Fender FR-12 preamp mod : The Hissterectomy

Its not cheap for a company to change a design in mid flight. They have to throw away parts and buy new ones. Throw away assemblies and build new ones. Sometimes even retool. Either they absorb the cost and get a smaller paycheck, or they pass along the cost and raise the price. One good idea can kill a budget. Still hoping they make the change, though.
 
Rex said:
Its not cheap for a company to change a design in mid flight. They have to throw away parts and buy new ones. Throw away assemblies and build new ones. Sometimes even retool. Either they absorb the cost and get a smaller paycheck, or they pass along the cost and raise the price. One good idea can kill a budget. Still hoping they make the change, though.
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I agree on all points!

A bad idea can kill a budget too. Gain clipping the 2nd stage can burn through compression drivers, 37.2V on the rails can burn out ICs (especially the 14¢ ones), and the hiss problem is trending on YouTube.It may be warranty problems next.

It could really be a world class product and lead sales in the FR space for years. I don't think they have ramped up production to that point yet. This would be a great time to do a final board revision and have it ready for NAMM.

But hey what do I know about these sophisticated 1000 watt hot rods that idle a little louder than moms sedan. 🤓
 
WKSmith said:
But hey what do I know about these sophisticated 1000 watt hot rods that idle a little louder than moms sedan. 🤓
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Seriously. We know nothing compared to Fender's customer service worker bee that tries to "explain it to" (gaslight) us.
Thinking about it, if Fender doesn't move on this, maybe working with Mojotone, or a similar cabinet builder, would work better for us. A class-D plate amp and your circuitry, stuck into a sealed and closed-back cabinet using either a coaxial speaker or the two separate speakers, would replicate the sound, and we can tip our hat to Fender for showing us they didn't care enough.

It's what the cats would do. :)
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
Seriously. We know nothing compared to Fender's customer service worker bee that tries to "explain it to" (gaslight) us.

Thinking about it, if Fender doesn't move on this, maybe working with Mojotone, or a similar cabinet builder, would work better for us. A class-D plate amp and your circuitry, stuck into a sealed and closed-back cabinet using either a coaxial speaker or the two separate speakers, would replicate the sound, and we can tip our hat to Fender for showing us they didn't care enough.
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That's actually pretty brilliant!

Mojo just charges so dang much for an unloaded cab. But they ghost build a lot of stuff for other companies (if word in the biz is correct) so there's that 😉

I have been slowly moving towards building amp looking backline cabs with a coax driver/ horn and class D power. With a clean and simple preamp. But I will probably build just a handful of them.

I have learned a lot from the autopsy of several current offerings. Especially for making a FR cab have the amp in a room vibe.

I would love to help open source a killer FRFR design and we just give the design away. Parts list, CAD drawings, schematics. CAD cabinet blueprints, port tunings, speaker specs, graphs and actual truthful wattage outputs.

Imagine that.. a truthful monitor, in frequency, and in specs.

That should make a lot of corporate folks tremble. At least where their wallet is.
 
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WKSmith said:
That's actually pretty brilliant!

Mojo just charges so dang much for an unloaded cab. But they ghost build a lot of stuff for other companies (if word in the biz is correct) so there's that 😉

I have been slowly moving towards building amp looking backline cabs with a coax driver/ horn and class D power. With a clean and simple preamp.

I have learned a lot from the autopsy of several current offerings. Especially for making a FR cab have the amp in a room vibe.

I would love to help open source a killer FRFR design and we just give the design away. Parts list, cad drawings, schematics. Cad cabinet blurprints, port tunings, speaker specs, graphs and actual truthful wattage outputs.

Imagine that.. a truthful monitor, in frequency, and in specs.

That should make a lot of corporate folks tremble. At least where their wallet is.
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Yes, Monotone is expensive for their bare cabs. I'm sure there are other builders who'd be more in-line for this use.

I'd like to find a cabinet builder using carbon-fiber or, even more interesting to me, to see if it's possible to use a 3D printer to create a perfectly tuned cabinet using printed panels with tiny air-bubbles embedded for lightness and to increase the stiffness. The 3D printer and CAD would let them tailor the acoustics perfectly and every cabinet would be identical, there'd be no voids and no need to use plywood to try to get consistency.

We could make them look like…


:)
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Yes, Monotone is expensive for their bare cabs. I'm sure there are other builders who'd be more in-line for this use.

I'd like to find a cabinet builder using carbon-fiber or, even more interesting to me, to see if it's possible to use a 3D printer to create a perfectly tuned cabinet using printed panels with tiny air-bubbles embedded for lightness and to increase the stiffness. The 3D printer and CAD would let them tailor the acoustics perfectly and every cabinet would be identical, there'd be no voids and no need to use plywood to try to get consistency.

We could make them look like…


:)
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Hells yeah! Find us some of that.
 
WKSmith said:
Hells yeah! Find us some of that.
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LOL.

I think the downside of the 3D printers is that they'd need to be big industrial units that are capable of rapidly turning out the panels. Time is money so if they can't make them in bulk we'll have to pay a lot more. But, a cabinet that was perfectly tuned for the resonance of the speaker to neutralize and help flatten its sound, with a circuit that also was designed to work with that combination, would hopefully be truly flat. And light. And strong.
 
I'm sure any of them would gladly make a deal on 100 cabinets. I just don't want that much crap in my garage... Or to deal with shipping all those heavy Bstrds.

And really if you are going to spend $400+ on a cab... An unloaded matchless or bad cat 1x12 would fit in nice around here for close to the same money. I've picked them up on reverb for $200 ish for a bad cat combo shell with a matchless G12H30 in it.
 
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WKSmith said:
I'm sure any of them would gladly make a deal on 100 cabinets. I just don't want that much crap in my garage... Or to deal with shipping all those heavy Bstrds.
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Jim Carrey Shipping GIF by Morgan Creek
 
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