It's 15s it's is!

[Sean]

On 16/12/2025 at 11:28, BigRedX said:

Most of the time the second cab only takes up additional vertical space. It also has the advantage of raising the upper cab closer to your ears where it is doing some good for being heard rather than your knees.

I agree. And I've gigged two cabs many times where the lower one is just a shelf.

 

At the SE Bash recently we did a non-scientific "test" with one Monaco vertical-mounted on top of one horizontal. We walked around the room listening to just the vertical and then did the same with the both plugged in. It wasn't particularly loud but it was very revealing with that dispersion going on. @stevie will be able to explain it properly but what I got out of it was that now I'm playing in a band where I need to use backline to fill the room, I'll be thinking more about this and probably taking both of them with me just in case. I know one Monaco is amazing but the pair with one turned through 90 degrees was like another dimension. @cetera and @Wolverinebass were there when we were doing it. 

Edited December 19, 2025 by Sean

[Beedster]

39 minutes ago, Sean said:

I agree. And I've gigged two cabs many times where the lower one is just a shelf.

 

At the SE Bash recently we did a non-scientific "test" with one Monaco vertical-mounted on top of one horizontal. We walked around the room listening to just the vertical and then did the same with the both plugged in. It wasn't particularly loud but it was very revealing with that dispersion going on. @stevie will be able to explain it properly but what I got out of it was that now I'm playing in a band where I need to use backline to fill the room, I'll be thinking more about this and probably taking both of them with me just in case. I know one Monaco is amazing but the pair with one turned through 90 degrees was like another dimension. @cetera and @Wolverinebass were there when we were doing it. 

That’s really interesting 👍

[LawrenceH]

It's that bottom-end reinforcement. I've wondered before with a good FR cab like the ones LFSys is building, whether rather than stacking two complete cabs and accepting lobing there's sense in having the pad on the compression driver variable, so you could switch that out to pair with a second, (cheaper) woofer-only model that just had the low-pass filter rom the crossover. Of course that depends on the tweeter using a pad and having the headroom, but they usually do.

 

Even without a second cab model, you could potentially make the comp drivers switchable to achieve the same outcome.

[Chienmortbb]

38 minutes ago, LawrenceH said:

It's that bottom-end reinforcement. I've wondered before with a good FR cab like the ones LFSys is building, whether rather than stacking two complete cabs and accepting lobing there's sense in having the pad on the compression driver variable, so you could switch that out to pair with a second, (cheaper) woofer-only model that just had the low-pass filter rom the crossover. Of course that depends on the tweeter using a pad and having the headroom, but they usually do.

 

Even without a second cab model, you could potentially make the comp drivers switchable to achieve the same outcome.

I am probably letting too much out, but this was something that @stevie @Phil Starr and I have discussed in the past and on a trip to LFSys Worldwide Headquarters, we tried it out on a couple of identical cabs, with no horn on the lower cab but with all else the same. It did not sound that good.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Running a second no horn cab below adds 6dB to the low frequency sensitivity. For it to sound right requires turning up the HF horn by 6dB, if it has that ability. 

Quote

I've wondered before with a good FR cab like the ones LFSys is building, whether rather than stacking two complete cabs and accepting lobing

Lobing isn't an issue if the two cabs are built mirror imaged, so you can set them with the HF horns adjacent rather than separated. I don't see manufacturers doing that, for inventory reasons, but it's simple enough if you build your own. 

[LawrenceH]

47 minutes ago, Chienmortbb said:

I am probably letting too much out, but this was something that @stevie @Phil Starr and I have discussed in the past and on a trip to LFSys Worldwide Headquarters, we tried it out on a couple of identical cabs, with no horn on the lower cab but with all else the same. It did not sound that good.

Oh that's a shame, was that with matched sensitivity on the horn to compensate? Might work better with the smaller cabs, assuming they use the same HF driver, might have more leeway.

 

 

Stacking speakers in mirror when vertical seems less than ideal on a cramped stage because it takes the tweeters lower. Plus they still don't add entirely coherently. Splitting hairs on bass guitar I guess. But then that's what really good speakers are about!

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Not ideal perhaps, but the lobing you get with a typical HF above the LF driver arrangement tilts the HF output downward too. I first saw/heard it done by Henry Kloss in his office at Advent. He used a pair of Advent speakers per side, the upper speaker flipped upside down, creating a W-T-T-W alignment. This was in '72, two decades before another colleague of mine, Joe D'Appolito, perfected the M-T-M speaker. 

[Lfalex v1.1]

On 16/12/2025 at 11:32, Muzz said:

It's not the speaker size alone, it's the speaker plus enclosure which sounds the way it does; I had a Schroeder 1515L for years, and while I loved it (very honky soloed, on a stage very present; not tons of low bass, but then that's my taste), I'm gonna say it sounded like no other 2 x 15 I'd heard before or since, and that was down to the enclosure design... [snip]

 

Ah... I have a Schroeder 21012L. It's light but moderately bulky, and sound-wise it seems fine. 

Too many variables for me to even begin to get my head around working out why it sounds the way it does, but I'm forming the impression from what I've read that they're concocted by trial and error rather than designed.

It's a good single-cab solution- 4 Ohm, ~1000W power handling. And it generates a lot of perceived volume- I guess it has a strong hump in the frequency response between mid-bass and lower-mid that causes it.

 

The recently acquired PJB C8 is another wacky cab design,  yet  another kettle of fish entirely...

[stevie]

On 19/12/2025 at 19:19, Sean said:

I agree. And I've gigged two cabs many times where the lower one is just a shelf.

 

At the SE Bash recently we did a non-scientific "test" with one Monaco vertical-mounted on top of one horizontal. We walked around the room listening to just the vertical and then did the same with the both plugged in. It wasn't particularly loud but it was very revealing with that dispersion going on. @stevie will be able to explain it properly but what I got out of it was that now I'm playing in a band where I need to use backline to fill the room, I'll be thinking more about this and probably taking both of them with me just in case. I know one Monaco is amazing but the pair with one turned through 90 degrees was like another dimension. @cetera and @Wolverinebass were there when we were doing it. 

 

This was the result of some experiments I carried out on stacking cabs. To cut a long story short,  it's important when stacking to keep the bass drivers as close as possible. With cabs that have a tweeter on top, that means placing the bottom one on its side, with the top one in its normal orientation.  

[pete.young]

57 minutes ago, stevie said:

 

This was the result of some experiments I carried out on stacking cabs. To cut a long story short,  it's important when stacking to keep the bass drivers as close as possible. With cabs that have a tweeter on top, that means placing the bottom one on its side, with the top one in its normal orientation.  

 

Is there an argument for turning the tweeter in the bottom cab through 90 degrees in this configuration?

[stevie]

Theoretically, yes, as the widest dispersion from the bottom tweeter would then be in a vertical direction. I haven't tried it myself - so I can't be certain how it would work out. Theoretically, having the horns spaced wide apart with the bottom one on the floor isn't ideal, but in practice it's fine. 

[stevie]

On 19/12/2025 at 22:29, LawrenceH said:

Oh that's a shame, was that with matched sensitivity on the horn to compensate? Might work better with the smaller cabs, assuming they use the same HF driver, might have more leeway.

 

 

We didn't adjust the output of the HF driver, but there didn't appear to be any lack of treble. 

 

I've been asked more than a few times to produce a cab without a tweeter/crossover to act as a "sub" for LFSys cabs. When I tried it, there was more bass - as you'd expect - but the overall sound quality was noticeably inferior. I'm pretty sure this is because the second bass driver doesn't sound great when it's unequalised and operating above 2kHz: most large cone drivers have resonant peaks at or above this frequency that my crossovers deliberately remove. Adding a crossover to equalise and roll off the LF driver might fix this, but then you might as well go the whole hog and fit the compression driver and horn as well.  

Edited yesterday at 12:37 by stevie

[LawrenceH]

21 hours ago, stevie said:

 

We didn't adjust the output of the HF driver, but there didn't appear to be any lack of treble. 

 

I've been asked more than a few times to produce a cab without a tweeter/crossover to act as a "sub" for LFSys cabs. When I tried it, there was more bass - as you'd expect - but the overall sound quality was noticeably inferior. I'm pretty sure this is because the second bass driver doesn't sound great when it's unequalised and operating above 2kHz: most large cone drivers have resonant peaks at or above this frequency that my crossovers deliberately remove. Adding a crossover to equalise and roll off the LF driver might fix this, but then you might as well go the whole hog and fit the compression driver and horn as well.  

Yes I assumed you'd need the low pass side - an optional defeat switch for the tweeter might be an interesting extra. I suppose a 2.5way ideally necessitates a (switchable) extra pole on the low pass filter to smooth out the transition, and I guess that'd normally be an inductor so a bit more cost as it'd need to be low down.

 

I built 2.5way tops with some Deltalite 10s that I deemed unsuitable for bass guitar compared to more robust drivers, it did do that 'girth' thing which bassists chase.

Edited 9 hours ago by LawrenceH