I talked with an old Clair hand and then put together this 'first shot' -- much of which y'all have mentioned in your comments:
1. I will elevate the cabinets and position the casters 90 degrees from current, and rotate each cabinet -- one clockwise and one counterclockwise.
*If your elevating the cabinets, rotate them 180 degrees and maintain vertical alignment. No need to rotate 2405s.
You will have a "tweeter inside or outside" option that will depend on your listening position.
2. After rotating the slot drivers 90 degrees, I will have 2 mirror-image cabinets, with the woofers and mids horizontal, and slots upper right and left.
* Not a big fan of the horizontal alignment.
3. I will plug into the rear of the cabinets with EP8-11 inline female connectors and run 3 pairs to the amps.
*Check.
4. Pins 1 and 2 should be minus and plus, respectively, for the woofers, which are in parallel as a 4 ohm load. I will use the subwoofer R/L outputs of my preamp, with a 250 cycle crossover.
*Did Clair confirm the pin out? I seem to recall the reasoning behind that arrangement was due to the JBL polarity convention which would put the drivers in
positive absolute polarity.
5. Pins 3 and 4 are the same as above, but in a series/parallel configuration, for an 8 ohm load for the 4 mids.
* Measure twice, wire once
6. Pins 5 and 6 are a mysterious combination of the slots and horns, but, according to the 'Dude' ;?) they should look like 8 ohms above a 1600 cycle crossover.
*Same convention. 2" compression drivers in parallel with slots via passive filters.
7. My preamp, or the dbx 481, will perform the crossover function for the mid and high amps.
*What about the woofers?
8. I will use a CD player, the preamp, and 3 spare 250 watt/ch amps sitting on top of the huge cabinets. Turn the power on and listen. Go from there.
*Placing
any electronics on loudspeakers is never recommended.
Using pink noise as an initial source, start with the woofers and work your way up using low levels to begin with.
What do you think? A good first try? I would check the polarities of the pairs, but I don't know how to do that. I figure the 'scheme' I was given is dependable, and necessarily constant over the life of the several S4 iterations.
*What kind of passive filters have you found in there? Checking polarities on cone drivers is easy enough with a battery but more complicated with compression drivers and ring radiators.
Thanks to all for your comments!
Greg