15 or not 15? What do you think?

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

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.

[Stub Mandrel]

19 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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.

 

For portable amps. A few inches is enough for permanently installed horns, like they used to use in cinemas.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

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

[Dan Dare]

5 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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

 

True. I've recounted this on here previously, but when I played the Hammersmith Odeon (now Apollo) many years ago, they still had the old horn speakers standing unused in the wings. They were massive. I could easily have crawled into the horn throats.

[Bankai]

Reassuringly heavy..

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

1 hour ago, Dan Dare said:

 when I played the Hammersmith Odeon (now Apollo) many years ago, they still had the old horn speakers standing unused in the wings. They were massive. I could easily have crawled into the horn throats.

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.

[Steve Browning]

2 hours ago, Bankai said:

Reassuringly heavy..

 

That is the best bass cabinet ever made, IMHO. Every bass player should have the opportunity to play through one of those. 

[3below]

Reassuringly light, 2 x Eminence 3015LF, endless volume.  No tweetery top end which suits my bass tone.  Best bass cab I own.

 

Edited Monday at 20:34 by 3below

[Dan Dare]

18 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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.

 

I could have almost fitted into the narrow ends. They had 15" drivers, so the throats were very large. The fronts of the horns had about the same frontal area as a small car and they were mounted on large scaffolding stands that placed them about 10' in the air. Impressive. I just hope they didn't end up in a dumpster.

[Stub Mandrel]

On 18/05/2025 at 14:41, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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.

 

I've been fast and loose based on my memories of books read in my teens/twenties and written in the seventies. I think my wires got crossed between some of the different case studies. I am pretty sure I am right about a blind test with an audience where they matched a 10W output to the volume of a small orchestra.

Looking around, Lowther do 5 and 8-inch drivers for enclosures that cost about the same as a luxury car that claim 35Hz...

Horns can be crazy things... these PA horns were my grandfather's, then father's, and were still being hired out (with new drivers) for equestrian events a couple of years ago, because they sounded far better than modern speakers in that application. The photos would be early/mid-1950s.

 

 

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

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.

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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 Lowthers came up as what seem to be 'state of the art' for hifi horns when I tried to find my original source, which seems to have been lost in history :-(

Absolutely, they exemplify the original meaning of PA - clear speech under difficult outdoor conditions. Apparently the chap who used them (up until his untimely death) found they carried much better and dealt with light winds a lot better than modern 'boxes'.

[crazycloud]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

The Lowthers came up as what seem to be 'state of the art' for hifi horns

Lowthers weren't remotely SOTA hifi 50ya let alone what you can do with horns these days.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

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.

[tubbybloke68]

On 19/05/2025 at 21:34, 3below said:

Reassuringly light, 2 x Eminence 3015LF, endless volume.  No tweetery top end which suits my bass tone.  Best bass cab I own.

 

Glad you like it, I had one too, but strangely, out of all the barefaced cabs i owned (5) it was the one i couldn’t get on with.I suppose it did make me realise that i preferred cabs with tweeters 

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, tubbybloke68 said:

Glad you like it, I had one too, but strangely, out of all the barefaced cabs i owned (5) it was the one i couldn’t get on with.I suppose it did make me realise that i preferred cabs with tweeters 

 

If my sound is dull or flat the first thing I do is make sure my tweeter is switched on.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

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

[Stub Mandrel]

22 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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

 

I knew someone would post that the moment I typed it.

[Sparky Mark]

22 hours ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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

I use this technique to brighten dead strings. It really does work and saves £££.

 

[Chienmortbb]

On 21/05/2025 at 12:18, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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

I think, thank goodness the finger noise is gone.

[Chienmortbb]

On 20/05/2025 at 20:42, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

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.

Around 1969-70 I was invited, with others, to the home of a girl I knew. Her father was chief flautist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. In the loungs, was a very nice turntable next to a Leak amplifier and in two corners, two horns atop concrete plinths rose up from the floor. I asked about them and were told that they were Lowther drivers, set in concrete. I believe they were 8". Of course the father played classical music on them, but we played Hendrix, Cream etc along with some electric folk. I have never heard any of those albums sound better.

 

I have to add the caveats that it was a long time ago and maybe my ears were not a well-trained then (I later worked at the EMI record factory and EMI research labs). However, this was a stereo amp giving 30 Watts per channel and those speakers were so sensitive. You must also add that in those days we never heard the lows of the base owing to the equipment at the time and the quality of the playback equipment.

 

Being a Flautist, I assume he (or rather his speakers)  had some kind of tweeter in each side, as I do not remember any lack of top end.

[Stub Mandrel]

10 hours ago, Sparky Mark said:

I use this technique to brighten dead strings. It really does work and saves £££.

 

Interesting. Does this mean slap players' strings last longer? 🙂

 

Curiously enough, I've put two sets of strings in the dishwasher for a few days as an experiment, I only switched it on about an hour ago.

 

Edit: I should add that in the earlier days, I used to boil strings up with Ariel clothes washing powder in a saucepan. These days I generally have a few packs in reserve, but it pains me to see virtually immaculate strings go in the recycling, so most of my cases have a used set in 'just in case' and if they can be rejuvenated, all the better.

Edited 3 hours ago by Stub Mandrel

[Sparky Mark]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

 

Interesting. Does this mean slap players' strings last longer? 🙂

Try it and see if it returns enough brightness for your playing style. I'm not convinced doing this removes significant  grime as the video maker suggests; I think it could be something to do with the winding being relaxed from the string core.

[Stub Mandrel]

57 minutes ago, Sparky Mark said:

Try it and see if it returns enough brightness for your playing style. I'm not convinced doing this removes significant  grime as the video maker suggests; I think it could be something to do with the winding being relaxed from the string core.

 

I'll try just out of curiosity.

 

String ageing is fascinating. Anyone who has rattled inside a piano will know ancient, dust encrusted strings csn still sound harmonically rich. The strings we use are not going beyond their elastic limits and metal fatigue ought not to be an issue. Is it really the chemicals or just dirt from our skin that is changing the tone? The effects of string coatings suggest it may be.