i am going to recomend a few things, having builtand referbeished a lot of boxes justlikeyou are considering here

 

1.  please give model numbers of the eminence speakers chosen for this project.

 

2.  when you refer to a tweeter, i'm guessing your thinking of a horn driver, something like the eminence psd 2002.  these really need a proper crossover and while a simple capasitor will get you there in the end, itsnot the best way to achieve good results.

 

3.  what horn with what dispursion are you going to put on this cab, what kinds of rooms and crowd sizes are you playing for.

 

4.  unless you are dead set on a 1 inch tweeter, i might recomend going to a 2 compression driver, eminence makes one that sounds good and is quite reasonably priced.  this would keep up better for vocals and guitar micing with the subs you already are running.

 

5.  keep in mind that 1300 watt rms rating on the eminence kilamax is a bit inflated, you will want to be a bit careful and understand that it is a good driver, though not imo the end all beat all eminence says it is.

 

6.  did you do any research and modeling to figure out cabinet tuning and such for the fifteens? good performance is not always about slapping a speaker in a box and hoping..though god knows i've done that enough times.

 

have fun, keep slogging along, and realize that your on the right path, there is just a lot more to consider.

 

I was in the same boat as you... I went for 2x10 inch drivers (8ohm) & a 1 inch tweeter horn (midtops for a lightweight portable club music rig)... all fane components. I finished one of them last night (aside from a lick of paint), I will upload some pics after work.

 

I would recommend using WinISD to calculate the size of box you need... there is a good guide available on the below link... I'm no expert on this program so i'd direct your questions about this program to someone other than myself

 

http://forum.speakerplans.com/guide-to-winisd-pro-and-hornresp_topic1314.html" rel="nofollow - http://forum.speakerplans.com/guide-to-winisd-pro-and-hornresp_topic1314.html

 

With regards to an internal crossover, if you already have a digital crossover, it might be much easier to go down the route that i went:

 

I wired the 2 10 inch drivers in parralell to bring the ohm down to 4... my amp prefers this.

 

I then wired the tweeter horn to a seperate plug on the back of the cabinet, and that goes into a different amp for the tweeters.

 

So i have two speakon sockets on the back of my speaker cab - one for the mid drivers and one for the tweeter.

 

You then need to look at crossover points... my drivers worked well cutting the mids out at 4.5khz, and then the tweeter horn kicked in from there all the way up to 20khz...

 

This is much more easily controlled when the signals are split and you can control it all from a digital crossover...

 

Hope this helps a little... please don't hesitate to ask more questions, we have all been in the same boat at some point in our speaker building lives!

stupid question probably but -   are these capacitors limited power ratings or could I put them in any cab no matter rating of the cab, I am thinking of  450 W  

thanks  

Going from a pair of 15s to an APT200 is likely to leave a large hole in the  frequency response, you'd be better off with 10s as suggested above. Most 15s will be losing response from about 1500Hz and the APT doesn't start till 4000Hz.  Also 10s will in general give a much better vocal sound.

In case you don't understand those Hz thingies, the frequency of middle C is about 261Hz and the low C on a guitar (5th string 3rd fret) is 130.5Hz, each time the freq doubles the note goes up 1 full octave....... or each time it halves, the note goes down a full octave.

 

if i was you, with what you own, this is what i would do.

 

use two outputs of your crossover for the eighteens, two more for a pair of eminence capa pro 12s per side, and the final two for a pair of eminence psd3006.  scrap the four way idea, keep it simple, set xover points accordingly, and be loud as all get out, clean and clear, with less cabinets to move.

 

having a four way system is great, when you need it, but live bands dont need it nearly as much as dj/prerecorded music imo and..please dont take this the wrong way, it sounds like your biting off more than you can hold onto with this, and keeping it simpler for starters will net a better result especially if you've got six weeks before they need to be used.

 

down the road you could add four more eighteens and then some dedicate midbass/low midrange cabs with the eminence 4015 lf, but for now..the above is what i would do.

 

some other notes.

 

use a 90 x40 dispursion horn for the psd 3006, when you want to double up this rig later it will be harder to get the angles of two cabs per side right, but for now, its the best option for even coverage in pubs up to outdoors with one set of horns per side.

 

use crossover points of 90 hz lowpass to the eighteens, with a 30 hz highpass as well both 24db butterworth.

 

use crossover points of 110 hz highpass for the 12s and 1.1 khz for the lowpass of the 12s, 24db on the lowend and 18 at the top.  the reason for the gap between the highpass of the 12s or lowpass of the fifteens is that most pa setups tend to energize a room at about 100 hz and this creates a small null where the frequencies are less..meaning less eq and less mud right out of the box.

 

use highpass of 1.2 khz 24 db on the horns, and set the lowpass on the crossover to 20khz or out depending on what it can do.

 

these crossover points would also work if using the eminence cappa pro fifteen, but i really like the sound of 12s better for rock vocals and such.

 

these are starting figures and will get you going quick, then you can play with dropping the hf driver to 800..but dont overlap, if you drop the hf driver down, drop the 12s too.  setting the hf driver a little above 1khz nets you more protection and safety for the driver diafram.

 

George c

 

four way to me would be the following. your subs, your fifteen mid cabs, your 12 top cabs as you call them, and whatever horn or tweeter rounds out the top end.  if only using the 12s and fifteens of the ev rig, you'd be losing a lot of upper end detail and clarity and i dont think you'd settle for that.

 

i totally understand wanting your own rig, and that is basicly what i suggested above with the two eighteens per side, two 12s perside, and a psd3006 per side.  that is three way, that is your own gear, and that would outrun the ev mids and tops very quickly.

 

what i dont quite get is why you want or think you want fifteen mids and 12 tops? that is done in a lot of larger club rigs but you would then have to buy more amps, figure out how to stack it all safely, find a horn that can keep up with that much midrange energy, and passive crossovers to go between the twelves and the tweeters or horns you will absolutely need to finish off the top end.

 

with the dual eighteen, dual 12 and one horn approach, you have a nicely stackable system, you can run one peavey to each sub cab but please be careful as i said because the eminence killamax ratings are inflated and unsafe imo, and one to the 12 and horns through a passive crossover.  or, and this is how i would do it, buy a peavey pv1500 or 900 and power the two psd 3006 horns off the outputs five and six of your crossover for ultimate control.

 

so, just to make sure we're on the same page.

 

outputs one and two each go to a peavey pv3800 which goes to a dual eighteen subwoofer cabinet.

 

outputs three and four go to left and right channels of a third peavey 3800 which powers two 12 midbass/midrange speakers per side.

 

outputs five and six go to a peavey pv900 that powers a single eminence psd3006 on each side.

 

hope that clears up my intent.

 

this would go right back to your orriginal questian, how to wire up two speakers and a horn.  well, you would go from the input on the cabinet to the crossover, then out to the dual fifteens from one side, and out to the horn from the other.  most crossovers are designed for eight ohms, but i believe the above suggested radian unit can do a four ohm midrange/midbass section.

 

seriously though, in my post where i detailed the use of an amp for lows, mids, and highs, that is by far the simplest way to achieve your goal and could totally be done within your time constraint.

 

the top end of a guitar absolutely comes out through the high frequency driver in the zx5 so please dont lose that good sound you already have.

 

with that unit, you own a threeway stereo crossover.  subs from 20 hz to 90 hz..fifteens from 100 hz to 1.2 khz, and horns from 1.2 khz to 20 khz..or something close to that.  this avoids all passive confusion, gives you the ability to swap drivers and play with the cabs till your happy, and means you only have to buyan amp since the crossover is already sorted