out of my depth

Lisa Lane-Collins

Lisa Lane-Collins

Sophomore
Dec 9, 2012
270
0
16
Adelaide, Australia
working with passive speakers for the first time. paired 4 peavey f1 subs with a lab gruppen fp3400, two a side, linked together using the input/throughputs on the back of the subs. am using a dbx drive rack to cross over, and powered jblprx615s on top (the four peaveys blow them out of the water, wicked).

so i powered every thing up, wound the amps back to half to try and bring the jbls and sub volumes closer together, played a bit of edm through at ball park gig volume. heard a few unsettling crackles, then a pop, then i lost a side (just as i was reaching to wind the amp down). now one sub is dead, judging by the acrid smell, i may have burnt out a voice coil? oh well, they were ten dollars each, my question is, what can i do to safeguard the remaining three against a similar fate?

also, is it possible my very average soldering job on the link cables is what is creating the pops? and can those pops be lethal?

show time is in 14 hours, super looking forward to reading peoples replies. thank you :)
 
Re: out of my depth

If you are referring to the FH1 W-bins, they are not really subs as we think of subs today and will not survive any power below a sensibly high-passed kick-drum. The LAB300 will easily overpower them. The sound you heard could either be the drivers bottoming out or the already damaged and sticking coil occasionally moving when given enough power.
Survival of the remaining three would depend on a high pass no lower than 40Hz (preferrably higher for max power applications) and avoiding the temptation to outrun or even keep up with the JBLs. The Peaveys can give you good punch from 50-200 Hz, and can allow the JBLs to play louder and cleaner in the rest of the register, but don't be tempted to go deep. Set the mls switches on the lab to -4dB, and gain/attenuate so that the limiter on the dbx kicks in around the -5 dB mark on the amp. You can easily run all three survivors of one channel of the LAB, it doesn't need all of the current reserves to handle the Peaveys.
I think you can get replacement cones for the Peaveys, they are great little speakers if used right.

EDIT: OH yeah, make sure the subsonics on the dbx is turned off and don't try to eq to get anything below 40-50 Hz, the autoeq on the driverack will try to compensate for the lack of response below 50, don't let it, readjust those bands after auto-eq if you use it.
 
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Re: out of my depth

solid gold reply. the lab's meant to be loads of spare juice (bare with, still getting my head around ohms and watts), they're all 700watt peak so giving them 1000 plus a side to cater for that, cos they're chained , brings em down to 4 ohm so even more juice if i understand right.

that was a dumb oversight to not adjust the crossover up to 50 (seeing as i remember seeing that in the specs). seeing as they go right up to 500, is it worth lifting the crossover point up higher at all?

quietly suspecting i am going to regret not hiring in something modern that can go way low (looking forward to using surviving subs in rock band context though yes yes), lesson learned at least.
 
Re: out of my depth

It could be the Peavey was damaged before you used it (they have not been made for quite a number of years-so who knows what condition they are in).

The "pops" could tear up a loudspeaker-from causing overexcursion-but that really depends on how loud the pop was-at what freq it was and where that freq "sits" in the loading of the driver and so forth. So no easy way to tell in that case.

I know of many cases that "pops" have torn up loudspeakers-but that was when "everything lined up" to cause the failure.

If it was the pop that caused the failure-then I would suspect that the other 3 are very close to failure also.

Assume they have the Peavey Black Widow drivers in them (as was originally used), then I would take the drivers out of the cabinets and remove the 3 bolts on the back and look at the voice coils, connection of the voice coil to the cone/spider etc and see the condition. That is one very nice thing about them-you can actually "get inside" and look-without having to ruin the driver. Very few other drivers offer this. McCauley being the one that comes to mind.
 
Re: out of my depth

Lisa Lane-Collins said:
solid gold reply. the lab's meant to be loads of spare juice (bare with, still getting my head around ohms and watts), they're all 700watt peak so giving them 1000 plus a side to cater for that, cos they're chained , brings em down to 4 ohm so even more juice if i understand right.
Click to expand...

According to the spec sheet the FH-1's are 700W program, not peak. 350W continuous. 1400W calculated peak.

http://www.peavey.com/assets/literature/manuals/80301013.pdf
 
Lisa, as Ivan suggests, popping the magnets off and inspecting the voice cool, spider, and tinsel leads will tell you everything you need to know about why that driver failed. It seems unlikely that you were applying enough power to burn up a voice coil in a few short minutes, VC heating times are closer to half an hour unless you're just basting them with voltage. It is entirely possible, however, that over excursion is the culprit... Or that someone else helped you wreck these. Take some photos and we can help!
 
Re: out of my depth

After checking out the specs on the FH1, it looks more like a 60Hz box than a 50Hz box. Without a proper high pass filter and some real subs to go below 60Hz, EDM would be an uncomfortable bedfellow with that box except at modest levels. The fp3400 running below the box cutoff would eat those drivers pretty fast.
 
Re: out of my depth

Hi Lisa,

While not a concert level sub by any stretch, these are quite efficient as long as you don't try to get them to go too low.
You definitely need a high pass filter on them, start at 40 hz if you're only going for moderate volume, but be prepaed to sacrifice more LF extension and raise the HP to maybe 60hz if they are going to be pushed at all.

What venue are you using these in, what is the room size and audience size? If you can cluster all 4 of them and couple the horn mouths you'll get better low end extension for free!

Having said that, it sounds like the driver may have already been rubbing the voice coil.
Those drivers are really easy to fix, the basket, cone and voice coil are all bolted on as one assembly. I'm pretty sure it would be in stock here in Adelaide too.
It probably wouldn't hurt to pop the other drivers out and clean the gaps, check for rubbing, burning etc. Easy job, and educational too!

Cheers,
Darren
 
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Re: out of my depth

hey, adelaidian, helloooo.

the speakers were bought at auction, 40 for 4, so, real cheap gamble.

they are in the producers bar, turns out i lost a side, ended up bringing in another passive sub to do 40 to 60 and getting the surviving 2 doing 60 to 100.

currently freaking out because cant find conclusive information about their peak power, spec sheet does not say 1400 anywhere but if they are then they are underpowered right now by a good 1000watts. the show is in full swing and the sound is rounded if not deafening, about ready to say im willing to pay the cost of repairs if it means i can go home Now
 
Re: out of my depth

Lisa Lane-Collins said:
hey, adelaidian, helloooo.

the speakers were bought at auction, 40 for 4, so, real cheap gamble.

they are in the producers bar, turns out i lost a side, ended up bringing in another passive sub to do 40 to 60 and getting the surviving 2 doing 60 to 100.

currently freaking out because cant find conclusive information about their peak power, spec sheet does not say 1400 anywhere but if they are then they are underpowered right now by a good 1000watts. the show is in full swing and the sound is rounded if not deafening, about ready to say im willing to pay the cost of repairs if it means i can go home Now
Click to expand...

There is this weird (in my mind) obsession with not undrepowering speakers that leads to futile discussions, so I won't go there, just mention that I believe I remember that we used to run these off cs800. Can't really remember for sure though because it was thirty years ago and I was only involved on one tour where my job was not systech, and my only involvement with the speakers and amps was loading and stacking. The thing is, one can't overpower thirty year old speakers and expect to get away with it, and underpowering speakers in an active set-up has never hurt a speaker and never will. (shoot, just went there).
 
Re: out of my depth

Lisa Lane-Collins said:
switched em to one a side, then limited them, then heard them popping, them Really limited them, -12 db, cmon survive the night, pleeeeeeease
Click to expand...

The popping noise you are hearing is the voice coil bottoming out in the gap!!! Not a lot you can do other than HP and turn it down I'm afraid.
I guess they possibly may not even be the right drivers for those boxes, who knows what was done to them before you got them.

I "think" we may have done a couple of corporate gigs together a year or two ago for an AV company here in town.

Darren
 
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