A7-450 Off The Site
But only so the new one can get online 
The A7-450 is being changed and upgraded. Here is the what and the why.
What is changing.
1. Cabinet design is going to a slightly larger cabinet dimensionally.
2. Going to 2 6″ ports. (Moving from the 3 4″ ports mainly for production time)
3. Going to a larger custom underhung 18″ subwoofer. Cast basket, rearward cooling. Follows technology from the 13Av.2 but in a different direction. Similar platform to the custom 15″ speaker used in the A7-350.
4. More low frequency output. (@20-30hz)
5. Price will go up.
6. LT/1300 will be designed for full 4ohm output. Power goes up.
7. The new design will only be shipped in the Matte finish.
8. More overall power handling and cooling.
Why is it changing.
1. Demand. We continually get requests
2. Current design allows for D2 and D4 to be swapped. When this happens it gives too much power at 4ohm (If the D2 coil is swapped in) if used incorrectly. We want to remove this from EVER being possible again. There is too much headache associated with it if the change is allowed to happen for everyone involved.
3. Construction. We’re redesigning in large part with the production manager. The current design goes together in a but more production oriented environment a bit quicker.
4. Sub 30Hz output. We’ve improved it.
5. Abuse. It’ll take more of a beating.
6. Lower distortion.
7. More power.
Few other things worth noting.
This new 18″ driver like the 15″ driver used in the A7-350 will be made in Iowa and will not be for sale alone. It is designed specifically for the system and application. It does not share production parts with any other Elemental Designs speakers other than the motor. After the success of the A7-350 and this driver platform we felt the A7-450 platform would benefit as well.
The first units will be shipping in the next few weeks. The new model information will go online hopefully by the end of the week. We’re working on getting the first half dozen that have been ordered out the door before attempting to add more to the production schedule.
Thanks for driving another development at Elemental Designs. This is happening solely due to demand and requests. Very cool development that we are pretty excited about. Rather than throw up computer generations comparing the drivers we’ll follow with some comparison graphs with the old and the new design.
As long as the market keeps telling us what they’d like. We’ll keep on listening 
Evolution is a good thing.
December 30th, 2008 at 6:19 PM
wow. it’s not often that a company will take something really good and make it better all the way around like this. i’m impressed now, i can’t wait to see a final product. now, does this mean that the A7-900 will have the option to run his same custom driver? or should i not be asking that in a public fashion and giving people ideas?
December 30th, 2008 at 11:51 PM
Nick,
With the A7-900 “as is” it wouldn’t benefit from the use of this particular 18″ driver. It needs a incredibly large box. The A7-450 is only marginally smaller than a A7-900.
With that said the upgrade could be made but this particular speaker would be incredibly under powered if we tried to use a single LT/1300 to power a pair.
This brings the A7-450 platform closer in performance to a A7-900 but the 900 still wins. In this particular case using this speaker (even though it’s bigger) in the A7-900 would actually result in lower performance. The speakers in there currently are a lot more efficient.
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Will this driver be rolled out to the A7S-450 as well, or do the same volume requirements get in the way there?
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 PM
Garrett,
Similar situation. You nailed it. For those reading I’ll expand on that a little bit.
The driver used in the A7s-450 is a smaller box performer. In this case the larger driver used in the cabinet replacing the A7-450 is meant for absolutely massive vented enclosures. I do mean big. 10cF is a lot of space
This particular driver is purpose built for massive vented boxes. Using a speaker that works in a small sealed box in a big vented box isn’t really a bad thing. It just won’t have a ton of mechanical power handling. Taking a big vented box speaker and going in reverse to a small sealed box really isn’t going to go very well.
As is the A7s-450 would see less performance from swapping with this big underhung driver now being used in the A7-450’s replacements. Much like the A7-900 it wouldn’t only degrade performance in those applications.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 AM
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