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Piezo tweeters?
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guitarplayerjoe View Drop Down
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    Posted: 16 August 2012 at 5:02pm
Hey guys,
 
I've just been building a top-box for a four-way system. Anyway I was planning to load them with APT-80s but after looking at a load of established reggae sound-systems (unless I'm mistaken) they all look to have piezos in them.
I'm not really sure what the crack is after seeing a load of posts slating them so I thought I'd ask you guys on the Roots and Culture Forum for your opinions on them. If you guys recommend using piezos then I'll probably buy a few of them instead and save a bit of money to go towards some nice outboard equipment. Embarrassed
 
Thank you!
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Chris LDN View Drop Down
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Piezos are cheap. They have a certain sound (some say “ear splitting”, others say “crispy”). It's a tradition. Some people don't like change.

Edited by Chris LDN - 16 August 2012 at 5:08pm
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studio45 View Drop Down
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Modern cheap piezos are for jokers. Seriously. They have a very uneven frequency response, distort a lot, and have very low sensitivity - hence why you always see about nine million in one box. Using them below 7kHz is impossible unless you really hate your ears.
Old Motorola/CDC piezos, on the other hand, are a different beast altogether, in a different kettle of fish. Though the sensitivity is still quite low, the response is much more even and distortion vastly lower. Additionally,they have inbuilt protection circuits that keep them going long after a £2.99 Maplin special would have expired in a sad little puff of smoke. 
They are hard to find these days so you would have to spend quite a lot of time searching them out. You will be paying between £10 and £25 each if you find them.

Personally, I would never advise the use of piezos in modern times because 1" compression drivers such as the Fane CD130 have become very cheap and offer much better performance in all areas. You can get a pair of the drivers for about £40 and a pair of small plastic horns, eg 18Sound XT120, for another £15.
There are a few other compression drivers around the same price point, but obviously avoid the Soundlab, Skytec, IMG Stageline brands as they are not on the same level as Fane in general.

You would also need a highpass filter board, costing about £15 in components. I can PM you details of a suitable circuit that includes power shaping to bring up the very top end of the response and make it sparkle like people wish their piezos could ;)
Studio45 - Repairs & Building Commotion Soundsystem -Mobile PA
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Jahlive View Drop Down
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Piezos are poo compression drivers or apt but no piezos poor mans tweeters
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Jahlive View Drop Down
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They should be called poozo
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guitarplayerjoe View Drop Down
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Well if I chose piezo's I was gonna cross them as high as I could get, but thanks for your responses guys I shall keep well away from the "poozos"! LOL Regarding the compression driver, I've already cut out circular holes to fit the APT's so I'm pretty happy to use them.

I do have one question though, if piezo's are so terrible, why do so many systems use them? Or are they the Motorola ones? 
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Chris LDN View Drop Down
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Originally posted by guitarplayerjoe guitarplayerjoe wrote:

I do have one question though, if piezo's are so terrible, why do so many systems use them? Or are they the Motorola ones?


Originally posted by Chris LDN Chris LDN wrote:

Piezos are cheap. They have a certain sound (some say “ear splitting”, others say “crispy”). It's a tradition. Some people don't like change.
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Sheggy View Drop Down
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Piezo's have there place - they are no all rubbish. First Motorola piezos were good.

S
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Dub Specialist View Drop Down
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Roots boys seem's to set them up and got the nack to make them sound good cant remember the Roots Soundsystem name now of my head few months ago i went to and didnt sound too bad at all...and yeah +1 on the original moto's are ok and still usable..crossed quite high will take that low harshness out of them..........

Edited by Dub Specialist - 17 August 2012 at 12:43am
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TONY.A.S.S. View Drop Down
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I have heard a few systems with piezos that didn't sound too bad. They were probably crossed high. I would bring them in at above 10k over a CD just to add a bit of sparkle. Having said that, of course, if you did the same thing to better tweeters than piezos, your system would sound even better.
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championdrei View Drop Down
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the original piezos that were being made in the 80s and early 90s were good got 8 of them and they sound crystal clear no distortion but nowadays they sound terrible
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slaz View Drop Down
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Originally posted by Sheggy Sheggy wrote:

Piezo's have there place - they are no all rubbish. First Motorola piezos were good.


Slight thread hi-jack if you don't mind folks - re the Moto piezos .....

I need something for my boombox. Piezos have one very useful attribute in this context ... light weight. Need tweeters to go above 2 x very good 8" Beyma bass-mid drivers (well an OEM 4 ohm version) .... sensitivity of the 8"ers is quoted as 96dB (which I think is conservative, as they sound gutsy even with tiny 15W x 2 amplifier).

Now due to physical size/shape constraints I thought well lets try a couple of very cheapo piezos with just a 40R resisitor (as they could me made to physically fit OK) ..... and  surprise surprise- they're pathetic. I have just "bass and treble" controls on the diddy amp - and if "flat" you can't hear any HF to speak of - if I use fair bit of "treble boost" you can hear em, but then there's horrible boost in upper mid - disgusting. They can be made acceptable-ish by using the 7-band EQ I have, but that compromises portability too much.

Oh yeah - the 8" drivers claim to go substantially up to around 6k-7k.

So .... wondering if the moto piezos might be a good choice here ? Are they dramatically more sensitive than the ultra-cheap shite ones ? They're not really cheap enough to casually toss aside if no good .....
If worth a try - should I go about getting/making something more than just a resistor to crossover - and what ? Can a regular Xover be used (2nd order mebbe ?) to define the Xover point ?

TIA ...
REMEMBER....POLITICIANS AND DIAPERS SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON
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