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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => HistoryOfConcertSound.org => Topic started by: duane massey on June 12, 2019, 01:04:02 PM

Title: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: duane massey on June 12, 2019, 01:04:02 PM
Does anyone here remember the old Meyer tweeter array?
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: John L Nobile on June 12, 2019, 01:59:23 PM
I remember the one I had on my ML3's before I upgraded them. Always gave it a cheesy look.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: duane massey on June 12, 2019, 03:56:45 PM
The one I am thinking of was a handful of piezo horns, cut down slightly and mounted sideways. It's not on their website under discontinued products.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: John L Nobile on June 13, 2019, 12:06:32 PM
The one I am thinking of was a handful of piezo horns, cut down slightly and mounted sideways. It's not on their website under discontinued products.

They probably want to erase all traces of that product :)
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Mac Kerr on June 13, 2019, 12:41:16 PM
They probably want to erase all traces of that product :)

The only ones I remember were the 3 piezo tweeters in the MSL-3. IIRC they were added after the speaker was introduced.

Mac
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Riley Casey on June 13, 2019, 04:43:58 PM
Probably on the same piezo order as the ones they used in the original UPMs
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Art Welter on June 14, 2019, 01:31:03 PM
The one I am thinking of was a handful of piezo horns, cut down slightly and mounted sideways. It's not on their website under discontinued products.
Duane,

Sounds more like the Klipsch MTM tweeter array than anything Meyers, though I do remember piezos used in MSL-3 for a short period.

Meyers did have an experimental "long throw" tweeter array using a large amount of dome tweeters with processing to create a virtual point source, but that experiment seems to elude detection on the interwebs now. IIRC, that array was late 20th or early 21st century.

The Klipsch MTM tweeter array topped their 4 way MCM stack, it used 5 piezos (sometimes cut down) in an arc. That series was produced during the latter part of the 1970s through early 1980s.

Art

Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: duane massey on June 15, 2019, 12:47:53 AM
Art, I remember the Klipsch. The meyer I am describing had a handful of piezo 3x6 (?) horns mounted sideways in a curved shape. The edges were cut off, and the whole thing was kid of bizarre. This was probably early 90's, or earlier. I had several conversations with meyer service people, and was always disappointed in the false info they would repeat. If I remember correctly, one of them told me they weren't using normal peizos, but a custom OEM unit.
They also told me that they weren't using Yamaha and JBL drivers at that time......
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Ivan Beaver on June 15, 2019, 09:51:49 AM
Art, I remember the Klipsch. The meyer I am describing had a handful of piezo 3x6 (?) horns mounted sideways in a curved shape. The edges were cut off, and the whole thing was kid of bizarre. This was probably early 90's, or earlier. I had several conversations with meyer service people, and was always disappointed in the false info they would repeat. If I remember correctly, one of them told me they weren't using normal peizos, but a custom OEM unit.
They also told me that they weren't using Yamaha and JBL drivers at that time......
Peavey had the same sort of "array" in the project series.

That would have been in the early to mid 80s I remember.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: duane massey on June 15, 2019, 11:56:45 AM
Ah, the "old days"......
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: John L Nobile on June 17, 2019, 11:19:41 AM
I don't recall piezos ever sounding very good. I always thought that the only reason for having them was to claim a 20khz and higher freq response on paper.

Am I wrong???
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Dave Pluke on June 17, 2019, 11:55:20 AM
I don't recall piezos ever sounding very good. I always thought that the only reason for having them was to claim a 20khz and higher freq response on paper.

Am I wrong???

Nope!

All they did, IMHO, was to add a little HF static sufficient to fool some ears.

"The Emperor's new high end" for those of us too cheap to buy JBL slots or bullets...

Dave
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: duane massey on June 17, 2019, 12:16:57 PM
I don't recall piezos ever sounding very good. I always thought that the only reason for having them was to claim a 20khz and higher freq response on paper.

Am I wrong???
The small piezos were pretty horrible. The larger ones, if used with a passive network, could be "ok". I still have a small 2-way cabinet with a screw-on horn/piezo, and it works well for a monitor on a small stage. None of them sound good at higher levels.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Paul G. OBrien on June 17, 2019, 08:52:52 PM
All of the original Motorola piezos were super tweeters and any type of deployment that didn't use them as such ended badly. I used them in a few DIY projects of mine back in the '80s, for home audio apps they delivered a lot more topend than the cone tweeters that were common at the time but they didn't have the power handling capacity to survive PA applications in singles or even doubles. I still have some with holes burned through the piezo element from my first DJ cabs, after blowing these up twice in 2 gigs I substituted regular bullet super tweeters and gained a massive increase in sound quality, instead of everything sounding like frying bacon from moderate drive levels up I could actually discern the difference between ride and crash cymbals and the system had much better dynamic range. Except for the later powerline compression driver versions these things were really only good for lower power levels.
I remember there was a guy down the street with a Traynor or Peavey 2-way system, 15's with the big white horn something like the old Yamaha 4115 but with and separate super tweeter box on top with 8 or 10 piezo units in an arched horizontal array. This system definitely worked better but it still had too much of the frying bacon sound at higher drive levels, I quickly came to dislike this characteristic after switching my own system to proper compression drivers.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Tim McCulloch on June 20, 2019, 04:45:19 PM
All of the original Motorola piezos were super tweeters and any type of deployment that didn't use them as such ended badly. I used them in a few DIY projects of mine back in the '80s, for home audio apps they delivered a lot more topend than the cone tweeters that were common at the time but they didn't have the power handling capacity to survive PA applications in singles or even doubles. I still have some with holes burned through the piezo element from my first DJ cabs, after blowing these up twice in 2 gigs I substituted regular bullet super tweeters and gained a massive increase in sound quality, instead of everything sounding like frying bacon from moderate drive levels up I could actually discern the difference between ride and crash cymbals and the system had much better dynamic range. Except for the later powerline compression driver versions these things were really only good for lower power levels.
I remember there was a guy down the street with a Traynor or Peavey 2-way system, 15's with the big white horn something like the old Yamaha 4115 but with and separate super tweeter box on top with 8 or 10 piezo units in an arched horizontal array. This system definitely worked better but it still had too much of the frying bacon sound at higher drive levels, I quickly came to dislike this characteristic after switching my own system to proper compression drivers.

All sizzle, no steak.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Dennis Wiggins on June 23, 2019, 07:05:19 PM
Peavey had the same sort of "array" in the project series.

That would have been in the early to mid 80s I remember.

I experienced a demo of this in the early-mid 80's, sponsored by Guzzardo Music at a local hotel in Rockford, IL. The "impact" demo last only a few seconds. The midbass/lower midrange (100-600hz) was astounding; the rest was just very loud. I was literally breathless, in a good way.

It did have the piezo tweeter "array" on the top. I think it was called the Project 4.

p.s.>  At the time, I was running what was later called the Project 1 (Mf1-x over Mb2 over Mf1) with 2 CS400s and plug-in crossover cans. My favorite component was the MB-2 as it did what no trap could do.

-Dennis
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Dennis Wiggins on June 23, 2019, 07:20:26 PM
I believe the "array" had 5 of these stacked, for a total of 10 p-drivers.

-D
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Paul Miller on July 10, 2019, 05:44:57 AM
Peavey had the same sort of "array" in the project series.

That would have been in the early to mid 80s I remember.

Here's a Reddit post  (https://www.reddit.com/r/livesound/comments/7ekcg3/peavey_project_two_series_pa_found_on_craigslist/)showing several vintage Peavey cabinets including that piezo array.
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Rory Buszka on August 20, 2019, 01:26:04 PM
Duane,

Sounds more like the Klipsch MTM tweeter array than anything Meyers, though I do remember piezos used in MSL-3 for a short period.


Purdue's Hall of Music had a portable system of MSL-3s (used for outdoor festival stages and at one time supported on the low end by 650R2s, then later by VT4880s) and I saw/heard the piezos. They were never very good sounding, mainly because of a horrible resonant peak at 6kHz that is the resonance of the PZT disc.

An example (not the Purdue system):
(https://medias.audiofanzine.com/images/normal/meyer-sound-msl-3-1423214.jpg)
Title: Re: Meyer tweeter array
Post by: Brian Bolly on August 25, 2019, 02:51:42 PM
Does anyone here remember the old Meyer tweeter array?
The piezo array disappeared when the MSL-3 turned into the MSL-3A. The (IIRC) XM3 filter was disconnected and the MS2001A driver was fitted in place of the original MS2001N to make it an MSL-3A. As well, on the M3T processor, the TC circuit was supposed to be switched off.