TLAH Pro for a church sanctuary

[miked]

Wow, that's great work! Nice job on the woofer layout; nice and even. The boxes look really strong and the airtight tweet compartment is a great idea. I'd love to hear a pair of TLAH's someday. BTW, are you using PL to put them together? I don't see any tell-tale PL smears.

[mattsk8]

Wow, that's great work! Nice job on the woofer layout; nice and even. The boxes look really strong and the airtight tweet compartment is a great idea. I'd love to hear a pair of TLAH's someday. BTW, are you using PL to put them together? I don't see any tell-tale PL smears.

No PL, I used Tightbond. All the joints (including bracing) are dado'd and rabbeted. I have a LOT of faith in Tightbond, I used to be a custom cabinet builder and know the qualities of it. If I wasn't worried about chipping up the cabinet, I would confidently park my Suburban on these boxes and use them for jack stands. I'll go around the inside of the cabinet joints w/ silicone III tonight just to be certain there are no air leaks. PL is a mess to work w/, gets all over everything.

[miked]

Agreed on both counts. PL is incredibly messy, no matter what tricks you use and siliconing around all seams in the box is a very good idea. Box structural strength is not a reliable indicator of air-tightness. Sure; dadoed/rabbeted joints are unlikely to leak, but a quick bead of caulk is cheap insurance. Keep the pics coming! How will you finish these cabs? MDF doesn't take paint too well, ESPECIALLY on the edges.

[mattsk8]

Agreed on both counts. PL is incredibly messy, no matter what tricks you use and siliconing around all seams in the box is a very good idea. Box structural strength is not a reliable indicator of air-tightness. Sure; dadoed/rabbeted joints are unlikely to leak, but a quick bead of caulk is cheap insurance. Keep the pics coming! How will you finish these cabs? MDF doesn't take paint too well, ESPECIALLY on the edges.

I'm not sure yet. I'm curious about Duratex. I've seen pics but never anything up close, it looks easy to use. My only reserve w/ Duratex is long term, does it sun fade like a spray on bedliner and get chalky? I do want either satin or semi-gloss black. For now I'm leaning towards paint, just for a pro look.

Just FYI, if you want to paint MDF... First mix some Tightbond original about 70/30 w/ water, you want a little thinner than latex paint. Then take an acid brush and brush the mixture over the endgrain, usually about 3 coats. That makes the endgrain hard as a rock. Once this is done, go over the whole cabinet w/ bondo to level off any imperfections. Then just use filler primer for a base (you can use Zinnser sealcoat for a base before primer, that will make the MDF not absorb quite so much primer). Once this is all done, spray your color. Gives you a perfectly flat surface

[miked]

Thanks for the tips on painting MDF. I don't use the stuff for cabs anymore since getting out of the car audio scene.

Duratex is quite simply the best thing since sliced bread. It goes on easy, dries quick and you can get pretty much any texture you want out of it simply by combing the texture of the roller with how much pressure you apply it with (how hard you press down on the roller). Duratex is very tough, though not as tough as bedliner. But it doesn't STINK like bedliner, either. DTex has almost no smell. Either right out of the can or while drying.

Duratex is also very easy to touch up, should you get a ding or chip. But in your case, these speakers won't be moving, so I doubt they'll get dinged up.

Being that these are going into a church though, I'd think you'd want something "less pro audio" and more "blends in nicely with the decor" for a finish...i.e. paint.

[mattsk8]

Thanks for the tips on painting MDF. I don't use the stuff for cabs anymore since getting out of the car audio scene.

Duratex is quite simply the best thing since sliced bread. It goes on easy, dries quick and you can get pretty much any texture you want out of it simply by combing the texture of the roller with how much pressure you apply it with (how hard you press down on the roller). Duratex is very tough, though not as tough as bedliner. But it doesn't STINK like bedliner, either. Duratex is also very easy to touch up, should you get a ding or chip. But in your case, these speakers won't be moving, so I doubt they'll get dinged up.

Being that these are going into a church though, I'd think you'd want something "less pro audio" and more "blends in nicely with the decor" for a finish...i.e. paint.

Thanks, I'll look further into the Duratex. As far as the finish for the church goes, I think the pro audio look will work. They have quite a bit of stage lighting up there now that's satin black, and this would accent that nicely. Otherwise I'll have to match the tongue and groove, brownish stained cedar (or maybe its knotty pine?) that the ceiling is covered w/. Satin black is the easy way

[miked]

Duratex is as easy as it gets. Nail holes, dings and dents need to be filled with spackle (or wood putty, but Arcyltec recommends spackle) but other than that, no special surface prep is needed. 1 light coat and 1 heavy coat about an hour later that will do just fine for a fixed installation.

[mattsk8]

Duratex is as easy as it gets. Nail holes, dings and dents need to be filled with spackle (or wood putty, but Arcyltec recommends spackle) but other than that, no special surface prep is needed. 1 light coat and 1 heavy coat about an hour later that will do just fine for a fixed installation.

Thanks!! At this point it's looking more and more like they'll end up finished w/ Duratex!

[mattsk8]

I got these all wired up last night, was up till 2am. Pretty sure my neighbors aren't super pleased about it either .

Holy midrange!! I know next to nothing about pro audio, but next to my garage speakers these are SUPER mid heavy. I will say the sensitivity of those Eminence woofers is phenomenal! Next to the speakers I built for my garage, they're more than twice as loud. To balance the sound I have to move the balance knob 3/4 towards the garage speakers. I didn't put the tweeter's xover on them yet, but in my uneducated opinion the tweets need to be louder. Take that w/ a grain of salt, like I said I don't know much about pro audio, and I do know these will play entirely differently in the sanctuary. It also takes me a bit to warm up to any speaker, regardless of how good it sounds. I didn't have much time last night to play, plus I couldn't really jam on them (it was 2am and I live in a sub-division). Tonight I'll hammer them harder w/ some Dire Straits.

I measured them w/ my volt meter and I have 3 ohms at the woofer circuit, is this ok?

Tomorrow morning I'm going to take these over to Meniscus audio so they can take some measurements and let me know if they think they'll benefit from a woofer xover, or maybe different tweeters. I'll post what they say when I get the results back.

[miked]

That is one sexy speaker. Will be a PITA to remove all the drivers to finish the cab, but hey, it's only time, right? LOL!

I know very little about the TLAH series and don't own the plans; is there no woof/mid crossover spec'd out in the plans? Seems odd for any BFM design other than a Tuba/Titan.

[mattsk8]

That is one sexy speaker. Will be a PITA to remove all the drivers to finish the cab, but hey, it's only time, right? LOL!

I know very little about the TLAH series and don't own the plans; is there no woof/mid crossover spec'd out in the plans? Seems odd for any BFM design other than a Tuba/Titan.

That is correct, the mid/woofers play full range per the plans; seemed odd to me as well.

[miked]

Then aside from a possible highpass to protect against over-excursion and wasted amp power, I wouldn't go introducing any type of crossover to the design. It wasn't designed for for it. Probably, the spec'd drivers have a natural rolloff near the tweets' crossover freq and therefore don't need to be crossed over. If it's not in the plans, you don't need it.

[mattsk8]

At this point I'm mainly taking them to Meniscus because they're intersted in them as well, so I'm down for letting them measure. The guys over there are super cool. They're the ones I got all the drivers from. http://meniscusaudio.com/

This is getting exciting now! I have visions of these hanging in the sactuary, I can't wait for that moment, there might be tears!! It's been a long road of planning and what-not w/ these!!

[miked]

I know the feeling; I've been planning/building my OTops for two years already and should be firing up at least one tonight!

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

the spec'd drivers have a natural rolloff near the tweets' crossover freq and therefore don't need to be crossed over.

+1. You could put a low pass in, but it wouldn't benefit that much. If they were hi-fi cabs where EQ would probably not be used and maximally flat response was a goal that would be another story, but these are pro-sound cabs, and in pro-sound a good EQ isn't optional, it's a necessity.