Crossover needed?

Ian Harvey

New member
Feb 7, 2023
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Toronto Canada
We have a PA system shared by three bands, with some cross pollination of players. Currently using a pair of Yorkville Pulse 12 inch with horns on stands.
We've just been given a pair of older passive EV ETX Subwoofers which have the hole in the top for a pole mount for the Pulse. Very nice. One catch.
The previous owner decided to use them as subs for their home stereo system which entailed ripping out the speakon connectors and then just twisting their speaker cable onto the two wires to the ETX Speaker.
The panels are there but the speakons are gone leaving the round holes. A new set of female speakons are on order.
Now the questions
1) There doesn't appear to be a cross over board inside the cabinets. Do we need one? Seems strange not to send the higher ranges to the 12 inch and horn and then the lower frequencies to the subs? We've never had subs before. We're running a small rack with Peavey monobloc and Traynor Monobloc for the mains and monitors along with two EQ,s and gated compression unit.
2) The speakons come with four terminals. I've never wired one before. There are two holes on each panel to daisy chain and we want to keep that feature so we'll be installing four female speakon connectors. Any clues/wiring diagrams available. Just started looking.
Thanks in advance.
 
1) Yes, you want to use an active crossover, highs run from one amp side, lows from another amp side.
2) You could follow Neutrik's Bi-amp suggested wiring.
 

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Hey thanks. Follow up question. In terms of a cross over, how would we go about that? With an external unit or a unit mounted inside the cabinet? This is new territory for us. Sorry if it's a stupid question but since they were free and you don't get given 18 inch 1200 watt speakers in cabinets every day we don't mind investing a couple of bucks but we don't want to guess.
 
Bi-amping 101 -
First you need two amplifiers, this because the crossover you buy for this divides the sound before it arrives at the amplifiers and you need to have a high amp and a low amp. The crossover will live in the rack with the amplifiers. You'll need a fairly basic crossover, it could even be an old analog unit from the used market if you want to go cheap as you're not doing anything complicated, just crossing over about 80hz between subs and tops. Keep in mind as you plan out buying and setting all this up that the subs will be producing sounds between 40 and 80 hz, basically the lower octave on a bass guitar, the bottom of the kick drum, the bottom of a floor tom and the left end of keyboards. If you're trying to put those in the PA now but running out of steam this will be a big improvement. If on the other hand your PA is primarily to get the vocals out over the stage volume in small rooms the subs aren't going to be a big change.
 
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