Ashly SC-70
A mono three-way electronic crossover that spent the late '70s and early '80s doing the unglamorous work that makes a PA system sound like a system instead of a pile of drivers fighting each other.
Overview
The SC-70 is the mono three-way member of Ashly's late-'70s signal-processing lineup. The company's advertising called it the "Ashly Package," with the SC-70 listed at $249 alongside siblings like the SC-22 at $290 and SC-77 at $429 (Modern Recording, February 1980, p.71). The SC-70 was never sold as a standalone hero component. Ashly's own advertising positioned the whole range as building blocks, assembled one part at a time and combined to suit the user's needs, and the SC-70 sat in the middle of that catalog as the mono three-way crossover. The stereo two-way SC-22 and stereo three-way SC-77 handled the stereo crossover jobs. The mono four-way SC-80 went further up the split ladder. If a user needed to divide a mono signal into three bands, the SC-70 was the box.
The price is well documented because it appeared in ad after ad. Ashly's advertising listed the SC-70 at $249 (Modern Recording, February 1980, p.71; Recording Engineer, August 1979, p.11; Modern Recording, July 1979, p.55). For a pro-audio crossover, that's a workingman's number. It points at the buyers Ashly was after: the club, the small studio, the band with a rack and a budget.
The SC-70 divides one input into three frequency bands so each can be fed to the appropriate amplifier and driver - lows to the subs, mids to the mid boxes, highs to the horns. The 1982 Studio Sound crossover roundup (June 1982) grouped it with its siblings as part of a range of electronic crossovers "all offering similar facilities but with different formats," and listed the SC-70 specifically as the mono three-way. That's the clearest surviving description of its job. The trade press treated it plainly, as the mono three-way in a coherent family.
The SC-70 turns up in real rigs in the period press. A Canadian Musician equipment profile of player Bob Federer lists a pair of SC-70 crossovers in his live sound setup, running alongside Traynor amps, Sound Crew cabinets, and a Roland Space Echo. Two of them in one rig makes sense for a mono three-way design - one per side of a stereo PA.
The documentary record on the SC-70 is thin on the inside. There's no surviving spec sheet in the Archive's collection giving crossover frequencies, slopes, or filter topology, and nothing here establishes production years, dimensions, or weight. What's solid is the identity - mono three-way electronic crossover, part of the Ashly Package, $249 list - and the corroboration that people put them to work in both live and studio contexts. That's enough to know what the box is. It's not enough to say anything about how steep its filters are or how low it goes.
For anyone assembling a period-correct Ashly rack, the SC-70 is the piece that completes a mono three-way system. Its siblings - the SC-22, SC-77, SC-80, SC-63, SC-50, SC-55, SC-66/A, SC-40, and SC-44 - are the ones to hunt alongside it. Buy on condition and completeness rather than on spec sheets, because the spec sheets largely aren't there anymore. The $249 list price is the anchor.
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