Line Array trial using Bose drivers?

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SET not pushing many watts? Yet perhaps not much power required...you, sir, are a strange egg ... usually a SET implies audio snob pardon me...quality gear. And to pair that with Amar's Abomination! The mind reels :clown:


These are my SETs, 200WPC, plenty of power. Russian 6E5P feeding 833C transmitter tube, direct coupled design. 2.3kV on the 833C plate. Currently they drive Infinity RSIIbs with no sweat (see picture).

I like a challenge, like trying to make a decent line array from Bose drivers. I'm in no hurry, as the current system kicks serious ***.
 

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These are my SETs, 200WPC, plenty of power. Russian 6E5P feeding 833C transmitter tube, direct coupled design. 2.3kV on the 833C plate. Currently they drive Infinity RSIIbs with no sweat (see picture).

I like a challenge, like trying to make a decent line array from Bose drivers. I'm in no hurry, as the current system kicks serious ***.

Is that a pink plasma glow? Looks like a genie in a bottle. Cool amp. 🙂
 
I've been messing around with the 901 Series III drivers and found that three coats of Parts Express Wet Look on the cone really cleaned up their response, and dropped their Fs by ~10Hz (Picture 1, beige trace is with the Wet Look).

I then took that driver and put it into a 0.2 cuft vented box and did a little optimizing, with two front-facing slot ports on the side, and obtained a pretty nice FR curve from 80Hz to 6kHz (Picture 2). Sounds good, too, with very good clarity.

18 or so of these per side run crossoverless in a vented enclosure, with a line of tweeters crossed in at 5 or 6 kHz and a sub or two at the bottom below 80Hz might make for a pretty good sounding line array!
 

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Next step for the above is to build another single driver box with better optimized dimensions, using 3/4" plywood. The one above was actually an old Macanudo cigar box with W and D dimensions identical and thin 1/4" walls. I figure I can reduce standing waves quite a bit yet with a properly proportioned design and add some filling to absorb some of the higher frequency backwave as well. Once the single driver box is optimized then it will be time to think about scale-up.

The upward trending slope of the FR response graph above could actually be useful in a line array, as the frequency response will tend to slope downward with increasing frequency, so the two effects should cancel to some extent.
 
Very interested in all of this. I was thinking of building a LA PA system in the Bose L1 fashion.This would be for my bands vocals primarily and we play in small enough venues but I would like to have plenty of headroom. Maybe you guys could help with my thinking (or lack of). I figured looking around the posts here that the Faital 4" speaker would be a good unit to use. I thought a column of these each side (12)and a 15"Sub(maybe 18") and not sure what to use as hf drivers or how many. For a really good quality sound with plenty of power what ratio of power would I need between Bass Mid and Top assuming a 3way active system (I am leaning towards 2kW bass).Any help with choice of hf driver and any pointers would be appreciated. One of the main objectives here is a portable light weight system.
 
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