DIY Loudspeakers Arn't Loud! HELP!

[gooberpea33]

Hey, I built this set of speakers and to be blunt THEY SUCK! First, they are 4-way speakers. They have a 15" Full range woofer, a 12" sub woofer, a 10" Mid Bass, and a 10x4 piezo tweeter. When I first built them, I had the 15, 12, and 10 wired in series, with the tweeter in parallel with a cap between it and the positive side. They Sounded AWESOME!!! But, my tweeters blew and one of my 15's blew. So, I got 2 new tweeters with a higher power handling, and 2 15's with a higher power handling, and 2 4-way crossovers. I figured the crossovers would make it a whole lot safer so they wouldn't blow again. But, what actually happened, is that my crossovers are killing my sound!! These speakers have just about no bass, they don't shake the house anymore, and they are just too damn quiet at full volume! BTW I got a crown CE2000. With the old stuff I could shake the house at less than half power without my amp clipping. Now it clips and I can barely hear it from 30ft away. Please give me some suggestions. Should I completely eliminate the crossover like before? Are there better crossovers out there that won't kill my sound? Help!
Thanks!

~TracyDJMan~

[richie00boy]

Probably the replacement 15s are weaker in the bass department. Your design is far from optimal, but there's a lot of work to get it right, not sure how much time and effort you are willing to put in.

[sreten]

Hmmm.........

Sounds like a real dogs dinner of a loudspeaker.

What sort of 4 way crossover would suit those drivers ?

Read the wiki here on piezo's, you cannot just use a normal crossover.
http://www.diyaudio.com/wiki/index.php?page=piezoXO

Give some details of the drivers, layout and cabinets.

You should then get some sensible and good advise.

/sreten.

[Sonusthree]

Were you really running the speakers without ANY crossover at all?

[Willitwork]

Originally posted by Sonusthree
Were you really running the speakers without ANY crossover at all?

Sounds frightening doesn't it?

[Grumpy_Git]

Polarity of drive unit wiring?

wiring by lug size can be a dangerous game.....

Nick.

[Cal Weldon]

You have gone from 3 drivers attempting bass to 1. Which driver now gets the bass with the new XO?

[Tenson]

I'd suggest selling all the parts and cutting your losses. They are clearly not a well designed speaker (no offence) so you would do better buying a pair of simple but effective 2-way sound reinforcement monitors.

Something like a pair of these http://www.behringer.com/B215A/index.cfm?lang=eng

[Cal Weldon]

Tenson,
I think we recognize the shortcomings of this configuration but it doesn't sound like goober needs anything more. He's just wondering why, when he used to have the bass coming from a 15, 12 and 10" units all in one cabinet to just one of the units, it's much less bass.

When he is ready for the next project we can steer him away from this "bucket 'o' bolts" approach and into something that makes a little more sense.

[Tenson]

It just seems he must have a lot of capital in all those drivers and more to be spent yet. He may well get more for that money by selling up and going for a budget commercial approach. Depends if he can flog the drivers or not I suppose.