# Buying Horns with Amazon Prime



## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Here's a stupid trick to get your horns faster, thanks to Amazon.
If you ship to an Amazon locker, it often shows up faster than the promised date.

Here's an example:

I chopped up one of my waveguides, and needed to replace it.
The original waveguide was purchased from Parts Express.
Shipping took something like seven days, but the waveguide only cost $12.

As I only needed to replace one waveguide, I ordered from Amazon on Saturday. If I'd ordered from Parts Express, the order would ship out on Monday and I'd be lucky to have it by the following Monday. Amazon shipped the waveguide the same day I ordered it (Saturday!) and it arrived at the Amazon locker on Monday, a day earlier than expected.

Amazing.

Basically I ordered it on a Saturday, it arrived within 48 hours, and the total cost was about five bucks more than what I'd spend at Parts Express.


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## 94VG30DE (Nov 28, 2007)

Thanks, I have none in my area. Now I have a longing for something I didn't even know existed earlier today. Way to go PB


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

94VG30DE said:


> Thanks, I have none in my area. Now I have a longing for something I didn't even know existed earlier today. Way to go PB


Oh weird, I thought Amazon Lockers were national. Plain ol' Amazon Prime is still pretty fast.


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## HardCoreDore (Apr 30, 2014)

There's none of them in my area either, which imho is kind of strange. There are 2, yes 2 distribution centers within a 30 minute drive of my house. I'm in Nashville. 

What kind of horns/waveguides are you getting for $10-$15? What do they sound like?


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

HardCoreDore said:


> There's none of them in my area either, which imho is kind of strange. There are 2, yes 2 distribution centers within a 30 minute drive of my house. I'm in Nashville.
> 
> What kind of horns/waveguides are you getting for $10-$15? What do they sound like?


http://www.parts-express.com/pyle-ph612-1-screw-on-constant-radiation-horn--292-2572

The same one that's in the Econowave. It's a clone of the JBL progressive transition waveguide. It's made by Pyle. $11.33 if you buy four. (I tend to chop 'em up.)

I have personally built about thirty or forty horns and waveguides over the past two decades, and this cheesy $11 waveguide works better than anything that I've been able to build. I am listening to it right now.

It's a little big for a car, but if you saw it in half it works about 80% as well. And if you can fit the whole thing, that's even better.

Besides being cheap, it is also ubiquitous; you can get it from Amazon, Parts Express, and half a dozen other websites.


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

Here's a measurement of it's polars that Geddes did. This is with a B&C DE250 iirc









Here's a measurement of it's polars that I made. This is with a CDX1-1425 and some midranges, as a Synergy horn. It's basically +/- 2dB as long as your withing a window of about fourty degrees. *And even if your within a ninety degree window it's still quite smooth.*









Here's the polars of a Pyle PH714 that I measured. Same compression driver, same midranges, but you'll notice the frequency response is much more ragged. This horn is a clone of the constant directivity designs that JBL sold in the 80s. They were state of the art at the time, but the state of the art has come a long way in the last thirty years.


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## HardCoreDore (Apr 30, 2014)

Oh, so it doesn't include the compression driver. The price sounds a little more realistic then. 

I guess those are designed for homemade loudspeakers, huh?


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## HardCoreDore (Apr 30, 2014)

So I guess these are still considered waveguides, right? Are they going under you dash as usual?


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## Patrick Bateman (Sep 11, 2006)

HardCoreDore said:


> So I guess these are still considered waveguides, right? Are they going under you dash as usual?


Had them under my dash for a while, but now they're setup at my desk.

There's some measurements in the diyaudio thread titled "soundbar bateman style"


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## mires (Mar 5, 2011)

I believe the Amazon lockers are mostly in big cities in downtownish areas. Places with a lot of apartments where it may be hard to leave a package at the door and not have it stolen.


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## LumbermanSVO (Nov 11, 2009)

There was a locker in downtown Richmond that was super convenient for me, but it was removed just after I started using it regularly. I think the best part was getting an email saying it had been delivered just minutes after the package was put in the locker. That and I live in the ghetto, so no worries of theft.


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