Need some Pioneer B20 + AHE60 advice

[BadassBob]

Im looking to build a pair of speakers for the old lady...shes taking up my stereo time with her music, so Ive decided she needs her own pair lol. Im contemplating the Pioneer B20 mated to a Pioneer AHE60 horn tweeter. First, would this be a decent tweeter to pair with the B20? The price is certainly attractive. Second, whats a good cabinet design? It doesnt need to have tons of bass, as she listens to mostly country and light rock music. Id prefer a floorstander, but wouldnt discount bookshelves. She prefers floorstanders because she wants to put smaller pictures on top of them. Does this FR + tweeter combo look like a winner? Any other tweeters I should be looking at? Whats an ideal frequency to bring the tweeter into the mix? Thanks guys!

[GM]

IME, women have much better HF hearing than men, so tend to prefer billiard table smooth sounding HF from ~2 k with a steep roll-off above ~15 kHz, so a piezo horn would be about the last thing I'd use since it will require a lot of EQ/damping to get right enough to ensure it wouldn't offend any of her friends even if its inherent shrillness didn't bother her.

Wide BW paper or planar diaphragm tweeters are your friends in a WAF situation and cheap too! For extra points, couple the speakers to a tube amp liberated from a 50s-60s era stereo console. Better yet, use its drivers also if available.

Since the B20 would be covering some of this BW, a TL seems the best overall choice for this app, so will be plenty big enough to be a floor-stander.

GM

[planet10]

Note that this Pioneer (Foster) teeter is not a piezo. The relatives i have all have a 1" orange domes.

dave

[GM]

'Haste makes waste' as they say. It looked like a piezo and the first review mentioned 'hiss' like a piezo, so I'm thinking it might as well be one in this app, but being a horn loaded dome, it may be fine with just some mouth edge damping or grill cloth stretched across it. Only one way to know for sure though.

GM

[BadassBob]

Ive been actively searching out an EL84 SE Maggie amp for her as well, but theyre a tad pricey in my area. I feel itll do good in the smallish (16 x 12) space this system will be used in. I'll probably throw together a passive preamp and feed it with an iPod attached to a line-out dock. Back OT, whats a good planar to go with the B20? Any good enclosure designs somebody can show me?

[Godzilla]

http://www.zillaaudio.com/b20-mod.htm

Scroll down to see some fun projects others did with the B20... they seem to easily match up with different types of tweeters (dome, cone, piezo) but i have not seen anyone use a planar tweeter yet.

B20s work in simple sealed boxes all the way up to interesting pipes. I even think they work well on open baffles along with bass help.

Zilla

[GM]

Originally Posted by BadassBob

Back OT, whats a good planar to go with the B20? Any good enclosure designs somebody can show me?

Dunno, the ones I was remembering appear to be long gone now, so Google is your friend, though this $5 ribbon might work with a small inductor in series and use a by-pass cap if it sounds too dull for her.

A wide range of B20 designs have been posted around the net, though I see Nelson Pass's TL has made a bit of a comeback around here.

GM

[BadassBob]

Well...looks like we have to scratch the floorstander idea. She wants something smaller that can be used with her computer, so the speakers should be small. They will need to have some bass, so Im thinking a 4" driver in a 7L Dayton cab from Parts Express. Im going with the premade cabs because my woodworking skills are less than ideal, and shes nitpicky about asthetics. Which drivers work well with that enclosure? I have no problem going to a 3" driver as long as the bass is there. Im hoping I can get 65 to 75Hz on the low end with these cabs, but will step up to the next size if need be. Thanks everybody!

[planet10]

CHR-70 works in that volume. I'd leave it sealed, but it could be ported if you want to bump up the bass.

dave

[BadassBob]

What would be the optimal port size/length to use with the CHR-70? Ive been trying to use WinISD, but it doesnt play well with Linux...keeps crashing on me . Is there an 8 ohm variant? Also...are there any decent higher efficiency drivers that could be used in the enclosure above?