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Author Topic: The Tuba 36 debuts  (Read 31430 times)

Jim York

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The Tuba 36 debuts
« on: January 22, 2005, 06:14:46 PM »

 The first of Bill Fitzmaurice’s Tuba 36 subs has been constructed by John Reynolds of San Antonio; Bill didn’t build the first himself as his New Hampshire workshop is closed for the winter. Unfortunately John doesn’t have any testing equipment, but as the following report tells it the planned Texas Sub Shoot Out should prove quite interesting indeed.
Posted on the Bill Fitzmaurice Loudspeakers forum:
HOLY CRAP!!!
Ok now that that is out in the open lets proceed.
My friend drove up from Corpus last night. His cargo included
1 Carvin ProBass500 bass head
1 Carvin DCM2500 power amp
1 Carvin LB76bass guitar
1 Carvin “redeye” 4 x 10 cabinet
Assorted cables
Evil intentions
Ok, I expected the cabinets the Tuba36’s to sound good, that is just a given. But DAMN did they go loud! We ran the rig (which looks utterly ridiculous by the way) full tilt with no low cut engaged. It was quite frustrating trying to get the Magnum15LF woofers to distort or cause throat distortion in the cabinets. The output from the Magnum15LF drivers was MUCH higher than I had anticipated.
Now I am not joking around saying we went to extremes. The low B string on the bass guitar was repeatedly de-tuned way WAY lower till you could easily count the cycles as it swung back and forth over the pickups. With the amp bridged dumping all 2500 watts into the cabinets ridiculous amounts of air was moved. Hitting the bass guitar body with palm of your hand (a favorite effect of ours that routinely bottoms out 18’s) proceeded to knock over beer bottles dumped crap off of a shelf in my pantry (a jar of mayonnaise took a dive and made a horrible mess) and caused my roof to flex. I am not kidding, I stood out side and could here the beams flexing and strange groaning emanating from my roof. My house is only two years old.
The amp was eventually able to get some distortion from the cabinets, throat or driver I could not tell as I was not about to put my head in the horn mouth to do any critical listening. At that level of output you get dizzy being near the cabinets (probably from your inner ear fluid getting moved around) and your vision blurs. So we engaged the low cut on the amp on started on the ultimate volume stomp. Thus far with the low cut engaged the cabinets will not distort in any fashion.
My friend got possessed and went on a freakishly low de tuned bass solo for around half an hour. It was cool to watch the world disappear to him and the sick look come across his face as he put out tones most bass players can’t even dream of. No low-end bass boost was used on the bass head, just some modest compression and the tone knobs on the guitar. The tuba36’s belted out every low tone put to them without breaking up, no matter how hard we tried, and trust me WE TRIED! We turned off the stack around midnight utterly amazed the cops did not show up. We will beat on the rig more today and probe for weaknesses.

A related side note:
My friend happens to live right across the street from a liquor store (how cool is that!). According to the people that work there, when the band practices in a converted garage the low bass notes going through the tuba30 “rattle every damn bottle in the store.”
For updates log on to http://audioroundtable.com/BillFitzmaurice/
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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2005, 06:22:32 PM »

Is this thing supposed to directly compete with the LAB or simply fill the gap between the Punisher horn and the LAB?
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ChainedDragon

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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2005, 07:44:42 PM »

...try getting it through a door


I do beleive its just a scaled up tuba24, made for higher output
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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2005, 09:06:01 PM »

It's a little misleading, because it's not a 16" cube, just 36" tall and 36" deep. It's 30" wide.
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Michael_Elliston¶

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comparison!
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2005, 10:51:40 PM »

It is smaller in volume than the labhorn,then hoffmans iron law dictates that it it not as 'good' but different.
Either reduced SPL,or reduced bass extension etc

You can easily see that its designed for the one man band and guitar guys...The design intent is obvious.

Perhaps it comes close to a labhorn,but if some one says 'is this thing labhorn competition' without having a sub shoot out,im going to scream!

Cheers
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Patrick Gillert

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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #5 on: January 23, 2005, 02:33:17 AM »

Quote:

It was quite frustrating trying to get the Magnum15LF woofers to distort or cause throat distortion in the cabinets.


Maybe you and Bill should read some of the posts from Tom Danley about throat distortion in bass horns before make such comments.  He might know something about high spl's after all he has designed devices that can lift objects with just sound.  When you levitate some of the bottles at the liquor store across the street with your Tuba 36 then you can give a more qualified opinion.
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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #6 on: January 23, 2005, 08:35:18 AM »

Sorry, I didn't mean to set off the bomb. I was simply wondering. The Tuba subwoofer cabinets have, in my experience, had an uncanny ability to produce deep bass because of their dual nature as a bass horn and a bandpass enclosure. Where the horn quits, the driver still has some extra output in direct-radiator mode. This is what I find most interesting about the Tubas: Though their horns can't break the laws of physics, the fact that they still produce output in direct radiator mode gives the impression of very deep, extended bass. Since the Tuba 36 should have good horn loading to much lower frequencies than the tuba 30 or Tuba 24, I would also expect that its larger rear and front chambers would allow it to have bandpass action to lower frequencies as well. One thing I note about the Tuba 30 and 36 is that the way their designs are arrived at is fairly unscientific - simply scaling up the dimensions for the Tuba 24  to handle the larger driver. I will wonder how well this method works.
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blades976

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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2005, 09:39:13 AM »

PATRICK GILLERT wrote on Sun, 23 January 2005 07:33

Quote:

It was quite frustrating trying to get the Magnum15LF woofers to distort or cause throat distortion in the cabinets.


Maybe you and Bill should read some of the posts from Tom Danley about throat distortion in bass horns before make such comments.  He might know something about high spl's after all he has designed devices that can lift objects with just sound.  When you levitate some of the bottles at the liquor store across the street with your Tuba 36 then you can give a more qualified opinion.


Maybe you should build and test your own cabinets and then write a book or two about sound physics instead of simply dropping names in an attempt to sound intelligent.  As I stated in past threads I am not an audio expert and my opinions are based only on my own experiences.  I can give whatever opinion I wish concerning cabinets I built myself.  I find the liquor store story amusing because it is only one 12” driver causing all that commotion at ~ 100 yards with around 500 watts.  What have you built?  

Before this thread gets stupid let me establish my goals in building the tubas.  Big bass for little money.  

Comparing to other designs without taking economy into account has no interest to me.  Name-dropping does not impress me.  Critics who rely on simulations and not construction of cabinets are of no interest to me.  Saying you can do more with more is dumb.  Anybody who wishes to see detailed RTA graphs of these cabinets is more than welcome to mail me the test equipment.  I think that covers just about all the bases.  

Have fun

John
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Johan Rademakers

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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #8 on: January 23, 2005, 01:19:54 PM »

Maybe you could respond a little less offended?

Not to offend you but so far I've read only few reactions from Tuba supporters/owners that are relaxed. Most reactions seem really fanatic to me, not to say aggresive.

If the Tuba's really are that great they will come to prove themselves in time.

Just out of curiosity for the Tuba's: As an Tuba owner, can you say what the negative points are from the Tuba's you've got?

Mvg Johan
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Alan Searchwell

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Re: The Tuba 36 debuts
« Reply #9 on: January 23, 2005, 02:30:57 PM »

Guys! Guys! Let's try and calm down a bit.

I find all of these discussions on subs very interesting and informative but, I think some of us might be getting a little emotional here. Let me first state that I'm almost done with my "prototype" lab sub with a couple minor cosmetic changes to Peter Sylvester's design. Having not built any boxes for over 15 years I've been brushing up on my carpentry skills and doing some  repairs/upgrades to my friends table saw as I go along (replace defective fence, new 80 tooth blade, build router attachment).

This sub is going into a club that I provide the sound equipment for and then I going to build 4 for my mobile rig. I have another club that I helped set up that badly needs a good sub to replace the single 15" scoop that the DJs keep destroying. This particular club is very small with a capacity for 200-300 people packed fairly tight so space is at a premium. This means that like many other people, I'm very interested in the pros and cons of the various designs being discussed here.

What I do need is facts, some sort of objective basis for judging the relative loudness and quality of theses designs. Sentences like "The output from the Magnum15LF drivers was MUCH higher than I had anticipated." do not mean anything to me. "132db at 1w at 1m from 37hz to 80hz with the 3db down points at 34hz and 92hz" will give me a much better idea of what a one box sounds like relative to another. I guess that's one of the things a subwoofer shootout can provide an opportunity for, the chance to do side by side comparisons of the designs to hear how the different frequency responses compare. Observers can then compare notes and hopefully come up with some sort of agreement as to the "sound quality" and loudness of the different designs.

I'm not saying that people can't judge how a box sounds, it's just that the perceived sound will depend on so many variables. If the comparison is not immediate, that is, plug out one box and immediately plug in the next, using the same (recorded) source material, amps, processors etc, then the opinion can easily be affected by how much beer or weed the listener has had, how loud the background sound level is, how long he has been exposed to loud sounds and how much stake he has in the box proving itself. That said, I think that we should all peoples subjective opinions with a grain of salt. I don't think we need to get offensive/defensive  . The truth will always emerge in the long run.        
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