Wedges. Your opinion.

Scott Ciungan

Freshman
Oct 26, 2011
17
0
0
Detroit
www.burstllc.com
Looking at upgrading our monitor rig. We have all adamson systems at the moment so we were looking into their wedges. But we also really like the performance of the 15" Microwedge by EAW. Figured the 4 channel Lab Gruppen 6000q to be the amp of choice. Any suggestions or direction?
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

We use MW15's and LG6,000Q's (also MW12) It all works very well. Coaxial wedges always made sense to me, which is why we went with MW's in the first place. I highly recommend the rig. They sound great, get plenty loud and have a surprising amount of low end.
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

I haven't listened to the MW15 but I have used the EAW MW12 a lot and have not been impressed. I was recently told that what I am hearing that I don't like is the horn being mounted under the dust cap. My technical knowledge ends there, but they just aren't as easy to get the result I am looking for as other wedges.

The D&B Max 15 deserves a looking at. They aren't too expensive or power hungry. One sound company near me runs them passive from and gets no complaints from some pretty heavy hitting national acts.

I've got the Fulcrum Acoustics FA12's on tour with me and will fire them up for the first time tomorrow at Symphony Hall in Chicago. I've only listened to them in my living room, but my first impression is that they will give my current favorite, the discontinued L'acoustics FM115, a run for its money.

In 12" land the Martin LE1200 sound amazing.
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

I've got the Fulcrum Acoustics FA12's on tour with me and will fire them up for the first time tomorrow at Symphony Hall in Chicago. I've only listened to them in my living room, but my first impression is that they will give my current favorite, the discontinued L'acoustics FM115, a run for its money.

I was very impressed with the Fulcrum boxes, not only do they sound great and cut well, Rich's carefully assembled feedback-resistant preset doesn't sound cut up and yet gets seriously rock and roll loud "out of the box". There's a mic you won't be willing to yell into.

Scott, if you want to stick with Adamson, I liked their M15 except I felt the HF was a little raw. Hard to say whether that can be equalized or not. Otherwise the wedge was well built, got loud, easy to deploy, and surprisingly light.

I haven't heard the EAW microwedges, but the Radian was a good sounding box with solid output for the money. In terms of big boy box loud... not really. If the new ones are better behaved near limit and have a little more output they could be winners. Only you know whether you need loud or very loud. That 6dB costs a lot...

Of course, the D&B stuff will probably be the winner, if you can afford it. ADRaudio will have a 15" coax showing up in the states in that general range by the end of the year, as well, for testing and then probably release in the spring.
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

I was very impressed with the Fulcrum boxes, not only do they sound great and cut well, Rich's carefully assembled feedback-resistant preset doesn't sound cut up and yet gets seriously rock and roll loud "out of the box". There's a mic you won't be willing to yell into.

+1 on the FA12 and FA15. My new venue has 8 FA12s and 4 FA 15s. They are a seriously loud and clear sounding wedge. They DO NOT have a biamp feature, which is a moot point because of the processing, and MUST ALWAYS be used with DSP. ALWAYS.
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

Jannus Landing upgraded their monitor rig with a bunch of new Ramsdell monitors. They weren't coax but they were powerful and have gotten rave comments. They also made a bunch of nifty low profile 12+2" curved front monitors for a local sound company a while back and have not yet put any pics of the new type on the web site. I think it was a custom order. They were loaded with hi-powered Fiatals and the customer was gonna use Crown Xti's to biamp them with the SA dsp. http://www.ramsdellproaudio.com/products/monitor/floormonitors.htm
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

Another vote for the d&b here. I'm currently using M4s because I don't need the output of M2s and don't want a wedge that big. I'm thinking about giving the M6 a try.

Oh, and I took the EAW MW12s out on a tour using a FP6400 and the UX8800. We had great results every night with them.
 
Last edited:
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

I did a TV show where I had 12 of the Nexo 45N12's and I thought they were great. They do everything that Nexo says they do with regards to arraying and they just sound fantastic. I had plenty of gain before feedback and the low end you can get out of them is great (especially with 2 or 3 linked together). I had no issues with the amount of SPL that you can get out of them, so I would certainly consider them. You can also run 3 off of 1 side of a NX4x4's.

I can't speak about the D&B's since I have never used them, but I was not a huge fan of the Radian MW12. I did not spend a lot of time on them though, so my opinion is probably worthless. What about the L'acoustics HiQ? I use them and have been very happy with them every time.
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

We have recently added the Turbosound TFM-560 wedge/amp/dsp package to our inventory. You don't say what our budget is, but these will pretty much hang with anything out there. 4 biamped mixes with onboard dsp in6 rack spaces @ 60 lbs. On a large stage you can pretty much turn these up until you can't stand it and then point the mic at them and they don't feedback, with the eq flat. Amazing and very scarey. We love them.

http://www.turbosound.com/docs/products/TFM-560.shtml
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

+1 on the FA12 and FA15. My new venue has 8 FA12s and 4 FA 15s. They are a seriously loud and clear sounding wedge. They DO NOT have a biamp feature, which is a moot point because of the processing, and MUST ALWAYS be used with DSP. ALWAYS.

I have yet to hear the Fulcrum wedges, but the low profile FX1295 looks to be worth checking out. It's slightly less expensive and smaller than the FA12, about 1/2 the weight, gets about 4db louder, but sacrifices some bass extension:
http://www.fulcrum-acoustic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Prod-Spec-FX1295-v3.pdf
 
Re: Wedges. Your opinion.

[...] the low profile FX1295 looks to be worth checking out. It's slightly less expensive and smaller than the FA12, about 1/2 the weight, gets about 4db louder, but sacrifices some bass extension.

Yes, the FA12 has nearly two octaves more LF extension, and the FX12 has a bump at its lower corner. The 50 Hz to 200 Hz range drags down the equalized sensitivity of the FA12.

If you high pass the FA12 at 100 Hz -- roughly mimicking the FX1295's LF response -- you add +3 dB to its equalized max SPL spec. This means they are much more similar when viewed in the same light.