A flexible & bass heavy rig...

Evenin

I'm putting together a sound system for doing small to medium events in clubs.
It needs to be flexible... some clubs I'll be in already have sound systems of decent quality- they just don't have enough bass for playing jungle/ reggae/ dancehall - bass culture music. So I've gone down the route of using matches pairs of 18" reflex cabs run by one amp per pair of subs so far. This coupled with an adjustable crossover plus a compressor limiter should be a flexible and portable bolt on bass reinforcement?
In this area there isn't enough money to be made out of nights to make bringing in an entire PA viable, so my intention is to have a cub system compatible bass array and have my own tops as well so the system can be used in its own right.

First off, here is what I've already got.

Two JBL 744 Soundpower Professional 18" subwoofers - 600w @ 4 ohms.
Two clones of the above (well made out of void free ply) which will be fitted with JBL 2243 HPL drivers (reconed to 4 ohms)
At the moment the clones have an unnamed 8 ohm 18" driver in an one Fane Studio Bass 18" 400w 8 ohm (the fane needs a recone due to a noisy surround).

Two Peavey PV2600s which came in cases for a good price- they seemed to my eyes to be a reasonable and cheap way of power the two pairs of subs.

A Yamaha compressor/ Limiter (rack mount, can't remember model off the top of my head.

This is all I have at the moment, but have been offered some JBL SF-25 tops (2X15 and a horn), two blown up passive 18" subs, a rack mount crossover and two power amps. This offer is local to me so may be worthwhile as I live in the sticks and the area is PA starved.I'm awaiting makes and models for all that gear, he could remember the tops were JBL SF-25s though.

I'm aiming to get two Crown Macrotech 3600s off ebay fairly soon too, I thought they'd be a good amp to have another pair of. I might try and get some Matrix amps alternatively as they seem decent and cheaper.

Any thoughts/ suggestions would be much appreciated, and any info on these JBL P744 subs fitted with the 2241G driver too! They don't seem to exist officially!

The plan I have in my head is to use the two spare mismatched drivers to fit to the two blown up 18" subs my mate is selling (along with all the other gear), use those whilst I build another two pairs of the JBL P744 clones. Then I'd have 8 subs, two hoofing 2X15 tops, compressor/ limiter. I need to sort a crossover though... ASAP. Any tips much appreciated!!

sell the compressor limiter, and just get an lms, this covers all your crossover points, peq, limiting etc...

bee wrote: sell the compressor limiter, and just get an lms, this covers all your crossover points, peq, limiting etc...

Good advice. I've got a behringer ultradrive on the way...

I would've got a db mark 26 but couldn't stretch to twice the money at the moment. The ultradrive is from Thomann so has a 3yr warranty, and if it messes up I can at a pinch use the Peaveys low cut and crossover .

I also have a nice Crown MA3600 VZ

My reconed JBL 2243 HPLs will be here early next week, so I'll have two spare drivers to put in my mates old blown up subs.
These 6 subs should tie me over whilst I get tops and build more subs.

I looked up the JBL SF25 and they are apparently loud but crap... low end JBL. So I'll give those a miss.

If I was going to build more subs, four more to be exact... what is the general opinion on small ones?
Cubo 18, or more clones of these JBLs spring to mind. What I want is sub with a fairly even response over all the notes, which these JBLs give. However I reckon the Cubo 18 might give shift more air...
I guess I could use the time delay stuff on the ultradrive to avoid phase issues between the two types of enclosure?

Cheers

So here's where it stands so far! I decided to buy all the gear off my mate as the price was so good.

For 450 I got two working jbl sf25, working behringer ep2500, working dbx driverack pa, working sound craft mixer, amp case, mixer case and loads of speaker cables and xlrs, two jbl m pro 418s subs one working the other blown and a broken crown xls 602.

It sounds really nice with the tops crossed over around 100hz. If you go lower it sounds muddy.

I've just ordered 3 sheets of birch ply to build two cubo 18 extended