S
stevieb
Just another guy, really.
Some of you may have seen my recent thread, asking for info on these monitors. There seems to be almost... check that, NO information on these squat, little things.
I bought 4 of 'em at a church garage sale about 2 weeks ago, paid all of five bux for all four, and they even had no-tool banana plugs on all four. Those connectors are $7.99 a PAIR at Radio Shaft. Well, one of the connectors broke before I could use it...
As I said, I have gathered virtually ZERO info on these. They are squat things, only about 8 inches tall, and look sort of like a pyramid shape, with the top lopped off. One face of the pyramid is more sloped than the other three, the 5" speaker mounted on that face. A very small (about 1 inch) tweeter mounts below the 5" woofer. The banana plug connection is in a recessed space on the base, so the connector is out of harm's way- it won't get kicked off. The cabs seems to be made of a rubberized composite, and they are VERY tough. A quick DC resistance tested out at 3.9 ohms, so call 'em 4 ohm impedence.
If I had hooked all four in parallel, I would have a dangerously low ONE OHM impedence- no amplifier I have ever seen could handle that low a load. So I wired 'em in series, resulting in a 16-ohm load. I wondered if that might limit their output, and make them weak compared to other, bigger, more traditional monitors, but I needn't have worried. My guitar group has a concert coming up in early June, we play in a small space, on a dais 15 x 30 feet, room is about 30 x 50 total, with about 25-foot ceilings. These four little tanks were powered by half of a Samson Servo120 amp (60 watts /channel)competiting with two home-build wedge monitors (8" woofers and horns) powered by the other half of the Sampson, and a pair of 12" wedge monitors powered by both half's of a EV 150-watt amp. We also have the church's (Emerson Uniterian Universalist, Emersonuu.org, if anybody is interested) 150-watt Yamaha PA as side fills. Everything was run in mono. 4 vocal mics were used, one acoustic guitar was played thru the system, all other instruments were either completly acoustic (or accidentally mic's due to proximity) or were electric guitars or bass, run thru fairly low-level amps.
My main goal was to test out these speakers, and to see if having a whole passel of monitor speakers would allow us to hear ourselves with a much quieter stage (previously, we used only the Yamaha system, and it was really too loud as a stage monitor system for that space.) The experiment was a smashing success- I was able to turn monitor volume down (next time, will go even lower) and we could all hear ourselves well- no one was standing more than about 4 feet from at least one monitor. At one point, after we had done a song that had 4 people singing harmony on the chorus, and doing a terrible job of blending (the lead singer was totally un-hearable during the chorus, the other three guys were WAY too loud) I pointed out that the reason for having a "shit-load of monitors on the stage" was to allow us to hear ourselves (yeah, these guys are NOT the most "seasoned performers" you ever met...) and they should darn well use 'em. It worked- next run thru that song was much better. I may run the little tikes in a series-parallel setup, to give me a total impedence of 4 ohms, thus allowing my power amp to not have to work so hard (it can handle a minimum 4-ohm load.)
We have three or four more rehersals before the show- I am going to not hook up the 12"'s next week, andy maybe try without the side-fills (or go very low volume with them) to see how that sounds. ONe thing is for sure- we can now go with a lower on-stage volume than we have been in the past. This has shown me that I am probably still mixing the fold-backs too loud- I will bring it down, down, down, until either it is best, or everybody complains.
If you stumble across some of these at a pawn show or (GASP!) a garage or estate sale, chances are no one will have any idea what they are- they would look truly weird as home-stereo speakers, and no one would use them for that, and even if you find them at a music store (used, I am sure) they will probably get no respect from the staff- foolish, because these are GREAT for a small space. SPL's were fine, (although they may not carry the day on a larger, outdoor stage) and clarity was good, too. If you have been thinking of building some ultra-small monitors, I would say go for it.
Conclusion- very good monitor speakers, and (at least at the price I paid- $1.25 each) an EXCELLENT value!
I bought 4 of 'em at a church garage sale about 2 weeks ago, paid all of five bux for all four, and they even had no-tool banana plugs on all four. Those connectors are $7.99 a PAIR at Radio Shaft. Well, one of the connectors broke before I could use it...
As I said, I have gathered virtually ZERO info on these. They are squat things, only about 8 inches tall, and look sort of like a pyramid shape, with the top lopped off. One face of the pyramid is more sloped than the other three, the 5" speaker mounted on that face. A very small (about 1 inch) tweeter mounts below the 5" woofer. The banana plug connection is in a recessed space on the base, so the connector is out of harm's way- it won't get kicked off. The cabs seems to be made of a rubberized composite, and they are VERY tough. A quick DC resistance tested out at 3.9 ohms, so call 'em 4 ohm impedence.
If I had hooked all four in parallel, I would have a dangerously low ONE OHM impedence- no amplifier I have ever seen could handle that low a load. So I wired 'em in series, resulting in a 16-ohm load. I wondered if that might limit their output, and make them weak compared to other, bigger, more traditional monitors, but I needn't have worried. My guitar group has a concert coming up in early June, we play in a small space, on a dais 15 x 30 feet, room is about 30 x 50 total, with about 25-foot ceilings. These four little tanks were powered by half of a Samson Servo120 amp (60 watts /channel)competiting with two home-build wedge monitors (8" woofers and horns) powered by the other half of the Sampson, and a pair of 12" wedge monitors powered by both half's of a EV 150-watt amp. We also have the church's (Emerson Uniterian Universalist, Emersonuu.org, if anybody is interested) 150-watt Yamaha PA as side fills. Everything was run in mono. 4 vocal mics were used, one acoustic guitar was played thru the system, all other instruments were either completly acoustic (or accidentally mic's due to proximity) or were electric guitars or bass, run thru fairly low-level amps.
My main goal was to test out these speakers, and to see if having a whole passel of monitor speakers would allow us to hear ourselves with a much quieter stage (previously, we used only the Yamaha system, and it was really too loud as a stage monitor system for that space.) The experiment was a smashing success- I was able to turn monitor volume down (next time, will go even lower) and we could all hear ourselves well- no one was standing more than about 4 feet from at least one monitor. At one point, after we had done a song that had 4 people singing harmony on the chorus, and doing a terrible job of blending (the lead singer was totally un-hearable during the chorus, the other three guys were WAY too loud) I pointed out that the reason for having a "shit-load of monitors on the stage" was to allow us to hear ourselves (yeah, these guys are NOT the most "seasoned performers" you ever met...) and they should darn well use 'em. It worked- next run thru that song was much better. I may run the little tikes in a series-parallel setup, to give me a total impedence of 4 ohms, thus allowing my power amp to not have to work so hard (it can handle a minimum 4-ohm load.)
We have three or four more rehersals before the show- I am going to not hook up the 12"'s next week, andy maybe try without the side-fills (or go very low volume with them) to see how that sounds. ONe thing is for sure- we can now go with a lower on-stage volume than we have been in the past. This has shown me that I am probably still mixing the fold-backs too loud- I will bring it down, down, down, until either it is best, or everybody complains.
If you stumble across some of these at a pawn show or (GASP!) a garage or estate sale, chances are no one will have any idea what they are- they would look truly weird as home-stereo speakers, and no one would use them for that, and even if you find them at a music store (used, I am sure) they will probably get no respect from the staff- foolish, because these are GREAT for a small space. SPL's were fine, (although they may not carry the day on a larger, outdoor stage) and clarity was good, too. If you have been thinking of building some ultra-small monitors, I would say go for it.
Conclusion- very good monitor speakers, and (at least at the price I paid- $1.25 each) an EXCELLENT value!
