked an aftermarket cone over a factory JBL.) The original factory coned 2220 is just really nice driver for midbass and lower mids, no make that a fantastic driver.(aw shucks, I don't want to drive the cost of these up but what the heck) The factory coned 2220 has a mass roll off of around 400hz in a horn and does up to about 900hz as a direct radiator comfortably without beaming. Be careful with some of the other JBL 15's in a bass horn that look similar to the 2220, they have a little less x-max. The 2220 was actually one of the few driver made as a bass horn driver.
I completely understand your point of view. And I wish you well on your possible business venture. You sound seasoned enough to make a real go at it.
Just to clarify. The J horn midbass horn is made by Ed Gindin. He and Bruce know each other very well and respect one another. It uses a 12" driver. Im not sure if fitting it with a 15" is ok or advisable. Maybe he will chime in on all this if he knows of this thread.
You mention the JBL 2220A. I mentioned my JBL A130. At my novice glace they look real similar. Are they close enough where they would be acceptable? Have a pair with original (maybe vintage recone, have to look) cones. Be great to put them to use if possible.
Any advice on active crossovers or even passive? I loosely recall what Bruce was up to with passive ones. I really do like active with its versatility. And what it allows an amp to work within. Infact I was just reading up on actives over on heritage. My ashlys are not held in the highest regard by many in the know. I already knew this. I know most audiophiles like Marchand and Bryston. Yeah its nice when good gear is under the $1K mark. Again my $ situation is different these days. Cant spend like a fool anymore in my 20s pre kid days LOL...
Again I really appreciate your thoughts and advice. I love to learn from folks who know far more than me. Not a though bar to achieve ;)
Gotta run now too....
TTYL
I have not messed with 130's in quite a while and after I discovered 2220's I retired all my 130's to guitar amps or to vintage hifi collectors if they were rare original coned models. Don't flame
me if I am wrong but I think most of the 130's have slightly less xmax than the 2220's.
Keep your 130's until you get some original paper surround edge 2220's and compare. They are so close but they are not the same, Lansing Heritage forum can explain all the little details between the two drivers. Metal dust cap on the 130's is not really used in hifi anymore, I am not even going to make a comment on the the metal versus paper caps sound, please listen, I think you will have a preference right away.
Paper surround versions of either speaker have MUCH greater detail if you are going the stretch up to 400-500hz.
If your 130's or 2220's are original paper edge drivers you probably don't want to go below 80-90 hz in a bass horn and 120hz as a direct radiator unless you don't care about wearing them out pretty fast and the cost of recone with a real JBL kit is pretty high.
I don't think any 15's would work well in your 12" j horn, different back chamber requirements plus they may not even physically fit? throat is probably too small also.
I understand what you mean about a high efficiency JBL 12" in the horn not being as impressive as it should. D120, etc. seems like it should be better than it is but 2220 blows the it away for hi fi or even pa use.
Ahhh here I go again driving up the cost of 2220's, my favorite all around
15" driver by JBL.
The 2220 works in these applications fantastic: 35-120hz in a bass horn and on a straight 80 or 100hz up to 400 flat as a mid bass horn driver. 120-900hz flat in a tiny cab as a direct radiator.
Yeah I know the K-horn guys are going to say "my K-horns" go from 35-400
on the bass and I would say that huge time delay and lack of upper bass lower mid harmonics is too big an issue for me but hey obviously doesn't bother some as much as myself. K-horns rock for parties just as they are though!
It's the JBL D130 with aluminum cone that should be avoided except for guitar or lofi. I avoid it for guitar too.
I wrote 130's off for hi fi way back in the 1990's when I discovered 2220's, that darn metal dustcap on 130's. I heard some guys put felt on them for hi fi but these are collectable speakers and you could hurt the value doing stuff like that.
Now I have to correct you though and this time I checked. The 130 is indeed a quite different speaker than the 2220. type in jbl thiele/small parameters on a search engine and pull up the specs of both. FS, QTS, Xmax, etc. in fact almost all the specs are really different between the two drivers and not just a small percentage, these are vastly different drivers.
I think I also remember the 130 had a thinner top plate or something like that, everything on 130's was done to get max efficiency out of it and damn the flat response!!!
I guess when I left the 130's for dead 20 years ago I forgot how different
they were from the 2220.
It is all coming back now, the JBL D120 I think was more similar to the 130
and again completely different from the 2220 type purpose. JBL made 120's to "get loud" It has been so long that I have cared for either 120 or 130 on hifi, the details were getting really foggy.
Now again I will say understand why you chose the EV Force over the JBL 12's you probably tried in your bass horn.
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