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Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:27 pm
by philaudio
Anyone has compaired a titan48 against an old keele's w-bin?
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:45 pm
by Turntablist
I don't know how they compare but I can tell you that a W-bins horn are generally not long enough to work as anything else than a kick bin. For subs you're much metter off with a conventional horn, as in the T48s case.
If you are looking for a sub, you're better off with the T48 than a W bin.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:13 pm
by philaudio
My friend here in our place has 8 of the t48's and they sound nice but the keele's are different monsters.We did an A/B testing and 4 keele's beats the t48s any aspect volume and low extension.Infact 4 of the keele's beats the 6 titans that my friend had.I was planning to order the plans for the titans but having second thoughts when i heard the comparison.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:34 pm
by Bill Fitzmaurice
philaudio wrote:My friend here in our place has 8 of the t48's and they sound nice but the keele's are different monsters.We did an A/B testing and 4 keele's beats the t48s any aspect volume and low extension.Infact 4 of the keele's beats the 6 titans that my friend had.I was planning to order the plans for the titans but having second thoughts when i heard the comparison.
Your A/B testing would have to have been done by ear. The Keele has a 60 Hz F3. It's a fine bass bin, but it's not a subwoofer.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:42 pm
by coolhandjjl
I just saw John Paul Jones on SNL playing with Them Crooked Vultures. While his rig there looked like an ordinary SWR 410 stack, I did some Googling on his old Led Zeppelin rig, the Acoustic Control 360. It was folded horn 18" Cerwin Vega driver in a box based on the old RCA W bin. I remember seeing that when I was in high school. I thought there was something familiar about the cab designs I saw when I first visited here.
Is Bill the only one promoting folded horn designs nowadays? Why did such premium systems like the 360 fade away?
http://www.bgra.net/2004/review.php?id=501&type=head
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthrea ... 710&page=2
http://acoustic.homeunix.net/twiki/bin/ ... sPreamp360
http://www.dancetech.com/index.cfm?load ... loader=176
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 5:50 pm
by philaudio
Yes we did the a/b testing by ear.
Here is the plan for the W-bin....
http://forums.klipsch.com/forums/storag ... ansPDF.pdf
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 6:11 pm
by Bill Fitzmaurice
Look at the response chart at the bottom of the plans.
coolhandjjl wrote:
Is Bill the only one promoting folded horn designs nowadays? Why did such premium systems like the 360 fade away?
They were expensive to build and went away when watts got cheap. We're the number one source for DIY folded horns, but they're hardly dead, they're just so expensive that you don't see them sold on the local level. The #1 commercial source is Danley Sound Labs and they don't list prices. If you have to ask...

Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:32 pm
by Ron K
I still have 8 Keeles loaded with JBL2240s.If you A/B them I'm certain you noticed how
Heavey they are.Mine weigh a ton and are only 1 man movable but not 1 man stack-able.That was the biggest reason I replaced them.
As far as how they sound compared to T39s or T30s/24s the Titans go lower and the Tubas definitely go lower.The Keeles are more impactive but I found the BFMs to be more musical and less thumpy. Keeles are good for kick drum but bass guitar IMHO sounds like crap through them.
While the Titan/Tubas have IMHO a more even and natural sound and show all the instruments in the mix a bit better and dont weigh near what the Keeles weigh. When you couple all 8 Keeles together (you will sweat doing this) you can get pretty good usable low end extension but it isn't very clean down there.
FWIW I used my Keeles for more then 15yrs so it was not easy giving them up.The first pair of T39s didn't convince me. The first pair of T24s didn't either. But i can move and stack 16 T24s solo and handily beat out the Keeles in every category but the most important to me is the nice clean separation between Kick and Bass Guitar.
To be honest if I were going to build Keeles (or anything close to that weight) I'd do Lab12 subs long before Keeles.
Or a herd of something easier to move about.That was my choice. As much as I like the Keeles , T-39s,T-30s I really like the T-24 in large herds far better.24 of them will wake the neighborhood! Thats my current count. I have only run all 24 at once 1 time and man that was downright scary! 16 is the most I go for the majority of my bigger shows and as little as 4 for the smallest gigs.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 9:14 pm
by coolhandjjl
Ron K wrote:.......but I found the BFMs to be more musical and less thumpy..........but the most important to me is the nice clean separation between Kick and Bass Guitar.......
Very nice real world descriptions!

Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:41 pm
by z-audio
Almost every sound system in our place uses keele's.I must admit that the keele's are louder and can go lower than my titans but mine sounds cleaner.4 keele's will play a little louder and lower than my 8 titans.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:55 pm
by Bill Fitzmaurice
z-audio wrote:Almost every sound system in our place uses keele's.I must admit that the keele's are louder and can go lower than my titans but mine sounds cleaner.4 keele's will play a little louder and lower than my 8 titans.
Louder maybe, they should, being larger with a higher passband, especially if loaded with the specified 4 ohm driver. The shorter path and only two bends also results in a lot more above bandwidth harmonics, which make it sound louder, but that's distortion, not clean bass. Lower? No. The usable low end of the Keele is 50 Hz, the T48 32 Hz.
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:38 am
by la malta
Ron K wrote:I really like the T-24 in large herds far better.24 of them will wake the neighborhood! Thats my current count. I have only run all 24 at once 1 time and man that was downright scary!
Wow... got any pictures?
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:48 am
by Mikey
coolhandjjl wrote:I just saw John Paul Jones on SNL playing with Them Crooked Vultures. While his rig there looked like an ordinary SWR 410 stack, I did some Googling on his old Led Zeppelin rig, the Acoustic Control 360. Why did such premium systems like the 360 fade away?
I had that Acoustic head and cab when I was a teen. The most memorable thing about it is how heavy it was LOL. I used it in conjunction with a Fender Super Reverb (4x10s), with no crossover. I just adjusted the tone controls on the amps to "balance" the overall sound, and it actually sounded damn good (well, to me, at the time).
I "think" that Acoustic cab was designed by Harvey Gerst (?).
Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 3:56 am
by SeisTres
24?!

I thought you only had 16. Wow, in that case I guess it wouldn't be such a bad a idea to keep building my stack of t39's since i've pretty much figured I only need extension down to around 30hz but people dont notice even if high pass at 50hz
And about the being louder and lower thing: it might sound that way but let me tell you from personal experience(fairly recent actually

I made a thread about it) that it may seem so because we're so used to having cheap subs at home and in cars and mediocre "pro" audio which are high passed too high and don't have enough extension. What I've seen that works really well for the human ear is to pound it with upper bass to trick into thinking we are hearing deep, powerful bass.
You'd be surprised just how much the voice and all the mids and highs shine once the bass is properly set up. LOL, and i've been using these things for around 6 months, this whole time the bass overpowering my tops

Re: Titan 48 vs. keele's W-bin
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:30 am
by bgavin
Inflammatory posts deleted.
Please keep it civil.