[AVB]

I've owned a lot of VMPS speakers over the years and have at least a dozen in the house now but I've never had a Tall Boy Sub let alone one I think has been modified. 
To start, I bought this at auction for $50 both drivers work but the PR has seen better days and I'll work on refoaming it later.  My questions are about hook up. On the back on a recessed board that attaches from the inside of the cabinet are 2 sets of banana plugs. The picture shows the inside of that. You can see the 2 sets of connectors under the silicone.   The one on what would be the bottom says AMP IN and the other OUT TO SPEAKERS. In the middle is what I think is an crossover and an attenuator as there is a knob on the other side and it turns 


I'm good with that so far.  However, then red and black wires then go to the 15" woofer where another set of wires attached to the same woofer terminals go to the 2nd rectangular cup that has another set of banana plug inputs and then wires going to the 12" woofer. Hopefully this diagram will help.

The way this looks to me is that I have a choice between using the sub with 1 sat speaker crossed over at some unknown point or feeding a straight subwoofer input to both drivers at once

Is this how they normally came? Does it matter which input I use if I don't have satellite speakers or is one preferred over the other? Lastly, with the speakers being in parallel I'm going to hope that these are 8 ohm drivers or else they will present a 2 ohm load.

Any and all thoughts (or prayers!) or advice welcome

[Stimpy]

I believe Brian designed the sub that way, to both provide the high pass option to the satellite speakers, and to also have the option of driving the sub with a mono signal or a stereo signal.  So, you can run one channel to each woofer, independently to the other, for stereo playback.  Or with jumpers, run the same signal to both woofers, for mono playback.

If I wanted to use the high pass feature, I'd use that input specific input box, for a cleaner, direct connection.  But, electrically, I don't think it would make a difference.  Either box should feed the the output connection.

As to the driver impedance, I'm not sure?  Better to measure them first, to confirm.  Still, I'd guess both were 8 Ohm drivers, for a parallel 4 Ohm load.

Good luck.

[ZAKski288]

Here a picture of  my subwoofer (12” driver, 15” passive) may look the same as your tall boy sub


Instructions sheet attached should be the same for Tall boy subwoofer

[AVB]

The locations are different. What you show as your top connector box is my lower and your lower connector box is my top.  I only have one set of Banana plugs on my top connector box. I wonder what the connector between your jumper is hooked up to (and the info paper doesn't say)?  Thank you for the info and pics but it isn't quite the same so I'm still not 100% on everything yet.

[AVB]

OK, I got some info from another VMPS fan.  The Larger Sub could have been special ordered with 2 passive crossovers for use with a single sub and 2 satellites.  That would have had 4 pr of banana plugs like is shown in one of the pics above. The low pass crossover is set to 100hz and can be attenuated 40db. 

I don't know if the direct stereo hookup (one set of banana plugs for each driver) is a standard feature or something that had to be asked for. I've found people who own the Low Boy version that say they did the direct stereo connection and others that show just one set of wires going to their sub. Since this will be fed from the Sub output of my prepro I don't need a passive low pass filter I'm going to go with the direct series connection from the 2nd connection box and see what that does once I fix the PR.

I've also been looking for aftermarket replacement speakers but I'm having trouble finding software that will take 2 separate woofers and a PR. Plus I don't know if the PR acts like a vented system in that a single box with 2 subs each driver "sees" only half the volume of the box. Is that true with a PR too?

[ZAKski288]

In my subwoofer  the  12” driver is dual Voicecoil speaker.

I also have a couple larger subwoofers with 12” &. 15” drivers with 15” passive
Here are the numbers from Parts Express # 295-185,  #295-190 , it looks like they are no longer available.
Good luck Zak

[AVB]

Just finished refoaming the PR so sometime this weekend I'll hear if there are any other rattles, wheezes or wires hitting the cone(s). I'm thinking of leaving off the cover since it doesn't stay on anyway and putting some metal grills on instead. We'll see how it goes. 

[ZAKski288]

Hello AVB,  recently one of my subwoofers made some weird rattling sound on certain songs, I thought something had come loose. So I pulled out the driver and the passive, and everything looked ok. Then I shook them the passive rattled slightly. The under the morite putty, the 1oz fishing weight came loose on one side and was vibrating badly.  Reglued it back in place and added some dynamat to both the driver and passive frames. Now it’s back to thumping properly.

AVB you want to coat the paper cone of the passive with glue if it has not already been done. Here is the link. Good luck Zak

https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=47927.msg479067#msg479067

[AVB]

Thanks for the tip about painting the cone. As for the Dynamat I'll wait until I have it all together and see how it sounds before I worry about the speaker frames.