Pensil 12 comes home

[markaudio]

Hi Guys,
I'm in New Zealand for most of January.

Today I visited Peter Richardson in Morinsville. Peter runs a custom timber and furniture company which is experimenting with Alpair 7 and Alpair 10 drivers into custom furniture. His work is beautiful and highly skilled. Anyone in NZ who's looking to have custom speaker cabs made (or furniture), His commercial site has the contact detials: Roll-it Home Page

Of equal significant interest is our visit to the home of Graham and Joy in Cambridge, in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Some of you know Graham's work from his web site: Graham's hifi page

Around 30 months back, Graham and Joy planned a move from Hong Kong to a large house in Cambridge. The house they bought had a large living space with a high ceiling, equivalent to a small church hall, posing a problem for his ported B&W 802's. So Graham asked me for advice, I in turn talked to member Scottmoose to see what could be done to serve audio needs for the space. Graham had made plans of the room which were sent to Scott for study; As a result, the Pensil 12 box design was conceived.

So finally, after all this time, we got to hear these Pensils in the very space for which they were originally designed. After a little adjustment of the stuffing, we entered a world of sublime music. The Pensils came "alive", closest thing I've heard to a decent concert in a long time. No screaming tweets, no over-blown mids, no booming woofs, no bumper-thumper subs, just spot-on sound reproduction of the type that is very close to "high-fidelity" (reproduction being close to the original source). We sat some 6 metres away from the speakers and recorded average outputs in the low 80db's peaking into low 90's without a hint of audible distortion on Jazz, contemporary (some heavy bass) and a variety of classical music. The Alpair 12's cone travel remained under excellent control, peak bass production requiring only around 2-mm (1 way), generously loud enough for sane listeners.

Graham has asked me to congratulate Scott for this design. These particular Pensil 12's are effectively the "genesis" models, from which other 12's and the smaller Pensils have been born. Interesting how one thing leads to another.

Cheers
Mark.

[planet10]

BIG room!!!

dave

[skeeter99]

Those speakers are the reason I made my SuperPensil's. Thanks for sharing the story!!

Scott

[markaudio]

Hi Guys,
Ummmmmmmph........Interesting thought. The Pensil 12 family is a potentially a low cost simple way to fill a large space with nice fidelity sound.

Cheers
Mark.

[skeeter99]

Originally Posted by markaudio

Hi Guys,
Ummmmmmmph........Interesting thought. The Pensil 12 family is a potentially a low cost simple way to fill a large space with nice fidelity sound.

Cheers
Mark.

I don't think it's a potential, it's a real option! I've got a pretty big space and I don't have to turn it up much to fill the whole space with amazing sound. All finished now I get to enjoy my Supers every day. MUCH thanks to you and Scott and Dave for these.

Scott

[markaudio]

Originally Posted by skeeter99

I don't think it's a potential, it's a real option! I've got a pretty big space and I don't have to turn it up much to fill the whole space with amazing sound. All finished now I get to enjoy my Supers every day. MUCH thanks to you and Scott and Dave for these.

Scott

Hi Scott,
Glad your Super-12's are doing well. Did you have chance to post any pics of your room on previous threads/posts? If possible, could you post some on this thread with your room dimensions? I'd like to approximate Pensils to room volumes if practical. Would be interesting so see what various Pensil projects are producing relative to room volumes.

Cheers
Mark.

[zman01]

Mark,

I have always suspected that my Super Pensil 12s would do super in a big room with a high ceiling. They've sounded too big for my 17 sqm and 24 sqm rooms (2.75 m wall height); quite overpowering at times with the "largeness" of music.

Good to know that the speakers are woking out so well for Graham.

-Zia

[markaudio]

Originally Posted by zman01

Mark,
I have always suspected that my Super Pensil 12s would do super in a big room with a high ceiling. They've sounded too big for my 17 sqm and 24 sqm rooms (2.75 m wall height); quite overpowering at times with the "largeness" of music.

Good to know that the speakers are woking out so well for Graham.

-Zia

Hi Zia,
Graham initially used these 12's in his Hong Kong flat (30 Sq Mtrs) prior to shipping to NZ. They do sound much better in their bigger Cambridge room setting.

Thx
Mark.

[skeeter99]

Originally Posted by markaudio

Hi Scott,
Glad your Super-12's are doing well. Did you have chance to post any pics of your room on previous threads/posts? If possible, could you post some on this thread with your room dimensions? I'd like to approximate Pensils to room volumes if practical. Would be interesting so see what various Pensil projects are producing relative to room volumes.

Cheers
Mark.

Mark,

I have a thread here about my build: Skeeter's SuperPensil12 Build

I don't have full room dims listed there but I think it's about 14' deep by 40' wide with 10' ceilings open to the lower floor and upper floor. I've only once played them to distortion and it was very brief. I've got an Onkyo TX-SR805 powering them and it does great. I'm not pushing them at all to get volume that fills the whole space.

Scott

[CabinetMakerRyan]

That is pretty sweet!