Big, Old School 3-ways

[rpb]

For some reason I just have the urge to build some speakers with a 12" or 15" woofer. The thing is, I'd rather do it with cheap drivers if they perform well highpassed, and crossed to a mid at about 400 hz. PE has several 12s and 15s for $25 to $85 dollars or so. My primary goal would be impact rather than bass extension. These would be used in a small room that is my HT / music room. With the woofers highpassed at 80 hz, I suspect the excursion would never exceed 2 mm even at full volume. Do any of the cheap large drivers sound good used this way?

[Pete Schumacher ®]

The Peerless 830669 in a sealed enclosure would be about ideal for your application. It's just outside your $85 target, but for the extra $10, it would be worth it.

[fastbike1]

At the lower end of the scale you might look at the DC300. They cross at ~1600 in my Econowave application,yet have some old school presence.

At 450Hz or so you should be pretty happy.

A quick WBCD model w/ 80Hz highpass, 400Hz low pass shows 108dB w/ 80 watts well below Xmax (i.e. ~2mm) everywhere. 2.2ft3 net sealed, QTC .76. F3/f10 78/51

[rpb]

The Peerless 830669 in a sealed enclosure would be about ideal for your application. It's just outside your $85 target, but for the extra $10, it would be worth it.

I really want to use something under $50 each if the drivers perform well at typical HT levels. If I could get a very low Q driver, that would be ideal, but they tend to have large expensive magnets. The 4 ohm Realistic Mach One driver at $50 looks interesting. I don't suppose a big 15" 3-way has a very high WAF. That's not an issue for me though. The bigger issue is moving the beasts around on occasion.

[rpb]

At the lower end of the scale you might look at the DC300. They cross at ~1600 in my Econowave application,yet have some old school presence.

At 450Hz or so you should be pretty happy.

A quick WBCD model w/ 80Hz highpass, 400Hz low pass shows 108dB w/ 80 watts well below Xmax (i.e. ~2mm) everywhere. 2.2ft3 net sealed, QTC .76. F3/f10 78/51

An F3 of 78 hz would be ideal, and a box size of 2.2 cubes is back friendly as well. I'm hoping for an "audiophile" type of sound with music, but want a little more thump with action movies.

[Pete Upnorth]

I really want to use something under $50 each if the drivers perform well at typical HT levels. If I could get a very low Q driver, that would be ideal, but they tend to have large expensive magnets. The 4 ohm Realistic Mach One driver at $50 looks interesting. I don't suppose a big 15" 3-way has a very high WAF. That's not an issue for me though. The bigger issue is moving the beasts around on occasion.

How about MCM 55-1465? This is a 12" dual voice-coil driver that goes for less than $50. each.

Fs = 25 Hz
Qts = 0.3
Vas = 204 liters
Xmax = 5.0mm

These are great imo, they can be driven very loud without distortion, that is in a sealed two-way system with internal volume equal to about 2.8 cubic feet yielding f3 = 39 Hz, & crossover freq. = 2 kHz.

In fact I have a second pair on hand currently just sitting on the shelf, but you probably would want to get a pair from MCM (electronics).

[donradick]

There is something to be said about those old school monkey coffins. We listened to these Fishers for many years and loved them. I recently reworked them prior to gifting them, and they measured very flat.