Chris
Router is a De Walt ¼” collet version. I also have an ELU (now De Walt / B&D) 177E. Had the 177 for about 10 years and is great the smaller one is also very good and does the job very well. I personally wouldn’t get anything less well engineered because you never get the same results. I am no carpenter but I get good results with these.
I did what you suggest – built the cabinets and then bought the drivers. I figured if I screwed the boxes up I hadn’t wasted too much cash. However I don’t think you can make too much of a mess of the boxes. At their worst they will still be great speakers just wont look quite so good but you can always have another go at the cabinests if they don't come out ok.
Oncecabinets were done I purchased the drivers and took the measurements from there. As I said I made some test holes and it took me about 4 goes to get the holes right for the bass and tweeter. I think it is better to use the actual drivers.
All in all the build is quite straight forward so don’t be intimidated. I am no expert by a long way but the finish is good enough to convince people I bought the speakers so you should get a good result. Also when I first played them they sounded very bad but you CAN get them to sound fantastic just stick with it. It will come out ok.
Any thing you want to know some one on the forum will know the answer. Get on and build them, you will feel great with the result I’m sure.
Matt
Router is a De Walt ¼” collet version. I also have an ELU (now De Walt / B&D) 177E. Had the 177 for about 10 years and is great the smaller one is also very good and does the job very well. I personally wouldn’t get anything less well engineered because you never get the same results. I am no carpenter but I get good results with these.
I did what you suggest – built the cabinets and then bought the drivers. I figured if I screwed the boxes up I hadn’t wasted too much cash. However I don’t think you can make too much of a mess of the boxes. At their worst they will still be great speakers just wont look quite so good but you can always have another go at the cabinests if they don't come out ok.
Oncecabinets were done I purchased the drivers and took the measurements from there. As I said I made some test holes and it took me about 4 goes to get the holes right for the bass and tweeter. I think it is better to use the actual drivers.
All in all the build is quite straight forward so don’t be intimidated. I am no expert by a long way but the finish is good enough to convince people I bought the speakers so you should get a good result. Also when I first played them they sounded very bad but you CAN get them to sound fantastic just stick with it. It will come out ok.
Any thing you want to know some one on the forum will know the answer. Get on and build them, you will feel great with the result I’m sure.
Matt
Thanks again!
These forums are amazing. I went to a high end Home Theater shop here in Salt Lake City on a lark one day. They have several different rooms with ascending levels of gear in each room. Effective way to present their wares. Even the low end gear they showed me was a fortune, I thought. Audio, Projector and Screen for about $17,000. It did look and sound great, but still...
Dismayed, I left with the idea that I would have to be satisfied with my 50" Mitsubishi rear projection TV.
Stumbled across AVS forum(http://avsforum.com) by chance. I posted a request for someone in Salt Lake to let me come see what they had done in their homes. A very nice guy invited me out to his place. He figured he had spent about $7,000 total, including finishing off the room. I was stunned at what he had accomplished. Huge screen, thundering sound, startling image 8' wide. From there, I just started reading and plannning. A lot of helpful people with creative ideas shared their solutions which helped me to build this room.
The impetus for my desire to build the clones was the putting together of the kit monitors from Parts Express for the front channels. For 139 dollars for the whole thing shipped to my house including the prefabricated cabinets, I figured how wrong could I be? While I don't have the gear from my college days any more, I do know what the good sounds like as opposed to the bad. These little boxes sound amazingly good, especially given that you are working with drivers that retail for 15 dollars.
When I bought my first pair of good speakers - (don't laugh, I loved them!) Klipsch Herseys, I paid about 550 dollars for the pair back in 1976. Never gave much thought to how that all broke out, but looking back, I am guesing half of it was profit to the dealer, maybe half of the rest was profit to Klipsch. Doesn't leave much for the acutal speakers, does it? Building those cheap DIY kits from PE removed the veil.
Knowing now what can be accomplished for very little money, I am very excited to have a go at the Clones. Am very grateful to all of you your advice
These forums are amazing. I went to a high end Home Theater shop here in Salt Lake City on a lark one day. They have several different rooms with ascending levels of gear in each room. Effective way to present their wares. Even the low end gear they showed me was a fortune, I thought. Audio, Projector and Screen for about $17,000. It did look and sound great, but still...
Dismayed, I left with the idea that I would have to be satisfied with my 50" Mitsubishi rear projection TV.
Stumbled across AVS forum(http://avsforum.com) by chance. I posted a request for someone in Salt Lake to let me come see what they had done in their homes. A very nice guy invited me out to his place. He figured he had spent about $7,000 total, including finishing off the room. I was stunned at what he had accomplished. Huge screen, thundering sound, startling image 8' wide. From there, I just started reading and plannning. A lot of helpful people with creative ideas shared their solutions which helped me to build this room.
The impetus for my desire to build the clones was the putting together of the kit monitors from Parts Express for the front channels. For 139 dollars for the whole thing shipped to my house including the prefabricated cabinets, I figured how wrong could I be? While I don't have the gear from my college days any more, I do know what the good sounds like as opposed to the bad. These little boxes sound amazingly good, especially given that you are working with drivers that retail for 15 dollars.
When I bought my first pair of good speakers - (don't laugh, I loved them!) Klipsch Herseys, I paid about 550 dollars for the pair back in 1976. Never gave much thought to how that all broke out, but looking back, I am guesing half of it was profit to the dealer, maybe half of the rest was profit to Klipsch. Doesn't leave much for the acutal speakers, does it? Building those cheap DIY kits from PE removed the veil.
Knowing now what can be accomplished for very little money, I am very excited to have a go at the Clones. Am very grateful to all of you your advice
Matt,
You wrote:
Curious what you mean by that. How true to the deisign on Al's site was your first attempt? Was the poor sound the result of them not being broken in adequately? Would an untrained ear also have thought they sounded bad? What did you do to improve the sound?
Sorry for so many questions!
You wrote:
Curious what you mean by that. How true to the deisign on Al's site was your first attempt? Was the poor sound the result of them not being broken in adequately? Would an untrained ear also have thought they sounded bad? What did you do to improve the sound?
Sorry for so many questions!
Hi Chris,
What I have done at the various stages I have written earlier in the post and I wouldn’t want to bore you with it all again. The reason they sounded bad was because they hadn’t been run in, the cabinets resonated too much and I hadn’t got the xo correct. I started with Troels V6 xo but found that mods as Al suggested worked better for me. With the foam instead of the wadding the sound moved onto a new level and with some component mods and coating the tweeter as suggested by Troels it just got better and better as it broke in. Bass is superb, detail is razor sharp, imaging as good as anything I’ve listened to and the overall ‘feel’ is comfortable to my sensitivities.
However the general comments listed by others about a harshness in the treble is still there but I don’t mind that and I found using Solen capacitors tended to exaggerate some sibilance. Changing the capacitors has helped a lot and I quite like the edginess as it seems to compensate for my aging ears!
There are things to try such as a different tweeter which I may do one day but all in all the sound is great. You may prefer the boxes stuffed with wadding or different values in the XO components, that is why I say stick with it, even if it doesn’t sound great at first.
I don’t know if the sound was ‘good’ first off, I don’t think it was. It was below that of my Response 1SCs but now I don’t listen to them any more and I don’t miss them.
I am thinking of using the 1SC in a surround sound system fronted by the clones or perhaps using the drivers from both to make a three way system like the future.
Matt
What I have done at the various stages I have written earlier in the post and I wouldn’t want to bore you with it all again. The reason they sounded bad was because they hadn’t been run in, the cabinets resonated too much and I hadn’t got the xo correct. I started with Troels V6 xo but found that mods as Al suggested worked better for me. With the foam instead of the wadding the sound moved onto a new level and with some component mods and coating the tweeter as suggested by Troels it just got better and better as it broke in. Bass is superb, detail is razor sharp, imaging as good as anything I’ve listened to and the overall ‘feel’ is comfortable to my sensitivities.
However the general comments listed by others about a harshness in the treble is still there but I don’t mind that and I found using Solen capacitors tended to exaggerate some sibilance. Changing the capacitors has helped a lot and I quite like the edginess as it seems to compensate for my aging ears!
There are things to try such as a different tweeter which I may do one day but all in all the sound is great. You may prefer the boxes stuffed with wadding or different values in the XO components, that is why I say stick with it, even if it doesn’t sound great at first.
I don’t know if the sound was ‘good’ first off, I don’t think it was. It was below that of my Response 1SCs but now I don’t listen to them any more and I don’t miss them.
I am thinking of using the 1SC in a surround sound system fronted by the clones or perhaps using the drivers from both to make a three way system like the future.
Matt
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Joined 2003
tktran said:
Thanks! Getting the finish remotely close to what I wanted took some effort. The veneer is quartersawn white oak that I purchased from Constantines' Wood Center. (www.constantines.com) The finish took several steps. Basically:
1) water based dye stain
2) shellac to seal the smallest pores
3) oil based pigment stain to fill the big pores
4) shellac
For more detail: First, water dye stain in cherry red. Then a coat of Zissner's Bullseye amber shellac thinned to a 1 lb cut. Then burnt sienna oil stain wiped on and then off immediately (just to fill the wood pores with a dark color). I made this stain from 1 part Ronan Japan Color, 2 parts boiled linseed oil and 8 parts mineral spirits. Then another couple of coats of full strength (3 lb) shellac.
I was really aiming for a mission style look, but using the cherry color was a little too red... I probably should have watered the dye stain down to 1/4 strength and used orange shellac.
As for the sound, well... Its been well described by others on line.... Though, I think I am having some sort of slight dip between 50 and 100Hz... (though I haven't measured it... Im guessing at the frequencies) I think I have seen others online that had the same results... I guess it is either room suckout or I and some others have made the same mistake in our building of the speakers... It might be the room itself... I have them in a pretty huge room.
I had built the original chinese design crossover as well, and actually got to liking the extra bump in the 2k region. In the end, I wound up using the basic Jacq+Troel crossover.
I wish more high end speakers were as well documented online... Im tempted to borrow some high end speakers for "home audition" from a stereo shop and take them apart, photographing and documenting for the benefit of all DIYers.. >
Matt said:I wish more high end speakers were as well documented online... Im tempted to borrow some high end speakers for "home audition" from a stereo shop and take them apart, photographing and documenting for the benefit of all DIYers.. >
Now That is nat a bad idea Gary!
Well... Hmmm... Actually, it might be easier and safer to talk a current owner of the speakers to take apart and document them...
If I were choseing to make a new clone, I think the speaker to clone should probably be a floor stander, with a narrow face to be more wife friendly, ranked high in the stereophile recommended lists (for the ego), cost a lot of money when purchased retail while costing much less money when built from parts (for the cheapskates), have commonly available drivers, and be relatively easy to build (read: squarish). These attributes would make it popular enough to have plenty of online dicussion about the design, as well as design variations by expert diy-ers. (like the Proac Clones).
As for the shape and stereophile requirements, I think these manufacturers seem to fit the description:
- Vienna Accoustics (seas, scanspeak, Eton)
- Joseph Audio (seas mostly)
- Totem (ATI and seas)
- Triangle
- Maybe vanderstein or definitive (since you can leave the box mostly unfinished because you covering the thing in grill cloth.)
- Opera (Any speaker named the Super Pavarotti gains points with me) Maybe you can call the clones the Super Yanni's.
Im not sure if all of them have off-the-shelf drivers, but I think most of them do...
dshortt9 said:
The watt puppy vers. 7 is an excellent choice.
Focal tweeter, a Scanspeak 7" mid, and two Scanspeak 8" woofers (man, those scanspeak 7 inchers are popular in the best high-end speakers, arent they?)
The only problem is that the cabinet work might be too much for most to handle. A halfway experienced woodworker could probably pull it off, but it would wear out most DIYers... The cabinet in the real watt puppy is pretty heavy duty stuff, so its doubtful that a clone would get the exact same sound... but it might be close enough...
And 93db would be almost enough for a low powered SET amp.
You are probably right about the woodwork. This might work out if some of us could make a group purchase of "flats" from a small custom woodworking shop. Having no woodworking skills or tools myself I purchased the cabinets for my 2.5 clones and am more than happy with the results for 1/5 the price.
My second choice would be to clone the ProAc 3.8's. Awesome speakers and less of a woodworking challenge.
All in all it will be hard to improve on the 2.5's
My second choice would be to clone the ProAc 3.8's. Awesome speakers and less of a woodworking challenge.
All in all it will be hard to improve on the 2.5's
Dshortt9 is right - in my book the 3.8 a great idea just a bigger 2.5 in DIY terms. And I think it is hard to improve the 2.5s without going bigger. Totem sounded very good at the last show I went to. Different than the Proacs but equaly as good. The Willsons may be dificul to build but that is part of the challenge and how much better you feel for achieving the end result.
There are some plans out there for the watts but the build sequence is not very clear - some one who can build them could pass on their working method and we can all learn from the experience. I think it is a great Idea. I'm just a beginner without much knowledge to pass on but this is something we could all benefit from. Any one out there got the experience?
There are some plans out there for the watts but the build sequence is not very clear - some one who can build them could pass on their working method and we can all learn from the experience. I think it is a great Idea. I'm just a beginner without much knowledge to pass on but this is something we could all benefit from. Any one out there got the experience?
Disabled Account
Joined 2003
After building and living with the clones for about 6 months for me it's time to move on. Next on my list is-
a) a teeny high quality mini-monitor. with lovely mids and treble, but unlike other mini-monitors, some bass so subwoofers aren't a necessity when listening to music
. eg. Tony Gee's HATT MkIII or Troels Gravesen's W11/XT.
You could build 5 and add a good quality subwoofer to make a HT setup with very good SAF.
b) modest sized 3 ways with a slim front baffle (10" on the front need not apply). These seems to be lacking in DIY circles.
A Response 3.8 would certainly be interesting but a 3 way approach would perhaps give more articulate and truly deeper bass, as we all better vocals/midrange.
a) a teeny high quality mini-monitor. with lovely mids and treble, but unlike other mini-monitors, some bass so subwoofers aren't a necessity when listening to music
. eg. Tony Gee's HATT MkIII or Troels Gravesen's W11/XT.
You could build 5 and add a good quality subwoofer to make a HT setup with very good SAF.
b) modest sized 3 ways with a slim front baffle (10" on the front need not apply). These seems to be lacking in DIY circles.
A Response 3.8 would certainly be interesting but a 3 way approach would perhaps give more articulate and truly deeper bass, as we all better vocals/midrange.
Disabled Account
Joined 2003
I'm know I should never read hifi magazien reviews again, but I just can't help it. I mean, just got to LOVE these kind of reviews. English isn't my first language but Its so easy to read and flows like poetry. But doesn't really say much about the sound does it?
And 5 stars for everything. And value? A 2 way floorstander costing 3 thousand british pounds is excellent value apparently.
I think anyone thinking of starting a new 2.5 clone project should keep an eye on Troel's Sliced Paper work-in-progress. Revelator 7" ScanSpeak with tried and trusted 9500/9700 tweeters in a 33 litre reflex cabinet, virtually the same dimensions/build difficulty as the clone cabs...
Some of the crossover gurus over at Madisound have used the SS 8531G and, frankly, it's an amazing machine.
Besides, IMHO it's the R2.5 port tuning that makes placement a slight issue. Not merely due to rear facing direction.
And 5 stars for everything. And value? A 2 way floorstander costing 3 thousand british pounds is excellent value apparently.
I think anyone thinking of starting a new 2.5 clone project should keep an eye on Troel's Sliced Paper work-in-progress. Revelator 7" ScanSpeak with tried and trusted 9500/9700 tweeters in a 33 litre reflex cabinet, virtually the same dimensions/build difficulty as the clone cabs...
Some of the crossover gurus over at Madisound have used the SS 8531G and, frankly, it's an amazing machine.
Besides, IMHO it's the R2.5 port tuning that makes placement a slight issue. Not merely due to rear facing direction.
Well, I got my 2.5 clone finished a few weeks ago. Cosmetic results were stunning. I had a cabinet maker build the boxes for me, and I veneered them with Yew veneer. The finish is absolutely stunning. But...
The sound was a disappointment. The bass - astonishing. Lateral imaging - wide and precise. Depth imaging - wonderful. Highs - sweet as honey. The problem was the sibilance that drove me mad. I found myself particularly sensitive to it and it drove me mad; as another poster put it, it resulted in a love-hate relationship with these speakers.
I tried different equipment, but that had no effect. My design, incidentally, was with the original 8513 tweeter and the Jacq modded crossover from Al.M's site. I remembered the mention of Troels' notch filter, and when I went back to Al's site, it was removed and replaced with a single resistor. I found the original notch filter in Troels' paper, and experimented with that and the single resistor.
It would seem that the single resistor has solved the problem. I no longer find myself wanting to turn the 2.5's off. The top end is still definitely forward and present, but not grating anymore. Now I expect great things as these units break in.
In the future I may try the various iterations of Troels' crossovers, but for now I think I am going to stick as close to the original as possible.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussions...the information on this site and the other aforementioned sites is invaluble to the builder of these speakers.
The sound was a disappointment. The bass - astonishing. Lateral imaging - wide and precise. Depth imaging - wonderful. Highs - sweet as honey. The problem was the sibilance that drove me mad. I found myself particularly sensitive to it and it drove me mad; as another poster put it, it resulted in a love-hate relationship with these speakers.
I tried different equipment, but that had no effect. My design, incidentally, was with the original 8513 tweeter and the Jacq modded crossover from Al.M's site. I remembered the mention of Troels' notch filter, and when I went back to Al's site, it was removed and replaced with a single resistor. I found the original notch filter in Troels' paper, and experimented with that and the single resistor.
It would seem that the single resistor has solved the problem. I no longer find myself wanting to turn the 2.5's off. The top end is still definitely forward and present, but not grating anymore. Now I expect great things as these units break in.
In the future I may try the various iterations of Troels' crossovers, but for now I think I am going to stick as close to the original as possible.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussions...the information on this site and the other aforementioned sites is invaluble to the builder of these speakers.
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