Yamaha ES90A Foldback Wedges.

[geoffbyrne]

I bought a pair of these a couple of months ago. They are pretty elderly & the seller couldn't tell me much about them. We assumed they are 90W per side.

However, I've opened them up & there's a Yamaha JA 3065 12" speaker rated at 15W & 8 Ohm and a Yamaha JA 2053 8" speaker rated at 10W & 8 Oms connected to each other via some sort of crossover. The label on each speaker says the impedence of the total cab is 8 Ohms, so the crossover must be doing something to the connection.

Since I'm hooking up to a power amp producing 300W per side & these will be used for foldback, I'm pretty much going to replace both of these little speakers (they're all fine, by the way) with a single 12", 8 Ohm rated somewhere near 150W-ish.

The real question is, do I throw away the crossover & do I block up the 8" hole, or do I leave it open as a vent?

And as a follow-up, anyone got a suitable pair of 12"/8Ohm speakers they'd like to part with?

G.

Edited September 17, 2013 by geoffbyrne

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

[quote name='geoffbyrne' timestamp='1379420363' post='2212410'] I'm pretty much going to replace both of these little speakers (they're all fine, by the way) with a single 12", 8 Ohm rated somewhere near 150W-ish.
[/quote]Bad idea. You need response to at least 10kHz. Useful response from a twelve is no higher than 2kHz before it beams so badly that you can't hear it more than a few inches off-axis at the range monitors are used at. Unless the drivers are damaged leave them alone.
The above assumes you're using them for vocals. If you're intent is to use them for bass, along with a backline amp, that's a bad idea as well. You may be doing so with the intent of hearing yourself better, but if the backline amp and monitors create null zones in the space between them it will have the opposite result.

[geoffbyrne]

OK Bill, thanks.

G.

[Phil Starr]

I think I've got some of these. If they are the same as mine the speakers are just junk, really awful. The cabs on mine were OK though and I simply threw out the baffle (the board the speakers are fixed to) cut a piece of ply the same size and put in some speakers I had lying around from a previous project, My band play a lot of small pubs and I needed some smaller monitors quickly so I bodged together something quickly, I've since tweaked them and they do the job quite nicely. The vocalists prefer them to my much more expensive Yamaha Club series monitors so they are now our go to monitors, despite looking like they come from 1973, which they do. The speakers I used are Fane 10-300's and some slightly unusual piezo's I got from Blue Aran. I keep meaning to put in some proper horn drivers and a decent crossover but actually they sound OK.

If you are interested in copying mine we can check they are actually the same and I can give you a few details