The leaves are falling and yesterday may well be the last time I mow the lawn this year. I’ve been running off in a new direction lately, honing a different skillset than I’m used to, and having tons of fun doing it. By now I’m sure you’re all aware that the Cardinal is once again open, in all it’s glory. Extensive renovations to the dance floor resulted in a gorgeous new all hickory hardwood finish replacing the old tile work, and the sound and lights are back up to world class. I had the privilege of designing and building a trio of spectacular sub woofer cabinets for the new installation, and you gotta know I loved the hell out of that project. Despite the high stress environment that this build was mired in I learned a lot from it and I couldn’t be happier with how the sound turned out.

Two of the cabinets were simple vented cabinets, each loaded with a pair of Selenium 15SWS800 drivers.
Oh. My. Bowels. These things pound like none other.

We have them running on two Cerwin Vega CV2800 amplifiers in bridged mono mode, delivering a crushing 1400W to each driver in both cabinets. Considering they are rated for 1600W max, the first night after breaking them in (which I think we may have rushed) was nothing short of breathtaking. The only downside is that the third speaker, my most ambitious speaker design project to date, was then rendered useless as overkill. My good friend Tronathan was kind enough to handle the documentation for a large portion of the construction, so I have a good record for this adventure, unlike the Deathstar cabinet from a few years ago.

You can see the whole thing unfold at his Flickr account, which shows most of the marathon-building-party-headquarters my garage (and house by virtue of tracking sawdust everywhere!) became for this. It should be noted that the whole thing was done in a miraculous 9 days (beyond the day job, and not counting three weeks of getting dicked around on the bid) from the first pencil line to the last rag of stain.

The real adventure was the third cabinet. I dubbed it the Aries for the unique shape of the dual horns merging at the center, forming the zodiac symbol for Aries. The flare rate was calculated using a spreadsheet algorithm designed by SanDiego and with assistance from her math professor mother, and after refining the drawing a time or two the final idea came to me on the day I started cutting.

A few hours of tense re-penciling and we had it. This cabinet is loaded with two Eminence Omega Pro-15LF drivers, rated for the same power as the Seleniums, albeit with some slightly different specs. As a mixed blessing, I now have it back in my garage where it will be undergoing some additional finish work and testing before I finally thrust it back out into the cold cruel world.

Finally, after building these luscious subs, and installing, wiring, and programming most of the rest of the sound system, I managed to come away with a new residency. on Monday nights. I’m apprehensive about working until close every week, but I think it may work out fairly well -and I’m certainly grateful for the chance, considering the closing shuffle eliminated most of the jocks that used to play there. In keeping with the tradition that was abandoned upon the unfortunate demise of Café Montmartré there will be 1/2 price wine and champagne offered during the evening hours. I don’t know when exactly, but you get the idea. We’re calling it ‘86′ed!‘ and it will have a slightly service industry slant to it, while still remaining a night for the general public. Basically a night for anyone that finds themselves working the weekends and having their Friday/Saturday/Sunday night out on Monday. So come down and drink, and I’ll play some music damn it. Here’s the “original” artwork I did to pitch the idea. I’m not sure how much of it will live on in the final fliers, but I like where it was going.

yeah, that’s fucking Supertramp all right. love it.

ok. I’ll stop for now. Keep your eyes peeled is what I’m sayin’, once I wrap up the projects that are open right now it should be just about time to hibernate in the studio for a while. Then I can bring the updates a little more regularly so it won’t be a damn novel by the time I make it back here. So many wacky adventures.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.