I was the one having a 4x12 type of box made. It actually wasn't a 4x12. The moment you put 4 12's together you have a very narrow sweet spot. It was actually a 3 way box with the dimensions of a quad box. It's not as simple as just putting coax speakers into a 4x12 box. You need to take into account air space, crossover points, and internal standing waves. The box actually has to be specifically designed for the purpose. The box in question was a 10" coax and a 15" sub in the same box which was a quad box aesthetically, but in actual fact was a 3 way PA speaker, or more accurately a studio monitor. It just happens that it would have about 800w of Phase Linear power. I was also playing with the idea 2 10" coax speakers wired in stereo (Jazz Chorus anyone?) in the box with a mono 15" instead of 2 separate "quads". One "quad" I could use for a lot of stuff, 2 simply wouldn't fit in some venues. I encountered a couple problems in getting this together. One was that the man I found to make it is extremely busy and has had it on the back burner for some time now and I haven't been pushy about it. He's also from the country so while he's good at what he does, he ain't exactly fast about it. That being said, I don't think you can get any more country than Kelsey, Texas where I lived when I was a kid. A big day was when the bulls from 2 houses down would get loose and fight in the street stopping the eventual traffic of, sometimes, up to 3 or 4 cars. I don't know how you can begin to keep up with that fast pace of life.
The other is that I live in Australia and he was still using imported speakers to put in the box which means big money. Australia is so far away from everything that freight is extremely expensive which is a cost passed on to consumers. Also the drivers in question are very high quality and very heavy (not that those two necessarily go together) which increases price. Add to this equation the fact of a small population (the whole of Australia has the population of LA on a busy day with the land mass of the US) and almost no competition. There are a number of monopolies on different product lines, and on specialty lines, many times a competing line isn't even imported causing even less competition and higher prices. I play Parker Fly guitars, but there is no way in hell I will ever buy one in Australia because the importer doesn't move on prices and doesn't even know a damn thing about the line anyway that you couldn't pick up yourself from a quick glance at the Parker website. I've played Parkers now for about 13 years so my knowledge leaves them for dead and I still don't reckon I know that much about them. They don't have to know anything. If you want a Parker in Australia, you have to go to them. I'm a American so (insert rude hand gesture of your choice) to them. I'll just get it in the US and bring it across the same way I do most of my gear. For an example on mark ups, a Cerwin Vega CVA-28 is $600 USD at GC (about $650 AUD), here they're about $1200 AUD (about $1150 USD) which is the price I was quoted from the importer earlier today. Get the point. And that's not a bad mark up. The point being that I am now looking to see if there are any Australian made options before pushing for the "quad" FRFR. I've found one that looks promising. One of the partners is quite famous as far as loudspeaker design goes. I'm going to check out a pair that that company suggested I try. If they're good, I'll be able to get a pair for less than one FBT, QSC or Atomic.
I haven't let the "quad" idea go just yet, I'm just checking other options. The quad aesthetic would still work well for a lot of what I'm doing, but there is also other stuff I'm doing where a smaller option would be preferable. There's one right now I'm doing that I'll probably end up using IEM for, not my favorite option, but if it helps the overall show.... Either way, the "quad" FRFR, if I end up going ahead with it, should easily handle the brutalz, as it's been so eloquently dubbed, with extreme ease. I said I would keep people posted, it's just that nothing new has transpired and I've been too busy to push it through.
If you're really interested in a "quad" FRFR, I would suggest you not do it yourself unless you're well versed in designing enclosures. The chances of you fluking it are pretty slim IMO. FRFR is a completely different beast to just a plain old guitar cabinet. You actually use the amount of airspace to tune the speaker to the frequency response you want among many other things. Do you know where you want you're crossover points to be? If not, you don't even have step one (I'm sure there are other earlier steps such as knowing in what freq range the speakers you're using are most efficient) of many steps in designing an FRFR. If you want to know more, contact Jay. I'm no loudspeaker or enclosure designer...he is...and quite a good one from what I gather.
If you want someone to build you one, I would suggest first finding out how they come up with their designs. The reason I decided on the guy that I did was because he uses his enclosure design, speaker choice and carefully chosen crossover points to tune his boxes the way he wants them. He doesn't rely on heavy EQing and such to make up for poor designs. He's actually already got a design and has chosen the speakers for the "quad", he's just yet to build it. I think some of the details of the one he has designed is in a post I did a few months back called something like Quad FRFR, or something along those lines. It shouldn't be too far back.
Again, I'm no loudspeaker designer, but I would still urge you against trying this on your own without some good knowledge on the subject. If you're happy to spend the money, knowing there's a good chance it won't do what you're expecting it to, then by all means, go for it. I'm definitely not one to stop experimentation. If I had the time and money to throw at it, I'd be experimenting like crazy. But I don't, so I won't. If you decide to go ahead with it, please fill us in with your results. I'm sure the resulting sound will not be for me, but I'm still interested in knowing what the actual results would be.
