Looking to upgrade to horns

I never knew there was an actual TOWN called Eminence! You are on a roll!
 
I have used Eminence speakers in a few projects over the years and have nothing bad to say about them, made in US and a lot of bang for the buck. I will just be using the stock 400 to get things up and running, very soon I will have a monster amp to drive the subs with, not sure what I will do with the stock 400, wanted to see about sending it to ED to rebuild stock maybe add the wats board, but he says he is to sick to take anymore work on so guess I will just retire it and let my grandkids fight over it after I'm gone..... BTW JustMike from this forum has helped me a lot with this, he is an Altec guru with tons of info and has used these for years... thanks Mike
 
Here is update, I painted the horn opening with gun metal grey metallic and the bass ports semi gloss black, got rid of the 1/4" input jacks and replaced with regular speaker terminals, I put grills in cause these are in my shop and mice tend to like to find winter homes and don't want them turning these cabs with the insulation into mouse condos, still have more work to do like put insulation in, refurbish the angle trim that goes all around the edges, shampoo the carpet, the HF horns are ready to go hope to maybe hook everything up tomorrow and give a bit of a run....

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Horns, though...
Efficient, but don't they tend to be a bit "honky" in the midrange? Maybe a bit too "present?" My ears tend to be a bit too sensitive to midrange, and I like something that I can listen to for long periods without an earache.

I'm doing some preliminary searching for something new, thinking about Pioneer HPM100 or Altec 9 Series II. Hell, even a pair of Realistic Mach One! I also tend to stray away from ported / bass reflex designs in favor of acoustic suspension for tightly controlled but DEEP bass. My ADS 1290 systems are nice, but not exceptional, a bit thin in the bass. Maybe a good sub might be the answer for me.

Opinions?
 
MarkWComer said:
Horns, though...
Efficient, but don't they tend to be a bit "honky" in the midrange? Maybe a bit too "present?" My ears tend to be a bit too sensitive to midrange, and I like something that I can listen to for long periods without an earache.

I'm doing some preliminary searching for something new, thinking about Pioneer HPM100 or Altec 9 Series II. Hell, even a pair of Realistic Mach One! I also tend to stray away from ported / bass reflex designs in favor of acoustic suspension for tightly controlled but DEEP bass. My ADS 1290 systems are nice, but not exceptional, a bit thin in the bass. Maybe a good sub might be the answer for me.

Opinions?
Click to expand...

Well this is my first shot with an active Xover and separate amps. I got everything hooked up today but only got to play around with it for an hour or so but I can pretty much get the horns to sound how ever I like, I can change the Xover, the input gain as well as output gain, so if the sound to honky I can adjust that to what I like...... I grew up on the east coast in the town that manufactured EPI speakers and like you I prefered the sealed cab sound but then spent a few years out in CA where everyone had ported speakers, I was not to wild about them at first but they really grew on me, they sound more like live performance to me and I love the thunder bass. I still have a couple pair of EPI's I run in the house with a powered sub, that sub really makes a huge difference with the sealed cab EPI's. To me to get the most out of ported speakers they need volume the more you crank it up the better they sound... so if your an apartment dweller where you need to keep it down a bit sealed cabs with a sub is the way to go but if you live where you can crank it up than I love the ported.... just my take

As far as recommendations here are a few I know first hand are truly great seald cab speakers, of course all EPI...
EPI 400
EPI 202
EPI 602
And if you have the space and money build a pair of these and never look back!! I have been tempted to build these myself
EPI 1000
How to build the 1000
1000 build
 
I am liking the color very much as well it flipflops from bright silver to dark grey depending on the light and angle you are looking at them from. in the next couple weeks I plan to build some stands with casters on them. They will be just a simple frame that eventually I can enclose to put some sub woofer drivers in.... they look great with the HF horns sitting on top of them
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bill7621 said:
i think you're going to need a bigger garage.
Click to expand...
Oh I agree! it is only 30 X 40, 80 X 80 would be way more to my liking, I was able to spend a bit of time with them today and got the Xover dialed in pretty nice, this set up is incredible I now see what all the hub bub is about on high efficient speakers, volume was so loud the whole shop was rattling and barely 1/3 volume on my C1, the WOPL 400 was not even breathing hard driving the mids but the stock 400 was working a bit pushing the subs... I ran Dark Side of Moon CD for my first run, this album has always been my go to, to see what a speaker has as that album has a bit of everything and it just sounded sweet, I am very happy with this set up and I did it for under a grand for everything including all materials, cabs, woofers, HF drivers, HF horns, Xover, and Crown power amp to drive the HF horns :)
 
Nice job on the horns but loud would be having the WOPL 400 driving the mids, a WOPL 700 driving the subs, and both of them banging well into the red. Lee and I have done it a few times. It will knock all of the dust off your rafters.
 
Hi Ray. Well as I was telling you awhile back that the Tornado that went through our area put us behind for awhile, but we are all good and about
back to our normal.

You have done an impressive amount of skilled work on the 816's brother. They look awesome and glad that I was able to lend some experience
suggesting components and stuff but you made it happen and under budget. And that was not easy with this quality of equipment.
Cheers bro, and I'm sure your neighbors are enjoying them also. :D:eek::p
 
All of that ^ is just flat out awesome. The paint is nearly unreal. I would love to see and hear it myself. Thanks for sharing it all with us. One day, one day....
 
Thanks Mike and everyone else for the happy comments. I think the neighbors will like them very much!! Woke them up a bit today with some golden earring lol. Finished cutting to length and ripping down the pieces to build the stands to put the cabs on also ordered some casters to make life easier to move them around, got to go to the lumber yard to get some insulation to line the cabs with I think 1" would be good for these, it is what Alec used originally... anyone know what the out put rating is for the WOPL 400 with 4 ohm speakers?? Thinking of what I am going to pick for 18" sub woofers....
 
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