Eminence Kappalite 1230HO Speaker Reviews 5

It's black. It handles very many watts, but I hate distortion and gratooittus loudness, so I use the watts for headroom. This makes a solid clean sound for my musical taste, which relies heavily on fretless and upright.

I got it from Parkway Music cuz they are cool about special orders. It cost almost $200. I needed a speaker for an Aguilar GS112NT cabinet, and this had the best specs, and Eminence is 800lb gorilla these days.

www.parkwaymusic.com

It's very light, the magnet is only 11oz cuz it's neodymium unobtanius, but it's rated 400RMS/800Program. I also like that the main frequency range is about 55 to 2500hz, which avoids both boominess below and tweetiness above. Just right for a single 12 bass cab. The non-neo version of this same speaker, in the regular Kappa series rather than this Kappalite version, has an 80oz magnet ... so thaz 69oz saved which is about 2kg ! It's rated at 100db efficiency, so that also saves weight when choosing an amp !!

It's part of the ''pro'' line so it has spin-clamp terminals instead of spade connectors. But that is normal for pro PA stuff, not an Eminence thing. This speaker is not listed as an instrument amp speaker ... it's listed for PA application.

Cast frame woofer, neodymium magnet, paper cone and cap with cloth edge. Eminence has a VERY detailed spec page for each of their speakers, but links are not allowed in the review text. Search on Kappalite 1230HO.

Running at 500W [it's rated 400W] I cannot drive it to noticeable distortion or break-up. Excessive gain in the signal will distort it even at lesser levels, but if you give it clean input you will get clean output. It is spec'ed as useful down to 50hz, and I've tested it with a 5-string. If you think you need a 30hz speaker for your 5-string, I'm more than happy to have annoyed you with this review, cuz you need a clue. For those with ears, 50hz is a great low end. If you want a bit more WHUMP, you choose the LF version [mine is the HO version]. The LF goes down to 40hz but is 5db less efficient so you need about triple the watts to put some oomph into that whump, courtesy of the 'No Free Lunch' department. You'll also loose some upper end, so the LF is prolly best in a horn cab. My cab is plain, no horn, no tweetie, so the HO is perfect ....very efficient, and clean, and light. But it is also one of the more expensive speakers, by about $85 [+/-].

Golem rated this unit 5 on 2010-11-01.

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