The Celestion 70/80 main driver that I installed is a low end entry level 12" 80 watt guitar/general purpose speaker. It has a pretty smooth low end coming into it's own around 175hz. It has a punchy mid around 2k and and sharp drop off around 10k. With this swell in response around 2-3k I expected it to be very middy. It wasn't the best choice for this application but it was good enough to test our proof of concept. The Eminence Delta-Lite II will be a much better choice for this rig. It's a Neodymium magneted 12" driver designed for PA systems. It has become hugely popular among bass guitar players for it's light weight and room filling tight bottom end. I'll give you a report on how it works out when it arrives.
The dome tweeter I used was a Boss TW-30 and was designed for car audio applications. It's frequency response was 2k to 20k. I was hoping for a pleasing crossover point. My crossover is fixed and unfortunately I could not find the specs on it. Fixed means the frequency at which it divides the sound is set at a fixed point, and is not adjustable. I have no idea what the crossover frequency is. To my ear it sounds like about 2k-4k. But even Google couldn't help me answer this question. I think it had CR-209 stamped on the circuit board.
Let me tell you a little about the rig I use. It's a Line 6 Pod XT Live pedal board, into a Carvin DCM-150 power amp. I do run the electric guitar into a Korg DTR-1000 tuner through an Audio Technica wireless. I A-B my acoustic instruments on a hard wire (guitar cable) thru the tuner and the Pod XT Live with an amp model set up for each one. I use the amp controls on the Pod for main EQ, and have the ability to get into the Pod's on board graphic EQ if more tweaking is desired. I was running this rig stereo into a 2x12 Avatar cabinet loaded with an 8 ohm Celestion Vintage 30 driver and an 8 ohm Celestion Greenback reissue. This trick of mixing drivers is a great way to get some killer tone, by the way. I thought this rig sounded really, really good. But with the rack case, the speaker cab and the pedal board it was a lot of stuff to tote to gigs.
I started out running some streaming audio straight into the power amp from my laptop with no eq. It worked. Sound came out. I checked the tweeter and it was tweeting. I checked the main driver and it was driving. So my wiring was good. I cranked it up and checked the air flow from the vented ports and they were venting and porting. The air flow from the ports was a little weak which I attributed to the 70/80. Tonally... well it sucked! It was honky as heck! But then I was pushing streaming audio from the web at 32k or some such silliness. Basically beach music with the guts ripped out by the codecs. I thought the 70/80 would be middy and I was right! I put aside the honky tones and cranked it up louder listening for shakes, rattles and rolls. It sounded tight. No issues in the build, no air leaks that I could find. No aural artifacts. And it was LOUD! But at this volume level the cabinet was starting to work giving the tone a little personality. Nothing like my guitar cabs. But clean and tight on the low end. And a glassy presence on top. The middle sucked though! Ha! It was honking like a flock of geese!
I let the fowl fly and went upstairs to grab some lunch. If anything was loose I wanted it to shake free now rather then later.
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