FranJ

EV SM120A are fantastic horn lenses and make a very happy marriage with Klipsch K55V - even better, remove the bug screen at the driver output. Here's my Peavey FH-1 based speakers (used to be LaScalas); your speakers are going to sound very similar to mine!

I tried many times to lift my LaScalas (now Peavey FH-1) from the floor : even two inches and the bass was gone and midrange was all over the place. Maybe it's due to my room's acoustics. Give it a try with whatever you can put under them; there's some good chances it will sound like crap!

Make it a mono boombox with included tripath amplifier and a mini-jack input. Music on the beach

I wouldn't use them just at the crossover frequency with the low pass. That crossover frequency is set by the ALK crossovers at 400Hz/6dB; what I'd like to do is get those harrison laps f-mods as a , say, 150Hz high-pass in front of the amplifier driving the mid and high range. I just wanna free that small amp from the burden of bass amplification. I guess since it's outside the band reproduced by the mid and treble, the "technical imprefection" of the f-mods won't be noticeable.... but it's just a wild guess. We will see. it's gonna be loads of trial and error, that's sure.

Yeah I remember Al K. saying that if you want to disconnect the woofer from its Universal crossover, you need to place a resistor in place. My "main" amplifier - the one that will feed the mid and tweeters trough the ALK crossovers- is 2 x 10watts so I guess 20watts resistor is more than enough. The electronic crossover will send all frequencies under 400Hz to a separate amp feeding the bass bins... as usual... the choice of a car-audio product is dictated by opportunity on a very very low price. I figure most entry-level analogic crossovers are based on the same opamps + a bunch or resistors, the fact that it's a car-audio product won't matter much in this case. At that price, I'm not taking much risk anyways - and the midrange and treble won't pass trough it, the signal for those will still come straight from the preamp to the main amp, to preserve signal integrity and transparency (my preamp has two pairs of main outputs). I'm looking forward to receive it and install it, there's a (small) chance that I won't be satisfied with the result, but I will learn at least what good can bi-amping bring to the plate. I'm thinking of getting some in-line passive crossovers (such as harrison labs proposals) to remove some lows from the main amplifier without having to pass trough the active circuitry of the car-audio crossover: even tho I listen at very reasonable levels, removing some unnecessary bass from the small main amplifier can only be beneficial. Seems stupid to send a completely full range signal to an amp that feeds midrange and treble only.

Some picture of my "NewScalas".

John, it's very obvious there's too much midrange and high midrange coming from the bass horns: if I disconnect the mid drivers, but leave the tweeters on, a (very untrained) ear could believe the sound is still full range. It would be very bad speakers, but still, it still sounds full range. When everything is connected, on some voices, there's a "wah-wah" sound from frequencies that are not supposed to come out from down there, coming trough and - I suppose- interferencing with what comes out the midrange horn. But I guess the main problem I have isn't interferences, I guess it's just you cannot cleanly pass frequencies above a certain point trough a folded bass horn, it starts sounding like a ...(very bad) horn. It would be more than OK for PA, but my goal is high-fidelity. I'm using klipsch K33E woofers. Globally I condider the Peavey bass horn to be superior to the LaScala bass horn, but I need to adapt the low-pass filtering. The fact that you were crossing yours at 1KHz says it all! Try to do that with LaScalas! I'm gonna go active. yesterday I found a brand new car audio crossover with 24dB linkwitz-riley slopes, phase switch, a variable subsonic filter that goes up to <40Hz, everything I need! It used to be an item priced around 200$, but I guess the brand -Caliber- stopped (?) and you now find the device for around 40$ on various websites the active filtering is gonna be on the low pass only. The rest will be full range on the ALK crossovers. I might add some passive filtering of what comes in the mid/high amplifier, to relieve it from some low frequencies.

Hello, to make the story short I used to have a pair of heavily modded LaScalas; they were a split pair, and my very last mod was to replace the LaScala bass bins with Peavey FH-1 bass bins. I'm pleased with the results (I love the LaScala but my bins have seen better days with metal handles in the side walls and everything, and they were prone to rattle and make noise; I was thinking of bracing them but I found these Peavey bins for super cheap instead) BUT I'm using a first order crossover (ALK Universal). Because of that, there's too much mid frequencies coming trough the bass horn (the FH-1 doesn't have 90° bends and has corner reflectors, it goes higher in frequency... I didn'thave the problem with the LaScala bass bins, the shape of the horn reduces the bandwith. Klipsch Belle users might have the same problem as me when using 1st order crossovers. It's very obvious and annoying with some songs, much less with others, but I'd rather get rid of the problem. I have two possibilities: 1) build a passive low-pass 12dB/octave filter for the woofer only and use instead of the ALK low pass section 2) use an active low-pass x-over and a second amp, and go semi-active: low pass 400Hz 24dB linkwitz-riley on the bass horns, the rest still connected full range on the ALk crossovers. What do you guys thing would be my best option?

lol she's got flexible suspensions for sure

my guess is from 21inch upwards, cone excursion is not that much anymore. above 15inch, and with the notable exception of VOLT 18inch woofers, I've never met a pro SUBwoofer with a rubber, or any other "souple" surround... and I'm not talking altec 515 here, we agree that we talk about SUB bass.

Huh... the best woofers ever made, from TAD, JBL, Altec, GOTO, and the woofers you have in your heritage speakers, are made of "paper" with an "accordeon" surround. You don't put a rubber surround on a 21inch driver; it would become slow and sluggish... a good, big size "pro" woofer like this one, with high sensitivity, will always sound better to my ears than a "heavy" low sensitivity driver in a small sealed box with a correction circuit to boost the lowest frequencies.

Makes sense, yes, and I thought about that; but I'm a "straight wire with gain" guy, so the less things in the way of the signal the better I feel. I don't want to put an active crossover in front of my amplifier just to send the low bass away. Would consider doing it if I had a small amp, to release it of some stress,or if I was considering a true active system -in wich case the plus points of having no passive crossovers in the speakers, and no intermodulation, overcomes the minus point of having an active device between preamp and amp... The problem with dampening is that, done wrong, it gets worse, not better. Some materials just have a higher resonance frequency, and the more you go into the mid frequencies, the worse it is, and the mor difficult it gets to annihilate. (I'm just quoting things I've read on DIY loudspeakers forums and magazines...)

I wouldn't brace the horn like i've seen it many times. IMHO it doesn't damp the vibrations, it just displace them to HIGHER FREQUENCIES where they're even more nasty on the ear... At least, the one braced LaScala I heard had a resonance peak that really sounded like cardboard. Maybe the work wasn't done properly, and probably if you add material around it then works good; maybe i'm just being over-picky...

I'm not looking for more bass. I'm using an active sub to cover the lower frequencies. however, my ears are sensitive to some resonances at some frequencies -my guess is between 60 and 150Hz- that I would like to eradicate. Plus my LS bassbins have seen better days and need some youth cure...

http://www.mwd.fr/adam_studio/adam_studio_sub2100.php