Bobby's Dad's thread....

[Elite-ist]

Not much to it, George. Thanks for the pictures and I might do a pair of woofer surrounds on an old set of EPI 100s I have. Ben did his Bose 901s some time ago and that was quite a job because of the number of drivers he had to re-surround, as I recall.

Nando.

 

[pennysdad]

Nice work BD. Did you refinish the cones??

These particular drivers (JBL 116H-3) come with doped cones. (giving that shiny look)
Trouble with that stuff, is that it forever remains a tad sticky, so I gently clean any excess rubbish off them by tapping the dirty bits off with a bit of masking tape, which has enough stick to remove the contaminant, but not quite enough to remove the doping. It's a tedious job going over the whole cone, but they eventually come up very clean looking.
You have to be extra careful to not change the mass of the cone in any way, so as to not mess with their resonant free air frequency. That includes minimal adhesive, and getting absolutely all the old residual foam off without removing any of the doping too.
Just had another look at them, and now that all the adhesive has dried clear, you'd swear they were 'bought ones', and they pass the 10Hz tone test admirably.
Can't wait to get the boxes for them by the end of the week, now that I've bought them. They should come up a treat once I get the boxes back up to scratch. No major chunks missing or scratches. Just a couple of very minor chips that should touch up pretty easily.
So for $50 for the boxes, and $20 for the surrounds, I figure $70 for a pair of JBL 4408A's (which will come up mint) is a pretty good price.
I'm happy with that…..

 

[BubbaH]

I did the 901's 1 speaker at a time. So only having 9 drivers to work with. I plan to do this big ol set of Cerwins I have in the shed at some point. I think it was Jer that of spoke bypassing the potentiometer on these which is something I may consider as well.

 

[laatsch55]

I would try cleaning the pot first. It was pretty handy on my D9's...

 

[pennysdad]

Not much to it, George. Thanks for the pictures and I might do a pair of woofer surrounds on an old set of EPI 100s I have. Ben did his Bose 901s some time ago and that was quite a job because of the number of drivers he had to re-surround, as I recall.

Nando.

Oh yes Nando. I've done heaps of Bose.
I had 32 boxes of 802's at one stage, when they first came out, and they tried to do a sponsorship deal with the band I worked for at the time (Men at Work), and the first night out, blew 16 of 'em to bits.
Huge job, but between me and the Distributor, we managed to knock 'em on the head after a marathon overnight session.
Never again.
It was just after that that they came up with the Tandem Tuned Bass cabs to augment the 802's, but I just ended up using JBL filled Altec 2215 W-bins. 2 per side did the trick for small venues, and I eventually sent all the Bose stuff back including the horrid 1800 amplifiers. Way too heavy, and just couldn't run cool without tripping out all the time. They just weren't rock n' roll, but the 802's made excellent side fill for stage monitors tho'. (I think I kept 8 a side for that.)

 

[BubbaH]

I would try cleaning the pot first. It was pretty handy on my D9's...

The pot is on the back of these ones and feels pretty scratchy and hard to turn.

Oh yes Nando. including the horrid 1800 amplifiers. Way too heavy, and just couldn't run cool without tripping out all the time.

Even with the fan cooled road case? I know the heat sink surface area on the 1800's is less than the 1801. My cousin has an 1800. It did seem to overheat a lot faster than an 1801. My problem is getting an 1801 hot, at least in my current living space. In a large room it would take an hour or two of some heavy listening levels to get it warm enough for pure enjoyment of cranking levels.

 

[Elite-ist]

What, how did I miss that, George? I didn't know you worked with Men At Work. That's amazing you and the crew resurrected that many surrounds in one night, without any stimulants.

Nando.

 

[laatsch55]

Not a bad deal at all BD.

 

[pennysdad]

What, how did I miss that, George? I didn't know you worked with Men At Work. That's amazing you and the crew resurrected that many surrounds in one night, without any stimulants.

Nando.

They were just another band then Nando….
All up there were about a hundred recones to do.
It's OK once you set it up as a production line, and there were three of us on the job.
Wot was funny, is that I'd never done a Bose before, but quite a few JBL's by then, and it was a bit difficult to adapt to the smallness of them, but once you're on a roll, it's not that hard, just boring. I ended up showing the Bose guys the most efficient way of doing them. They were so clueless, (and still in shock) but we were all fast learners.
Besides, we had another gig the following night, and it had to be done, 'cause I had all the stock they had, so there were no spares to replace them with.
…. and yes, the effort was well supported by mass amounts of 'stimulants', and I'm not talking' coffee.

 

[laatsch55]

So the Bose folks imbibed??

 

[pennysdad]

Even with the fan cooled road case? I know the heat sink surface area on the 1800's is less than the 1801. My cousin has an 1800. It did seem to overheat a lot faster than an 1801. My problem is getting an 1801 hot, at least in my current living space. In a large room it would take an hour or two of some heavy listening levels to get it warm enough for pure enjoyment of cranking levels.

They had to be fan cooled from the side, so wot we did was made up fan boxes/cases/sleeves, one for the bottom and one for the top of each amp stack (working push/pull), and four amps in between, and then tunnel the air from bottom to top.
It had like 4 chimneys, two per side of each case/sleeve, and each amp case had two holes cut in the bottom and two in the tops of their sleeves (per side/channel) which interconnected from sleeve to sleeve. So multiply that by 8 as we had 16 amps @ 8 per side. (2 stacks of 4 amps per side each amp feeding 2x 802 boxes.)
Easy concept just difficult to explain in my current state of tired/madness….. Shit, now even I'm confused!
…. but it worked, for a while, but the whole system was just too much work, as each amp was in it's own sleeve, and the boxes weren't road cased so there was a lot of walking backwards and forwards to and from the truck to the stage. Load ins were just killing us. You could only carry two 802's at a time, or one amp….. Just too much.

 

[pennysdad]

So the Bose folks imbibed??

Oops!

 

[laatsch55]

Oops??

 

[pennysdad]

Oops??

Yes Lee, "oops", as in "oops!"
Hell man, it was the end of the 70's and the start of the 80's. Who didn't?

 

[laatsch55]

Exactly, that's why I didn't understand the oops...

 

[pennysdad]

Damn, it's almost 5.00am.
Gotta go.
Got 6 albino budgies on steroids to feed at 8.00am……

L8r….

 

[stuwee]

Exactly, that's why I didn't understand the oops...

Bingo! Ding, ding, ding... Blue team wins!! Or is it the one with the 'purple/red hairs sneakin' up the buds??

 

[pennysdad]

…. the one with the 'purple/red hairs sneakin' up the buds??

That's the one I'd go for….

 

[pennysdad]

I've been getting some great job offers lately, ever since i signed up with a 'specialist' job sight, and listed myself as a Lunar Aviator.just got a new one as an Air Traffic Controller, and one from Jetstar as a Procurement Manager, and also one from a bank as a Real Time Analyst, wotever that is.....


maybe i should take up their offers, work a week, fake a heart attack, then resign and take the cash and run onto the next one, and so on......


i could pro'ly make 10K a week, for 6 months then retire for a while.

might just keep that in the back of my mind for a while…….

if anyone's thinking' of flying anywhere for the next six months, i might recommend you put it off for just a little bit.
I've never been an Air Traffic Controller before.

 

[laatsch55]

Damn, whats a guy say to that?