Whatever happened to Eminence fdm speakers?

[Auditory Driving]

I had the chance to try one of those at a good friend's place and liked both the sound and the attenuation mechanism idea.

I thought those would be super popular still today - I had no idea that they had been discontinued! Why was this idea abandoned?

 

[teemuk]

Price? Abundance of other attenuator types and units?

 

[Auditory Driving]

Price? Abundance of other attenuator types and units?

I m not aware of their price at the time they were being produced, but I believe they could still be (or become) competitive in today's market.

I also think that on practicality grounds alone, they are an easier to use solution since they don't t rely on external devices.

Maybe the attenuation to sound quality trade-off suffered? I think the max attenuation possible was around 9db and maybe the sound at that point was not good enough? Or better results were possible with standard (reactive or not) attenuators?

I d really like to see this idea get a second chance

 

[LaXu]

Lack of marketing from Eminence and the resulting lack of sales is the most likely reason to discontinue it. It was offered only on two models and was custom orderable on others with the same voice coil size.

The feature works great. It does change the tone as the more you attenuate the more the low end is increased and high end smoothed out a bit but you can easily combat those with amp EQ. Like any volume reduction method, it's not perfect.

9 dB is not going to get most amps into bedroom volume or anything but it's more than enough for taking the edge of an amp that is hard to otherwise drive into clipping or gets really loud early due to bad volume controls.

I have the Eminence Maverick in a Bogner 1x12 and it sounds very good with all my amps. I'd say it pairs best with brighter amps.

If I had any say in the matter, the feature would come in every Eminence speaker you can get.

 

[Auditory Driving]

Thanks @LaXu ! Great info

 

[zenas]

Better marketing would've helped sell them to the people that would've more likely found them useful. Unfortunately that would've been an education campaign, because most guitar players have no idea what speaker sensitivity, decibel numbers or amp wattage, even means.
A look at a decibel level chart will tell you, you need to be at 80 or less db to play at home. A speaker that only goes down to 91db @ 1 watt @ 1 meter isn't gonna do that, especially if you want to crank the amp!
They worked for gigging players and for guys just wanting to turn an amp up a bit more. Really liked the Maverick in my Deluxe Reverb, that amp was always too loud or not loud enough. Being able to adjust the speaker really helped that amp.
They were only about $125 the last few years, not what I'd call expensive. When they came out they cost a lot more than that, I don't remember how much.
Too bad they're not going to make them anymore. But I think the market is bigger for home players looking for far more volume reduction than they even understand.

 

[244300]

I owned both the Maverick and the Reignmaker. The FDM aspect worked well enough. The speakers didn't sound great to me but that may well have been because I did not give them a thorough work out and comparison with other speakers. I just loaded them up and turned the magnet.

Now I did get a PS-2 along the way which I found far superior for volume control and I could use the speakers I was accustom to using. So I sold my FDMs, two Air Brakes and three RockCrushers. No regrets.

 

[H. Mac]

Poor marketing. Both the Reignmaker and Maverick are good speakers and the FDM technology made them even better. But when they were introduced, the spec sheets did not address the variable sensitivity, and there was no mention of the fact that these speakers would have pretty likeable even without the FDM technology.

 

[Hefalump]

I had one, forget which, it was cool, actually sounded greenbackish at higher attenuation levels.

Sold it for some stupid reason, like I often do.

 

[Surgeon]

I liked the reignmaker a lot. Good speaker and worked as intended.

 

[JPH118]

I loved the Maverick and was bummed to find out it was discontinued... yes it lost a bit of treble as attenuation was increased, just like any resistive attenuator I’ve ever tried. It was no different than the treble variance from say a WGS G12C (bright) to an Emi GA-SC64 (smoother), and literally 2-3 notches difference on a tweed or brown tone control. Not an issue at all to me.

Ultimately, they just never marketed this series properly.