agedhorse

2 pole panel mount Neutrik jacks are now identified as "2 pole keyed"

Reminder, when using any kind of contact spray (on switching contacts), it hast to actually get in the contact as well a not get elsewhere which can cause new and more expensive issues.

never use contact cleaner on pots, it’s a good way to ruin them. DeOxit D5, and only the tiniest amount in the slot that the terminals exit from is generally safe and effective. 

On 26/10/2024 at 09:43, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Is there a visible difference?

 

My PA amp has 4-pole outputs but I can't see any obvious difference (maybe this just means my bass amps/cabs are 4-pole as you suggest).

Most likely.

7 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

The four pin ones are used for things like bi-amping. Haven't come across a bass cab or amp with a four pin speakon   socket yet.

Most have 4 pin SpeakOn jacks, wired with only 1+ and 1-.

6 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Rean are a subsidiary of Neutrik and the Rean speakons are to the same standard as far as I know and are very similar to the older Neutrik Speakons.

Correct, Rean jacks are essentially identical to the parent company branded jacks and in fact share the same safety certification file. 
 

Rean parts are available to large OEMs with some customization options.

1 minute ago, Dan Dare said:

As a matter of interest, do you know whether or not the speaker in the photos (which I assume the buyer sent you) is the one from the SWR? As lemmywinks suggests, might he have photographed a damaged one he had lying around?

 

How old was the combo? The speaker in the photo has a "RoHS compliant" sticker on it. As far as I can find, the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Regs came into force in 2006. If the combo is older than that, you wouldn't expect to find that sticker.

RoHS was in effect when SWR was shipping those combos, most of us in the industry began to migrate well before 2006 to get ahead of that curve.

I've seen it before, specially with rough DIY repair handling.

If lucky, it can be pushed back onto the rivet with a little 2 part epoxy to keep it there.

I would compensate him for the damage rather than spending at least that much for the cost of the return shipping plus eating the initial shipping charges too. It's the least of the evils IME, and you will come out way ahead.

You better be sure that whatever solution you choose actually achieves the necessary cooling. I see a fair number of DIY solutions that fall far short of this goal, sometimes with costly consequences.

1 hour ago, Dan Dare said:

 

This. A driver is a reactive, not a resistive load, hence the variation in impedance with frequency. Below is a typical impedance curve. You can see impedance is highest at the resonant frequency (the lowest frequency the driver is capable of reproducing). It drops to around 4 ohms through much of the useful frequency response, rising again at the upper end due to voice coil inductance.

 

I pointed out earlier that the stated impedance of a speaker is an average (the term usually employed is mean impedance). In practice - again as stated above - there is a safety margin with any good quality amp, which means they will drive lower impedance loads as long as you don't push things (either via cranking the volume too much or presenting them with a very low impedance load). That means you don't need to worry as long as you are sensible. The danger signs are obvious - sound gets dirty, volume drops, amp gets too hot, etc.

That would be a nominal 4 ohm driver not an 8 ohm driver, by any definition of nominal impedance. 
 

8 ohm nominal would average greate
 

r then 8 ohm’s impedance, with less than 20% of the bandwidth dropping below 8 ohms and dropping no more than 20% below 8 ohms when measured in the cabinet. The cabinet affects the impedance below about 250Hz.

This is a good rule of thumb IME as an amp and speaker designer. There are 2 different mechanisms that need to be respected for an amp to work reliably, maximum peak current and power dissipation. Average and minimum impedance affects both mechanisms.

I know we sent a bunch of bass amps to Europe, it’s possible that some retailers are still filling backorders. I don’t have access to any of that.

This American bashing stuff gets really old, and it's ironic in this case because the SpeakOn was a European design that was horribly flawed when first introduced. Everybody seems to forget the ridiculously unreliable locking ring that was changed in short order to various versions of the thumb latch...  and the lack of the metal insert was part of the original Neutrik design for at least 5 years!

Since Alec posted a rant thread on TalkBass which I answered, in the spirit of accuracy and honesty I provided the following information to set the record straight for those who think they know more about this subject than they actually do.

----------------------------------------

The original Neutrik part did NOT have the metal insert, they didn't start using metal inserts until a little later. Our replacement part was developed at a time when Neutrik was so backed up that they couldn't ship the NL4MP part for over 1 year when they were struggling with regulatory compliance for flame spread and their original jack series was non-compliant to the necessary safety standard under the 60065 edition 8 fire enclosure regulations (which specifically applies to amps, but using 2 different parts for amps and speakers (if we could even get the old part) made no sense. This was actually a licensed Neutrik part manufactured Neutrik's Rean division using a different glass filled Nylon (PA-66) compound that had lower flame spread. Ironically, they had to do another update to comply with the flame spread requirements for IEC 62368, where the punched opening in the sheet metal was close enough to a PIS that the part needed a lower flame spread rating, it's due to the (much) more compact nature of the newer amps.

Below is the original Neutrik branded part that we used at that time, it suffered from exactly the same wear issues as well, every pro audio manufacturer of that time dealt with the same thing. You have to remember that your speaker is between 15 and 20 years old, technology and regulations change through over time.

If you had really understood what you were talking about, you might have chosen your words more correctly and diplomatically. Also, you may not know this either, but the Genz Benz factory service program is still "a thing". Factory support for the products exists throughout the US, Canada, and much of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

---

Follow-up:

The glass filled PA-66 material that's used on the jacks is about the same wear as the original material, but the flame spread rating is higher on the updated part in order to comply with the newer safety standard. The metal insert was introduced by Neutrik and Rean at the same time because of wear issues, it's unrelated to perceived "quality" differences.

Perhaps you are unaware, but Rean is owned by Neutrik AG and handles much of the OEM development of connectors as well as the manufacturing of Neutrik, Rean and OEM branded components and connectors for products and assemblies built in Asia and some markets in North & South America. OEM's often use customized versions of connectors for the purposes of regulatory compliance, cosmetics (color, logo, cosmetics), and in some cases to achieve things that can't be done with stock off the shelf components (like for example bonding modifications for pin 1 terminal on XLR jacks) in high volume applications.

The models with R in front are marketed through the Rean channels but are identical in performance and share the same ETL safety listing certificate because they are in fact the same company:

The half-rack concept never caught on by itself, therefore most manufacturers that originally signed onto the concept dropped it (except for side by side applications into a standard 19” rack. 
 

There are 2 official EIA rack standards, 19” and 24”. 19” is what we use in the MI and pro audio industry. 

On 24/09/2024 at 07:36, BassAdder60 said:

Yep you need a 4ohm load on the ELF to be useable in a band 

Not necessarily, if your cabinet is high sensitivity and you have reasonable expectations. 

3 hours ago, Treb said:

and that's where the HPF comes in handy...

Or essential...

9 hours ago, J.Wolf said:

Hey Andy! Certainly true, but I'm not clear on which comment you are responding to.

Your post above: 

"Totally, its a lot of power.  but really what it is, and what we were after is a lot of headroom, at ANY volume."

8 hours ago, bremen said:

All true.

 

My point, though, is that Bob Gallien says it was a deliberate decision to use a mere 2000uF reservoir caps in order to get a particular sound, and users of his amps enjoy their 'heft'.

 

So maybe, counter-intuitively; a stiff, conservatively rated power supply doesn't equate to a 'beefy/hefty' sound as conventional wisdom has it, but some sag is what's called for. In which case one of the possible reasons for some class D amps not sounding so great is that the switching power supplies in them are too good, too well regulated, not saggy enough.

 

As Deaddog remarks, valve amps sag and valve amps have heft. I wonder how much the HT rail on an SVT drops at full power.

 

I'm going to hook an olde fashioned unregulated linear power supply up to my classD amp, bypassing the smps, and see what happens. I suspect confirmation bias might win, though, so don't believe a word I say.

This kind of goes against all the mythical BS about an amp needing a big transformer and filter caps to sound “hefty”. 
 

There’s an awful lot of attributing cause and effect in the fade of multiple examples contrary to the premise. 

Note that the definition of headroom is available power that is NOT used. Once you use that power, it's no longer considered headroom. 

16 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Presumably that means that from the returns or aux inputs you get a much lower THD figure, more in line with the power module's base specs?

Yes, lower THD without the preamp, the output stage emulation algorithms are different than the gain stage algorithms. It also depends on the amp model, for example the TT-800 uses different algorithms than say the D-800 or 800+. 

It also depends on how hard the gain stage(s) and the output are driven, the character and distortion harmonics change with both level and frequency.

On 14/09/2024 at 07:27, DGBass said:

I suppose in reality a THD spec is only a sales differentiator at the end of the day for some folks. I would never claim I could tell the difference between 1% or 5% THD, or 700 and 800 watts. I'm more curious why some amp makers quote one and some don't. And why Ice Power ratings are different from the finished products they go into especially when they are higher. I only mentioned Mesa as an example where there isn't a figure on thier website. It might be in the user guide though.

The detailed specs are located in the back of each owner’s manual.

We specify the rated power at THD less that 10% because much of the harmonics are added in the preamp and power amp tube emulation circuits in addition to the tube preamps themselves (WD and TT) when driven hard.
 

It’s similar in concept to say the SVT which uses 5% THD, or the Darkglass amps that use ~20% THD (presumably because their drive circuits are the basis of their fundamental tone). 

2 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

As best I can tell the cab internal volume is about 60 liters, so a 75 mm ID tube 35 mm long would give roughly 50Hz tuning. But the port velocity is off the charts. You need two, 120 mm long. 

Yeah, that would turn an electric bass into a tuba at those velocities

With OEM drivers, you can't assume that it has anywhere near the same TS parameters even if it looks "identical". The differences can be huge, thus impacting any modeling accuracy you hope to achieve.

13 hours ago, Chopthebass said:

Ok so if the cabs are stacked with the array horiz as it’s meant to be, it still means the four woofers end up in the non preferred arrangement. I assume this won’t matter? 

Correct, that’s exactly why I differentiated between the LF section and the mid-hi frequency sections as Bill also clarified.

7 hours ago, Downunderwonder said:

Worth mentioning the Genzler 'tweeter' array is doing a lot more than tweeting.

Correct.

They are designed to work stacked vertically, not side by side. The mid coverage pattern is defined by the mid element’s vertical orientation of the mid-high frequency array.

7 minutes ago, bremen said:

Ah well, we're in different leagues. The Sunday League post punk noisers I play with get what we're given, and enjoy the sound and smell of dying loudspeakers.

That's a tough market to earn a living in as a sound guy...

3 hours ago, bremen said:

You can choose?

Yes, often (or usually at the level I work at) you can. 

3 hours ago, bremen said:

So are bass speakers, Shirley? The ones I like are, anyway

The breakup in guitar speakers is quite different, and the cones/surrounds are designed differently in order to enhance the desired characteristics for different guitar styles. 
 

You won’t find the same types of cones and surrounds intended for breakup in bass speakers. The side effects are generally detrimental to what most bass players are looking for.