Dixie horn project

[MaximRecoil]

(This is a continuation of some posts I made recently on this thread, and from some posts I made a couple years ago on this thread)

It has been a long time coming, but I've finally gotten around to starting this project. Here is my hardware that is going to be the basis of perhaps the loudest and most accurate "Dixie horn" in history ("most accurate" relative to how it most often sounded on The Dukes of Hazzard):



The speakers are Federal Signal 100 watt police siren speakers (one Dynamax ES100, three Dynamax MS100s). Both models are very common police siren speakers (the MS100 is the older version of the ES100) and very loud. Most actual police cars only use one or two of these speakers for their siren; I'll be using four. These speakers are just horn-loaded compression drivers, functionally no different than any PA speaker, but the nice thing about these is their heavy duty sealed aluminum construction designed for being exposed to the elements behind the grille of a car. They also handle 100 watts each, which is a lot for a compression driver. Compression drivers are far more efficient than normal cone-based drivers like you'd find connected to your car or home stereo, so even feeding them 5 watts can make them quite loud, to say nothing of 100 watts.

The amplifier is an "old school" Rockford Fosgate Power 1000a2 from the 1990s, which I've had for many years. It is a class A/B two-channel amplifier which puts out 275 watts x 2 @ 4 ohms / 550 watts x 2 @ 2 ohms / 1100 watts x 1 @ 4 ohms (continuous RMS). This amplifier can easily supply a full 100 watts to each speaker (400 total watts) and run very cool doing it, because 400 watts is less than half the power it is capable of.

I'll be mounting the 4 speakers in my '69 Charger on top of the cross-piece that runs across the bottom of the car between the radiator and the grille/bumper/valance. This is the cross piece that the bottom of each bumperette is bolted to. I'll make use of those bolts to attach the large bracket which I'll need to fabricate for these speakers. This will more or less aim the speakers through the large opening on top of the valance.

The amplifier will be mounted on the flat top of the floor hump behind the rear seat, which is accessible through the trunk.

I'll be using this sound clip of the Dixie horn ripped directly from the show - https://app.box.com/s/f3w1l523507mt4cjx7uk - so it will sound perfectly accurate relative to the most commonly used sound clip from the show, and it will sound exactly the same every time.

It may be a while before I have this all installed, because I have to fabricate a bracket for the speakers, and I haven't decided how exactly I'm going to do that yet, but when I get it all installed I'll post some more pictures and a video of the horn playing.

Edit: I just tested all four speakers by connecting them to the speaker output of a boombox I have kicking around, and they all work perfectly. The ES100 is new in the box, so I wasn't worried about that one working, but the three MS100s are used, and even though the seller claimed they worked, I wanted to make sure.

[marshallfry01]

Very interesting!! I will definitely be following this thread so I'll know how to have an accurate Dixie horn one day!!   

[mopar0166]

Looking forward to seeing a video of this

[Indygenerallee]

Heres my horn set, I have 2 original Jubilaire horn sets, made a copy of a original pre 1980 Dixie disc, here is the video of it http://youtu.be/k1WQW5vMIpA

[Mike DC]

Heres my horn set, I have 2 original Jubilaire horn sets, made a copy of a original pre 1980 Dixie disc, here is the video of it http://youtu.be/k1WQW5vMIpA

That thing sure sounds great in the video.
What's the difference between those and the newer ones?  Is it the metal horn housings and the disc itself?  


The disc is metal, right?  I've got an old metal one myself.  That would be easy to duplicate but I dunno how you'd fix the plastic horn housings on the newer ones.  

Those horns seem like they were used on lots of vehicle horns back in the day.  I wonder if you could collect 5 metal-ended horns from any other setups and swap the plastic tube lengths to make them into the 5 correct Dixie notes. 

 

[MaximRecoil]

Heres my horn set, I have 2 original Jubilaire horn sets, made a copy of a original pre 1980 Dixie disc, here is the video of it http://youtu.be/k1WQW5vMIpA

Yeah, I've seen that video before (I commented on it 4 months ago). You have the best sounding standard Dixie horn I've ever heard, and I've heard quite a few on YouTube and several in person.

As I asked in my YouTube comment, can you think of a way to record that horn without the sound of the air compressor being mixed in? Is that air compressor oilable? That might quiet it down some. Also, maybe you could wrap it in a blanket or something. Even if you could just significantly reduce the sound of the air compressor, I may be able to filter the rest of it out in an audio editing program. As it is, the air compressor sound is too prominent in that YouTube recording to filter it out without ruining the sound of the horn. I'd like to have a good recording of your horn as an option to use in my setup.

There are a few reasons that I decided to go the amplifier and speaker route rather than the standard Dixie horn route:

1. Versatility. I can play anything I want through speakers, while an air horn setup is limited to basic notes. I can also connect a microphone and have a very loud PA system, or plug in a large woofer and have enough volume to provide music for an outdoor party (I could do it without a large woofer too, but it would be sorely lacking in the bass department).

2. Volume control. I can turn it up or turn it down, and with four 100 watt police siren speakers, I can turn it up a lot.

3. Accuracy. I can play the sound clip from the TV show; you can't get any more accurate sounding than that.

4. Standard Dixie horns that sound as accurate as yours are hard to find anyway. Even other horns on YouTube claimed to be Jubilee/Jubilaire with "disk 1" don't sound as accurate as yours.