I setup a PA system last saturday, 4 cabs with eminence 12 inch delta pro's and selenium D205TI tweets on stands, as well as a rack box with EQ, QSC RMX-1450 and power strip.
As I was setting up, something odd was happening... The speakers were consistently getting harder to bring up to the top of the tripod stands, with the last one much more difficult.
Then, the amp box....holy mackeral, by the time I grabbed that handle, gravity was at least twice as strong as it should be.
Breakdown 4 hours later was even worse. Gravity must have been at least 4 times stronger.
After I recovered from this debacle, I spent time in my basement working the rack boxes. No more putting multiple items in single boxes, too darn heavy.
I'm gonna make new boxes with strategic combinations of thinner plywood, west system epoxy, and carbon fiber cloth. The cloth isn't cheap, but the look is gonna be really cool.
Was also thinkin bout the speaker cabs...dropping to 1/4 ply sides but going strategic with side to side gussets and strengthening spars of maybe aluminum (titanium too expensive), kinda organic in design of the struts.
May hafta go with neo woofs as well. And I've started lookin at the N3000 behringer units, but I worry about reliability. My 1450's have been great since 2000. However, I must admit that I use the system probably 5 times a year now, quite done with clubs and no longer doing a summer gig every sunday.
In writing this, I realize that I will have to post pics of my build progress here, as well as the things I'm doing to make setup easier. One custom thing will be power distribution...I have a 1 RU 6 outlet box, but switch is on front, outlets in back, but it's only 4 inches deep...I can't even reach the outlets. So I'm going to make a half rack 1 RU box that mounts on the back of the mixer/EQ box, and was thinking of hard wiring the EQ and mixer power cords into the distro box, using IEC females to the units. Outlets at the back of the box will be for amp power and things like wireless mike receiver power and phone charger.
Again, I will put pics up.
John
As I was setting up, something odd was happening... The speakers were consistently getting harder to bring up to the top of the tripod stands, with the last one much more difficult.
Then, the amp box....holy mackeral, by the time I grabbed that handle, gravity was at least twice as strong as it should be.
Breakdown 4 hours later was even worse. Gravity must have been at least 4 times stronger.
After I recovered from this debacle, I spent time in my basement working the rack boxes. No more putting multiple items in single boxes, too darn heavy.
I'm gonna make new boxes with strategic combinations of thinner plywood, west system epoxy, and carbon fiber cloth. The cloth isn't cheap, but the look is gonna be really cool.
Was also thinkin bout the speaker cabs...dropping to 1/4 ply sides but going strategic with side to side gussets and strengthening spars of maybe aluminum (titanium too expensive), kinda organic in design of the struts.
May hafta go with neo woofs as well. And I've started lookin at the N3000 behringer units, but I worry about reliability. My 1450's have been great since 2000. However, I must admit that I use the system probably 5 times a year now, quite done with clubs and no longer doing a summer gig every sunday.
In writing this, I realize that I will have to post pics of my build progress here, as well as the things I'm doing to make setup easier. One custom thing will be power distribution...I have a 1 RU 6 outlet box, but switch is on front, outlets in back, but it's only 4 inches deep...I can't even reach the outlets. So I'm going to make a half rack 1 RU box that mounts on the back of the mixer/EQ box, and was thinking of hard wiring the EQ and mixer power cords into the distro box, using IEC females to the units. Outlets at the back of the box will be for amp power and things like wireless mike receiver power and phone charger.
Again, I will put pics up.
John
"Age takes its toll as it marches on......."
...."And eventually it marches right across your face"
(Steel Magnolias)
...."And eventually it marches right across your face"
(Steel Magnolias)
I haven't been able to put my 94 LB SP2-XT on the stand 2 m up where they belong. I'm too old & small to lift that much, although I do toe touch exercises. I hired the lawn man to help 4 years ago but that guy has a hernia now. Movers want $360 for 15 minutes, 3 hour minimum 2 men. Various "willl work for food" sign men are not interested.
Thinking of using Nema CE laminate 3/8" https://www.mcmaster.com/8491K33 instead of plywood to build a copy with Deltapro-15 bass vented box & separate Peavey RX22 CD on salvage Peavey horns on poles. But the NemaCE sheet is $363 a 36"x48" sheet. 6000 PSI minimum tensile strength. Passive crossover external of course to save weight.
1/8" carbon fiber hexcell is $2200 a sheet.
Thinking of using Nema CE laminate 3/8" https://www.mcmaster.com/8491K33 instead of plywood to build a copy with Deltapro-15 bass vented box & separate Peavey RX22 CD on salvage Peavey horns on poles. But the NemaCE sheet is $363 a 36"x48" sheet. 6000 PSI minimum tensile strength. Passive crossover external of course to save weight.
1/8" carbon fiber hexcell is $2200 a sheet.
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Neo drivers are somewhat gravity defying, for sure. Doing shows for a living I am well aware of how gravity will increase of the course of the day. And also, it seems, over the course of a lifetime.
At dinner tonight, my friend was mentioning the use of foamboard with glasscloth top and bottom. I worried about where I had to put screws, he said why not put wood there?
Given my wood and metal workshop tools, I should think about how to use foam/glasscloth and embedded wood or aluminum to meet my needs.
I know, I could just buy travel cases for my stuff, but where's the fun in that??? This is after all, a DIY forum....
Was thinkin...Given the time I will need to do this stuff, pics will be spread over many pages... So I will think about doin a youtube vid using my yt channel.
John
Given my wood and metal workshop tools, I should think about how to use foam/glasscloth and embedded wood or aluminum to meet my needs.
I know, I could just buy travel cases for my stuff, but where's the fun in that??? This is after all, a DIY forum....
Was thinkin...Given the time I will need to do this stuff, pics will be spread over many pages... So I will think about doin a youtube vid using my yt channel.
John
I once had the opposite. I went to a reggae concert where people were smoking marijuana all around me and when I left, it was like I was walking on the moon.
Loudspeakers are not surprisingly a vibrating mass. Too little mass for the whole system and the boxes will join the dancers and begin moving about.
In my larger systems loudspeakers need to be bolted to the floor if someone was foolish enough to design just a stacked system. Normally they are flown so the rigging keeps them in place.
So you just might find out even for loudspeaker boxes gravity is changing when the stacks fall down because the boxes have significantly reduced mass.
One secret of major system roadies is coke. It allows them to start their physically active day before eight or so and finish well after one. However as it is not only illegal, but also bad for you, in your case (and most others), it is strongly not recommended. (Note for the slow group the substance mentioned is not Coca-Cola!!!)
In my larger systems loudspeakers need to be bolted to the floor if someone was foolish enough to design just a stacked system. Normally they are flown so the rigging keeps them in place.
So you just might find out even for loudspeaker boxes gravity is changing when the stacks fall down because the boxes have significantly reduced mass.
One secret of major system roadies is coke. It allows them to start their physically active day before eight or so and finish well after one. However as it is not only illegal, but also bad for you, in your case (and most others), it is strongly not recommended. (Note for the slow group the substance mentioned is not Coca-Cola!!!)
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Can´t but agree.
"My thing" is live playing rock band stuff, better if in Stadiums, not kidding.
But I stopped manufacturing and selling, cold turkey, since March 2020, when our Beloved Dictator, (although he fancies to call himself President) "suggested": "let´s all take a 15 day break, until this funny oriental Bug disappears for good" 🙄
Restarted (or trying to) some 3 Months ago.
Gosh!!!!! Inflation tripled the cost of everything but also its WEIGHT!!!
Never tried to lift an 8x10" "fridge" Bass cabinet, but 4x12" Guitar and 4x10" deep Bass cabinets were easy and possible to, say, rise to working table level or inside/out a pickup bed or with 1 helper on the other handle, to chest level Theater (or large Club) stage edge.
Been doing that for 50 years !!!
Or HAD been doing!!!
NOT-ANY-MORE
Seriously designing small cabinets, made out of thin plywood, braced as needed (brute force wall thickness is a thing of the past), and developing SMPS.
Not kidding.
Not getting into Neo because I can´t magnetize it but I have always been able to efficiently squeeze down to the last drop out of Ferrites, so doing a lot with little weight to begin with.
As long as I don´t try to go stupid deep (anything below 50 or 80Hz respectively for Bass or Guitar), speakers can be both light and loud inside quite small and light enclosures.
Clever processing can create as much fake bass as needed to put smiles in Musician´s faces 😉
If Sony or Aiwa or Sanyo can get "wall shaking Bass" (or so it seems) out of 5" woofers inside plastic shoeboxes then so can I.
And they DO cheat, big time.
First with dedicated "Bass Processor" ICs such as MaxxBass, now with proprietary DSP or even plugins for Home Studio use:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/waves-maxxbass
Of course mine will be done in hardware and all analog, old dogs do not learn new tricks.
"My thing" is live playing rock band stuff, better if in Stadiums, not kidding.
But I stopped manufacturing and selling, cold turkey, since March 2020, when our Beloved Dictator, (although he fancies to call himself President) "suggested": "let´s all take a 15 day break, until this funny oriental Bug disappears for good" 🙄
Restarted (or trying to) some 3 Months ago.
Gosh!!!!! Inflation tripled the cost of everything but also its WEIGHT!!!
Never tried to lift an 8x10" "fridge" Bass cabinet, but 4x12" Guitar and 4x10" deep Bass cabinets were easy and possible to, say, rise to working table level or inside/out a pickup bed or with 1 helper on the other handle, to chest level Theater (or large Club) stage edge.
Been doing that for 50 years !!!
Or HAD been doing!!!
NOT-ANY-MORE
Seriously designing small cabinets, made out of thin plywood, braced as needed (brute force wall thickness is a thing of the past), and developing SMPS.
Not kidding.
Not getting into Neo because I can´t magnetize it but I have always been able to efficiently squeeze down to the last drop out of Ferrites, so doing a lot with little weight to begin with.
As long as I don´t try to go stupid deep (anything below 50 or 80Hz respectively for Bass or Guitar), speakers can be both light and loud inside quite small and light enclosures.
Clever processing can create as much fake bass as needed to put smiles in Musician´s faces 😉
If Sony or Aiwa or Sanyo can get "wall shaking Bass" (or so it seems) out of 5" woofers inside plastic shoeboxes then so can I.
And they DO cheat, big time.
First with dedicated "Bass Processor" ICs such as MaxxBass, now with proprietary DSP or even plugins for Home Studio use:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/waves-maxxbass
Of course mine will be done in hardware and all analog, old dogs do not learn new tricks.
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Strangely and very encouragingly I have found the very opposite in recent years; six years ago I visited the doctor with some chronic aches and pains and I was first hit with the phrase: "at your age...". I supposed that my days of going easily up stairs with a 22kg amp in each hand were all but gone, however regular steroid injections (wonderful stuff!) at least enabled me to carry on relatively as before. Now at sixty one they have all vanished, and I no longer require the jabs. I put it down to my self-imposed use-it-or-lose-it mantra and a continuing period of hard and often heavy labour restoring my 17C house which has seen me lose 2" off my waist but not a single pound in weight. I truly believe that I was simply becoming soft, and being 6'1" and 220lbs without too much excess fat is obviously an advantage.
Use it or lose it.
Use it or lose it...
You may also notice that the expansion of spacetime has dire local consequences. It seems that every time I drop something, the floor is much further away than it used to be. So much so that, having turned 70 a few days ago, I made a birthday resolution to ask myself when I drop something whether I really need to pick it up.
26 years ago, I dis-owned my one sister, the youngest of us 3 kids, who did nothing good for the family growing up, except for always "taking" and lying, and with me, taking advantage of and back-stabbing me.
She was the 'black sheep' of us three siblings, ran her seedy shady life into the ground, and continued to use drugs to blur her sickly world.
This April, my niece, her abandoned daughter (born 1977), contacted my other sister after decades of wondering what happened to the child, who managed to become a healthy, successful, intelligent mother and wife, with a degree in nursing. - that in itself is a miracle, considering the terrible home life she had under my druggie sister's abuse.
She told us, once I finally contacted my long-lost niece, that our druggie sister had died..... back in 2015!
The cause?..... heart attack due to coke use, at the age of 56.
They are. Just getting the speakers up to their lowest setting was a pain. But the amp box was really the most difficult.
Not everything you put a handle on.... is portable.
John