With Six W6 You Get Eggroll, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Wedgehorn

[NukePooch]

My latest project is to build four Wedgehorn W6 for my church. Saturday, I went to my local wood supplier to get 8 5x5 sheets of Baltic Birch and ended up with 10 4x8 sheets instead...

Yesterday, I began cutting parts, and figured I could get six W6 out of two-and-a-bit sheets, so now I'm building four for church, and two for the builder...folks, always remember to tip your builder, and please, try the fish.

My church currently has two awful Kustom 12" powered monitors as vocal wedges, and the vocalists are ever complaining (rightly so) that they can't hear. The Wedgehorns (which I've never heard) will be a huge improvement, and be much smaller and unobtrusive as well.

I'm going to load the W6's with the standard Alpha 6A's, and the panel mount piezos.

Well, I'm not sure how diligent I'll be in taking pictures as I go along, but I figured I'd give it a try.

[bassmonster]

Excellent thread title.

[NukePooch]

Thanks...

Got back to it today, somehow caught a good case of stupid and cut all 12 horn mouth pieces with the exact same angles instead of making 6 mirror-imaged pairs.
Had to re-cut six new ones... Luckily I cut the six bad ones down for the horn throat pieces, so I didn't have too much scrap.

So...it's read the plans, reread the plans, re-reread the plans, then forget to flip half of the pieces over and cut the same angles on all of them.

Just because IITP doesn't automatically mean that IITHead...

Hopefully I'll have pics tomorrow of stuff actually sticking together.

[AntonZ]

You are not alone. I must have had a case of that same stuff. Should have cut according to the green line.


I did only one WH though, so a bit less additional work for me. I glued an extension to the horn piece. Clamped with cut-offs and wax paper to make a straight and clean extension.


Then I cut again, making sure I cut on this green line. I could have made the exact same cut AGAIN, now that would have been stupid

[NukePooch]

That's pretty neat, Anton. I need to get me some of that plywood with the bright green lines so I won't make another mistake!

So...since I'm snowed in here in Kentucky, work's been cancelled...so after the morning coronary while shoveling the driveway, I found that I now have six tiny little horns.

[Chris_Allen]

Looking forward to seeing the finished articles.

Any thoughts on how you are going to paint them? Black, white, stained? Plans for grille or cloth?

[NukePooch]

They'll be Duratexed...

As far as grilles, I'm going to use the steel driver grille (hardware lath mesh).

I may or may not add full grilles. It depends on how it looks without (I do tend to like the 'pro' look of grilles), and how much trouble it will be to add.
From the looks of things, it might be a hassle to add them over the panel piezos...

hmm...haven't ever done cloth before...Now you got me thinking...

[NukePooch]

Another snow day...

Got the boxes together.

Being 'tall', they look bigger than they are... Really small considering all the horn that goes in them. I took a couple pics compared to my already-small Jack 112L, and my microscopic homemade monitor with a Beta 8CX coaxial driver.

Probably Saturday I'll break out the shoehorn to horn the horn into the box...or would that be wedge the horn into the wedgehorn?

[Chris_Allen]

The only reason I mention cloth is because grilles can look very industrial. If there is very low risk of cone damage (via moving the cabs into transport/storage and drunken idiots falling on the stage) then I think they look more pleasing, especially given the setting.

[NukePooch]

Boxes are built, sanded, routed/rounded. Still need to bondo a bit and resand.

I'd never thought of cloth grilles before because everything I've built in the past (including pre-BFM builds) needed to be road-worthy...

So...since these are just going to sit on the front of the stage @ church....cloth? Why not?
I made a quick frame, mocked up a couple piezos...I think it might work ok. Current plans are to use tiny neo magnets to stick to the piezo mounting screws.

[NukePooch]

So, it took me a bit longer than I thought...(of course)

But...I'm done.

Six W6 boxes built, four of which are loaded, wired, completed, and as of last night, given big thumbs up from the singers at my church.

Kudos to Chris Allen for suggesting the grilles. First time I've done those, but they turned out great. I used six 1/4" neo magnets per grille which hang onto the piezo tweeter mounting screws. I also used the 'Mellotone Premium' cloth from Parts Express.

Rubber feets on the bottom (shallow tilt side) but none on the steep tilt side, as they will be used on 45-degree tilt 99% of the time.

They're spaced 10-12' apart across the front of the stage. You can walk from side to side and front to back and the sound is remarkable even...no hot spots! This is VERY nice when you've got a half-dozen vocalists who like to wander around....

They're running on a tiny Behringer iNuke 1000DSP, 2-per-side. There is tons more left to go. Monday, at home, I tested one wedge briefly and got an easy 108+db at ear level...loud enough to, as Bill put it in a different thread, "...tear your head off". I'll know more if/when I have to take them outside. They still should be plenty loud enough for a church festival-type setting. I'd likely need more if I was running rock/metal bands outside, but for praise/worship music they're more than enough.

All-in-all, I'm very pleased with the design, plans, build, and result... I wouldn't change a thing.

[Grant Bunter]

Nice build!

I dig my WH8's...

[Tom Smit]

Coool!!!

[hifibob]

nice build!

[NukePooch]

Thanks, everybody, I appreciate the thumbs up.
I'm sure everyone has experienced the BFM Surprise...

When I built my Jacks, I was a bit apprehensive trying something new and unheard of (by me). I was completely and overwhelmingly surprised by the quality of the plans/designs and the resulting finished product. I was also surprised that I, myself, ME (?) could build something this good...

When I built my AutoTuba, I was a bit surprised that a single 8" woofer will blur my mirrors and make the roof wave...

When my pastor was apprehensive about spending so much money (very small church, very small budget) to build the Wedgehorns...I reassured him that all will be well, cause the Plan Man knows what he's doing. I wasn't surprised at all that the W6's perform better than expected.

When I build my 28" T39's....and the roof flies off my house, the walls come tumbling down, and the neighbors hide under the bed, I won't be surprised in the least.

I will, however, be smiling.