Bill Fitzmaurice

Thanks. BTW, the columns I used were Shure Vocal Masters. They were too tall to work well as monitors, which I fixed by cutting them in half. That gave us four of them, so there were no dead spots on the stage. This was 1973-74, when monitors were still almost unheard of, so we were quite pleased to have them. I'm not saying I invented them by any means, but I'd never seen monitors used in clubs prior to that. They came about because the band had the Shures when I joined, while I brought along the JBL 4550 copies that I had built, so it was either figure out a use for the Shures or leave them in the van.

No problem at all, I used to do this when touring in the '70s. Since our gigs were usually a full week I used to hang them in front of the band if there was available rigging.

If my sound is dull or flat it's time to change strings. ☺️

That comes as no surprise. 25x25mm pieces of wood connecting the sides to each other and the top to the bottom is the equivalent of doubling the panel thickness for vibration reduction. Three spaced around the driver hole connecting the baffle to the back does the same. 25 to 50mm thick foam or polyester wadding on the interior stops internal reflections that lead to ragged midrange response.

Lowther, and many Fostex models as well, are primarily aimed at audiophools who are convinced of the need for single driver hi-fi cabs. To extend the highs they use small very light cones. That also gives low Qes/Qts for high sensitivity, but with weak lows. To get the lows up to a useful level they put them into rear loaded folded horns. The high sensitivity is useful with very low power valve amps, over which audiophools also wax poetic. But these are the same blokes who'll pay 100 quid or more a meter for cables. They're easily bested with two or three way ported speakers and modern amplification.

Your current Celestion isn't all that bad, but the port is too short. It should be 13cm long, which will give better lows. The driver xmax is very short at only 2.5mm, which limits it to 50w before reaching the excursion limit. If you're not have an issue with distorting lows it doesn't much matter, but if you are that's the likely cause. Going to the Celestion FTR15-3070C with 5.5mm xmax would cure that. You also want to see if the cab has cross bracing and wadding inside. Fender was notorious for leaving out both.

Lowthers are typically used in hi-fi rear loaded folded horns. They'll go reasonably low but only living room loud. The pictured PA horns use compression drivers, perhaps good to 200Hz. That's fine for that application, but not so much for music. In their case they really are PA, as in Public Address.

The port depth is also required.

Cabinet technology not so much, but driver technology for sure. You may be able to greatly increase performance replacing it. I can make recommendations knowing the exact internal dimensions of the cab and port. An 8 ohm cab is best, allowing you to use two should the need arise, although with a 100 watt amp it probably would not.

The mouths. The throat is the small end where the drivers are mounted. Advances in driver technology allow us to use smaller drivers in horns just as in other cab styles, so where a fifteen might have been required 50 years ago a ten would work as well today. But you're not going to get 130dB at 30Hz from a 4 inch driver, no matter how large the horn.

Said horns were typically loaded with fifteens. For instance the Altec A7, or going back further the Shearer horn.

Not even. There are four inchers that would give good lows if the horn is large enough, but their small displacement would limit their output. Even horn loaded eight inches is the smallest practical size.

That's one factor, but not the only one. Juts as significant is power density, which increases by 3dB (doubles) with each octave reduction in frequency. While our E is one octave below a guitar E most of our content is two octaves below the guitar, for 6dB, or a quadrupling of power. The real question isn't now much power does the bass need, it's how little does the guitar need. If you've ever stood in front of a Vox AC 30 you know it's not 100 watts.

That would be a combination of hearing the subs in a big venue, and boundary reflection cancellations in the rehearsal space.

It does in Texas, but not in the way a Brit would likely imagine. 😁

Don't forget about TC watts. 🤪

PA should always carry the instruments, and again the reason is dispersion. Low frequencies have no problem filling a room as they're not highly directional, or directional at all below roughly 250 Hz. But that's not the case with mids and highs, so if you want 'not a bad seat in the house' the mids and highs from everything should be in the PA, drums included. Not necessarily loud, but just enough to give a uniform sound throughout.

As with all rules there are exceptions. If one uses a dust cover/dome that's of stiffer and lighter material than the cone, especially if it's bonded to the voice coil, it can act as a smaller midrange radiator, giving broader mid dispersion than the cone. That used to be fairly common with JBL, Altec, EV and other driver manufacturers. It's still used, but the downside is a pronounced midrange break up mode. With instrument speakers that can be desirable, but the more 'hi fi' oriented the driver the less likely it is to be employed.

In general no, but consider Jaco. His Acoustic 361 cab was not only loaded with an 18 but it was also a front loaded folded horn, a design that attenuates upper mids and highs. He didn't get stinging pop and slap highs, but what he got was still mighty good. It's but one more example of why one cannot generalize results based on driver size alone other than dispersion.

Tube versus SS watts has been covered here ad nauseam to the extreme. I'm sure you're just trying to be helpful but what you're saying has been covered here in detail going back over dozens of threads for as long as this forum has existed.

The same reason why far too many define the performance of an amp by watts. 😉

There are many versions of this available as PA cabs. There are none marketed as bass cabs but without a doubt some players are using them. I don't see it being a bass player thing, as we generally prefer the least complicated arrangement. Besides, one need not have a small box at ear height to hear mids and highs. Tilting a standard cab accomplishes the same thing.

Which proves the point. A common assumption is that midrange drivers are paired with woofers to extend the high frequency response. That's true to some extent, but the main reason for using midrange drivers is they deliver wider dispersion than woofers. That's because they're smaller. Tweeters are smaller than midranges for the same reason. Time was when you had to use a fifteen to get enough cone displacement for the lows along with a midrange for dispersion in the mids. That hasn't been the case since the turn of the century.

Current state of the art in driver design was realized closer to 20 years ago. What's changed since then is more and more sources are producing state of the art drivers.

Of course not. But a fifteen cannot realize the dispersion of a ten, or a twelve, which is their primary advantage, while still being able to deliver enough output to fill the stage, leaving the heavy lifting out front to the PA.