House Concert Speakers

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I have four Yamaha organ pull's JA-2061 speakers 8", 30W. They were used for the tremolo unit. Not a bad little speaker and I am thinking of putting a pair in each cabinet. I was looking for an inexpensive horn loaded tweeter for them. Mainly for vocals with acoustic guitar in a living room setting for up to 30 people.
 
Wedge monitors are a plague on the used band equipiment market. Everybody is going to in-ear monitors. So they are cheap. Some of those like my Peavey have a treble horn besides the 15" driver. Look on craigslist, ebay or gumtree. Last time I was looking for a RX22 driver somebody had a whole horn + driver listed for $50. I probably paid $40 for my whole monitor as part of a $1000 band "leaving the road" sale. I have it set on the side for 30 W FM radio out in the yard of my summer camp. 10 W inside. Used a salvage organ amp I re-e-capped and replaced some germanium zener diodes & transistors (blown) with modern parts. .
For mild television viewing including classical concerts I'm using two 6.5" drivers with whizzer cone pulled from a toshiba projection TV sitting on the curb for garbage pickup. In a 12" long taped closed cardboard box with a 15 mm square hole in the back for bass reflex, they are quite pleasant. I have 120 w/ch amp behind them, have to keep the volume down since they are 12 W rated. You could build a nicer box out of MDF.
If you really want to buy something new partsexpress.com is the speaker builder's first stop. They have crossover components too. Get them to ship US mail, Royal mail doesn't charge a $20 "loan origination" fee like UPS & fed Ex do. No residence surcharge, either.
 
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This is one of those situations where a piezo and a 4.7uf in series, 10 ohms in parallel crossover would be just fine. The next step up would be to buy about a $20 “bullet” tweeter and put a real 3rd or 4th order high pass (and attenuation resistor, to keep the highs from being too hot) on it. That might cost as much as a used vocal wedge.
 
No real bargains for speakers of this size in my local. Part of the reason I want to put this together is for an extended family member. They could do shows traveling with their car and there is only so much room. That is why they value my small amps, packs a fair amount of sound in a compact package. I have some 12's and compression horns that could work well on a pub flor for a rock band but overkill for the application.

A phenolic diaphram horn tweeter probably is the type of thing that I am looking for. Been many years since I thought of sound reenfocement so I don't know what is out there now. I'll need to spend some time seeing what is availible.
 
I put the search term "horn driver" in ebay and came up with hundreds of tweeters, some with vestigal horns. So try that in Canada.
I bought the only one I know can be made into a +- 3 db to 14 khz speaker, a Peavey RX22 with horn.
I intend to put it away in case of failure of one of the drivers in my Peavey SP2-XT pair. A speaker too big for your application, weighing 54 lb. Human voice & guitar don't go much below 100 hz, so 8" woofer could be fine for that. If you have a calibrated microphone, an anechoic chamber, a sweep generator program that is level +- 0.5 db, have at speaker design. Very few speakers on the market specifiy their performance closer than +- 10 db and most don't even say that in the "specifications". I caught Radio Shack once printing that their "flat 20-20000 cy/sec" specification was qualified by +- 20 db production tolerance. No wonder those speakers sounded like garbage.
 
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I kind of miss Radio Shack for their $8 horn tweeter, still have a pair running with so 8's in another room. I did check out EBay, as you said no shortage there. But the question is which will be appropriate, just thought the collective wisdom others might have tread this ground before. I have gone through a few learning curves buying stuff out of China. Some products under perform.


As an example, saw a pair of these listed Selenium DT150 Tweeters in Canada, also a JBL sticker on them. Are the legit, any good? Mind you they are gone now.

My idea is to biamp in the cabinet using a couple of TPA3118's. Cheaper and less space than a crossover. I might have a piezo somewhere, I could try it. I just don't recall thinking much of them but that was years ago, might be ok with an 8".

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Piezo horn speaker tweeter piezoelectric head driver loudspeaker treble H5 LA | eBay

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1pcs 86*86*H72 MM Piezo Horn Speaker Tweeter Driver Loudspeaker Treble | eBay


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134*70mm Piezo Horn Speaker Tweeter Rectangle Shape | eBay


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2pcs 87*87*78mm Piezo horn Speaker piezoelectric tweeter | eBay


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Pair GRS PZ1016 2" x 5" Piezo Horn Tweeter KSN1016A Replacement Speaker | eBay


Then there is the cheapest compression driver I found,

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https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Pack-of-2-P...ash=item3f7b90b611:g:RPMAAOSwcgNZCdJ3&vxp=mtr

Car stereo but the least expensive driver that wasn't piezo.

Then a ABS horn.

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I know Pyle has been around for a while for car audio but no idea of how they perform.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Black-ABS-T...008012?hash=item48d39e3c4c:g:Ge8AAOSwmMVdksSH

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That does look interesting if they will survive.
 
You'll get more experience from builders over at speaker, multi-way forum, same website. I buy them used after auditioning with a piano LP, a set has to sound better than the last set I bought. All the work I can do to keep the jacks cables & crossover capacitors up to date. Expletive deleted 1/4 phone jacks on Peavey 1122's are in the "auto-short" mode, permanently that way. Lucked out when Kentucky went no-smoking in all the bars 10 years ago, lots of bands were selling off great equipment at great prices. Not so great now.
I did see an alleged eminence horn on our e-bay. See if you can get one from a real eminence distributor as opposed to counterfeit prone e-bay. Parts-express doesn't go that high up the food chain to carry eminence or jbl. tubesandmore.com carries real jbl, but they are in AZ. There are also real peavey distributors sprinkled around CAN, I love the 2" RX22 for a smooth down to 2000 hz sound. The titanium membrane and heat fluid can handle a lot more power than you need for an audience of 30. So it costs.
 
Parts express appears to still have some Selenium ST200. The 320 (slot loaded version) was pretty good, but gone. But there are comparable drivers from Pyramid and PRV (car-Audio-centric). And they appear to have a version of the Pyle 3x9 horn. Those would be a bit wider dispersion than the “bullets”. I have no idea if they are any good at all these days - the version they made back in 1980 was pretty decent for a $20 horn tweeter.

I think it’s the Goldwood version of the piezos that are the ‘good’ ones now. The quality is all over the map - some Motorola/CTS clones are terrible. The 1005 was good, and so was the 1016. The 1025 was horrible - even the originals - avoid like the plague. I ended up subjecting the last pair I had to 120 volts at 60 Hz - and that was 25 years ago. In order to make any of them work well, you need at least a 1st order high pass network using a series cap and parallel resistor. It makes all the difference in the world.
 
It hit me when I found some of the car audio speakers that forum would be the one to ask for advice. I usually hang out in the Instrument side of this one and I looked through the past threads on this one looking for anything similar with no luck. I am not in a real hurry, just a project for next year. I just took stock of how many speakers I have and thought of asking while it was at the top of my mind. Thanks for the advice.
 
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Pack of (2) Pyle PDS111 1" Neo/Titanium Screw-On Horn Driver 8-Ohm 1-3/8"x18 TPI | eBay

Car stereo but the least expensive driver that wasn't piezo.

Then a ABS horn.

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I know Pyle has been around for a while for car audio but no idea of how they perform.

Black ABS Thread Diameter Plastic Screw-On Tweeter Horn for Speaker | eBay

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That does look interesting if they will survive.


Well for better or worse I ordered the above. Anybody have opinions on crossover frequency?
 
Horn size. Size: 19.5x15.5cm - 7.68" x 6.10"(LxW) So take away about half an inch for the flange, so about 32" mouth area. My brother threw out our copy of the Audio Cyclopedia, never thought to ask me first. I am sure they had a chart to give me some idea where this horn operates at. 2-3 kHz maybe?
 
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You are doing something that not a lot of people do. I'm with you as I love great big speakers. Problem is there is not a whole lot of us doing something similar so they don't have a lot to add. Be patient and bump your thread with new ideas once a day and you might find someone who has options for you. In the meantime, those drivers and horns are fine and hopefully will suit you well.
 
Thanks, yeah I do things others don't do a lot. Sometimes seems that I just do a lot of banging my head against a wall. You think I would have learned by now. I probably should make an adjustable electronic crossover and play with it when I get the drivers and horns. Like I need another project though.
 
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