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[Eric Wong!]

Ken Dowell wrote on Thu, 25 January 2007 11:45

When I called Carvin and ordered their 8"-16ohm replacements they sent me 8ohm replacements. When I called them back they said "those will work according to the "engineers". When I opened the boxes up and 3 of the 4 boxes the hi and mid's were wired reverse polarity and on 1 only the mid was reversed.

Good lord, that's not very confidence inspring of their tech support or quality control.  How the heck can they say a 8 ohm replacement "will work" when theres 16 ohm drivers in their originally?  Not only will the level change but also the crossover frequency if running passive.  Well then again I guess it will "work" just not properly.  

[The Guy]

I'm going to have to agree with Ryan L. here.  The Carvin audio gear just seems to be lame time and time again, yet people on the board keep trying to justify it.  There are plenty of manufacturers that make budget level gear that doesn't suck, and will work night after night.

I'd say that I'd take a piece of knockoff cheap gear from Behringer that works OK, rather than something of a totally new design that just plain sucks.  And, after hearing these stories of QC problems and bad information from the factory,  I'm also wondering how many "second chances" carvin is going to get here.  There are better ways to spend your $$$.  Maybe Carvin and Soundbridge can team up and design a box that has absolutely zero applied knowledge of actual acoustics in the design.

IMNSHO,
-JB

[TonyPybus]

"If" I triamp them, I'd probably use what I already have laying around and am not using, which would be a PLX3402 on the 15", a 2402 on the 8" and a 1202 (which I don't have) on the horns. Stereo/mono, it wouldn't matter on these gigs. As much as I like the "look" of the box, I'm a bit mystified that any company could have as bad of QC as Carvin does and tech support that doesn't know, well, shit. I had thought about triamping the cabinets but on these gigs I mentioned, it would be nice to just have one amp rack for the mains and monitors with as few amps as possible. Right now I have 5 amps in the rack and I could at least go to 4 with these running passive (assuming I used subs). If I ran them 3 way with a sub I'd actually have to add an amp. I'm not taking up for Carvin, I'm kinda pissed that they'd actually let anything roll out the door with wiring problems and 8" speakers that truly suck. I can only imagine how many kids in garage bands buy these and blow speaker after speaker and don't know why due to things being wired different from cabinet to cabinet.

[Lee Jacobson]

Tony,

 I agree with you. Do they suck for a $600 box?? Dunno. Do they suck for a "15 inch, horn loaded 8" mid, 60x40 HF device, flyable concert box"??? Seems like they do. So Evan blew his up, modded them. Kent (sp??) had to mod his. To me, $600 for a finished, effectively EMPTY triamp only box is a tad steep. By the time you load them with real drivers, you might be able to buy 650s used. You'd SURELY be able to buy used TX4s, which I'd hazard a guess would eat these things for lunch, even tho they are not a 3way box.

As to your amps and what to do, if I found myself with that pile, and was forced to try to make a rig out of it, I'd find a DSP slightly "better" than the DRPA, something you could, for instance, run one side of mono 3way and the other side of as sub drive. Bridge the 2402 into the two 15" cones, and run the 3402 on the 8" cones and the HF. There you go, mono triamped, all with decent power. Expect my bill in the mail....



Lee

[TonyPybus]

A "concert" box they are not. Anyone who buys them as such has a lot of learning to do. I think it was kinda silly for them to put a review on their site from the guy that filled an 8000 seater with them too. Anyone who knows jack about live sound knows it isn't possible with these boxes. Maybe if you stacked them to the sky and 8 wide it might work but I don't know how weird it would sound. If Carvin would put an 8" speaker in them that would actually do what it's supposed to do, the boxes would be well worth $600. Funny thing is, you can buy the "fix" which seems to be an Eminence Beta for cheaper than the hunk of crap OEM Eminence they stick in it now for less money. The horn is fine, the 15" seems to be fine, the 8" is unusable.

[Evan Kirkendall]

I started a thread over on the Carvin forums just to see what their response would be. Feel free to check it out: http://carvinbbs.com/viewtopic.php?t=377




Evan

[Lee Jacobson]

Evan,

 It'll be interesting to see how long that post stays there. Part of the rules of their BBS is that you can't say anything bad about Carvin gear! I posted a while ago. The subject was the pics from their 60th anniversary party/concert. They had Vai, Brunel, all their big name endorsers play. The PA was the TRx 153 stuff, but the  wedges were clearly TCS, HOWEVER!!!!!!!!! They routed TRX into the sides of the wedges. I thought that was beyond fishy, and this from a company who claims to be "of the flock" as it were. I'd have had MUCHO respect for them if they'd used properly identified TCS stuff, and simply stated "our TRX offering are fine for club stuff, but in front of performers like these, you gotta use the concert line". Anyway, that thread is nowhere to be seen now......




Lee

[Evan Kirkendall]

I saved it on my computer. If they delete it, Ill repost and chew them out about it.

Also, this whole mid wiring thing got me thinking. If mine and Tom's boxes were not all wired the same that would have caused cancellation and could have killed the mids A LOT quicker!


Hmmm...

Time to pull some things apart!



Evan

[TonyPybus]

Evan, didn't you say your mids were wired backwards on both ends? Mine was just wired backwards at the crossover. I'm sure people are blowing the mids for two reasons, out of polarity cabinets and trying to reproduce what isn't there. Quite silly actually ANY manufaturer would have QC like this.

[Evan Kirkendall]

TonyPybus wrote on Thu, 25 January 2007 22:33

Evan, didn't you say your mids were wired backwards on both ends? Mine was just wired backwards at the crossover. I'm sure people are blowing the mids for two reasons, out of polarity cabinets and trying to reproduce what isn't there. Quite silly actually ANY manufaturer would have QC like this.

One of my cabs was for sure. The other one, Im not sure about. Im tearing them apart tomorrow to see.



Evan