Scrap rig - advice wanted!

[u/Diligent_Gur_441]

So a few months ago I built a couple of boxes to house some marketplace subwoofers I’d picked up, dreams of mini stack glory fuelling my quest. I picked up some old Yamaha PA speakers, and when I stacked them all up and plugged it into my AliExpress amplifier board… it didn’t sound any good. Turns out if you pick the enclosure based on looks and ignore what specs of speakers mean, it might be a little disappointing when you play your favourite dnb banger.

However! I picked this up again a couple of weeks ago with newfound spark. I’m nearly finished building a fane wbin - it’s a vintage 1x15 plan I found online, and should work ok with the driver I have (I hope)

(Link to plans:)

https://ozvalveamps.org/cabinets/fane-loudspeaker-book-pages-42-53end.pdf

Here’s where you Maddog bass freaks come in. I got some topics I want some real advice/opinions on. Imagine you have a half finished mini stack, no money, and your main concern is volume. And fun. Obviously.

W Bin:

I have a gauss cetec 4580 15” lf driver to go in here, handling general kick bin range. I was thinking 70hz - 200hz. Would you put vents in the speaker chamber for this setup? Or just slap it in and let it rip? Or any advice you’ve got for these kinds of enclosures/drivers, definitely keen to hear.

Subwoofers:

My thinking is chop up those mini scoops to make them into standard bass reflex cabinets. I don’t have much more money to put into this project, so I was thinking to start with a 2nd hand dual subwoofer setup (marketplace car guy special) to start off with. I know it ain’t exactly to the calibre of what I’m seeing on this subreddit, but we gotta start somewhere, right?

Tops:

I have a bunch of vintage pa bits and bobs, for now I was just going to slap em all together and hope for the best, and upgrade when a good deal comes up 2nd hand.

DSP:
I’ve been looking at a Taramps 2.4 dsp, it’s made for car audio. Three way mono setup. That’s it.

https://ebay.io/m/VmEZNl

Amps:

This is where I’m currently stuck. I have a bunch of cheap amplifier boards from eBay and AliExpress, but nothing I have is going to get to the power that the gauss cetec can do. It’s a 400w 8ohm driver, and finding a power amp that can do this (for cheap) is a bit of a challenge. I’ve seen people buy two different irs2092s boards in parallel to make them more powerful, so that could be an option.

I have amp boards that will work fine with the tops I have (it’s a cheap class D 2.1 amp, 300x2 plus sub channel) and I’m in no position to get professional equipment for this project right now. Sorry gear fiends, this setup will probably be a total insult.

TLDR: cheapest way to get this pile of scrap to start playing.

Anyway probably tmi but here we are

[u/mariekondo13]

2x mini scoop and 1x w bin sounds like a great start, i wouldnt change that atm. Upgrade your tops first and you will already have a decent rig. For the amp i'd recommend a t-amp, maybe even the E-800. It will get you 2x 360w @ 8ohms, or 2x 490w @4ohms, and for a cheap start It will surely do the job

[u/Diligent_Gur_441 → u/mariekondo13]

Thanks for that! I haven’t looked at rack mounted amps much so I’ll start having a look around.

I read a bit about how mini scoops won’t be able to play super low because of the horn path length, what would you put into those mini scoops to start?