OHM Acoustics "Walsh F" Speaker remakes

[SpeakerTom]

I OWNED OHM F AND LATER WALSH 5 + MANY OTHER OHM SPEAKERS.. bOTH VERY GOOD IF YOU HAVE GOOD AMPLIFICATION.. WISH I KEPT THE F'S.. DIDN'T HAVE A GREAT AMP OR ROOM AT THE TIME SO LET THEM GO BUT A FRIEND DID AND THEY WERE VERY NICE IN HIS SYSTEM. OHM SPEAKERS AND I HAVE HAD MANY OVER THE YEARS INTEGRATE VERY WELL INTO ALMOST ANY ROOM.. VERY IMPORTANT.. CURRENT WALSH PRODUCT IS HIGH ON MY WISH LIST

[Sk8Ter]

Originally Posted by BudP

Utopix,

Ummm.... acrylic floor wax.... industrial strength. I buy mine from Micro Scale Products, called Micro Gloss. The real deal is that it needs to exhibit transverse wave energy transfer at speeds faster than that of sound through air. Most varnishes and lacquers will not do this and you can clearly hear the difference, but I have never found a way to measure it.

The paint I use to letter the blocks onto a driver surface is made by Poly Scale corp. Flat Finish #404106. Both of these materials will be in any decent hobby shop that sells plastic models and some HO scale train items.

Mamboni,

I am delighted to see the interest you have stirred up. Have you thought about using your process on more conventional speakers? Still placed on the non free air emitting surface, I suspect that a considerable improvement in midrange driver clarity might result. We may be stuck with just the EnABL process for dome, cone and linnaeum style tweeters... though I have seen the odd Walsh based tweeter show up. Not a drawback. Certainly a conventional speaker setup, with your pattern on the back of woofer and cone midrange, my pattern on the front to lightly correct whats left over, and an EnABLE'd tweeter, will rival the Ohms for clarity, depth of field and sheer musical beauty. And that is saying something!

While it has taken some number of years to accomplish I have a conventional system that will easily outperform my original treated Ohm F's in all of the categories you would care to list, so I am sure your idea can be so applied and between us we may just get as close to perfection as humans in the real world can accomplish.

Bud

I am still very intrigued to try both processes together, I do sense a possibility of synergy.

Hey bud is this the correct coating?
Micro Coat Gloss: Microscale Decals

I figured if someone like myself missed it in a posting this will bring them up to date...

Btw if you would be so kind i would love to enable my ohm F speaker cones.....PDF the patterns please any other advice for the ol Walsh drivers?

Lawrence

[planet10]

Yes, that is the stuff.

dave

[Sk8Ter]

Hello Dave.... very long time no talk Sir.....I see your still messing about...having fun!?

Last time we talked (about 10 years ago) you were playing with Heil tweeter drivers in a 2 way monitor


Lawrence

[planet10]

That box had the heils sold and then Marks & Daniels tweeters added. Mostly doing FR & FAST these days.

dave

[jamikl]

How does one see all the photos and diagrams on this old thread now? Nothing is coming up.
jamikl

[berm]

Now that the driver used for this clone has been discontinued, any thoughts on what driver, if any, would make a good alternate?

Pioneer W25GR31-51F 10" Butyl Surround Woofer 290-088

It makes me a bit crazy that Pioneer has been discontinuing some of their drivers that have been so popular with the DIY community. I understand the economics, but I will miss these drivers, such as this one & the Pioneer BU20F20-51F.

I have followed this thread since its inception, and finally have come near the time (about 3 more months, actually) when I could try building this Walsh clone. Now the best candidate for a driver is gone. Arrggh.

I can search for similar parameters, but part of the magic I think is that the cone of this driver is steeper than many of its counterparts.

[glorocks]

I'm a little late in this thread, and am wondering if it still active. I'm also not able to view any of the photos.
I've read about 1/2 way into this, and I've noticed that up to that point, nobody had mentioned attempting to use a Walsh type tweeter, ala Infinity rather than a dome.
I have some experience with these tweeters, as I helped the guy who came up with the idea build some of the first prototypes that went to Infinity. Probably built 50 or so on my kitchen table, and I can assure you they aren't that difficult to build

[BudP]

Would you consider building another tweeter and taking pictures and providing a description for the rest of us? I remember being at Henry Radio when Arnie and company brought the towers in with the Walsh tweeters in the top sector. The competition was a system with piezo electric tweeters in a row around the top of the box and a single 12 inch woofer. The Infinity speakers crushed them.

Bud

[glorocks]

Bud-
I am going to build a two way Walsh similar to a prototype we built back in '72 or '73. It may take a while, as I have recently moved and have not yet unpacked everything. I am happy to discuss what went into the original tweeter and post photos of my build.
I was contributing to a thread about the Walsh tweeter in Audio Karma, but the interest there was rebuilding their old Infinity's. I am more interested in pursuing a speaker based entirely on the Walsh principal, up to, hopefully a full range.
The Walsh tweeter was originally the idea of a fellow named Bill Seneca, who was Las Vegas' resident guerilla audiophile guru. He was and still is on the cutting edge, but his ideas don't sit well with the mainstream.
The tweeter was originally built and sold as an add-on- it was packaged in a cylindrical cage that was wrapped with foam, and used a shunt 6 dB crossover. It was patched in like today's passive sub-woofers.
The original crossover point was around 2 Khz, and it used a Seas 1.5" dome tweeter that was found in the old Dynaco 2-way. That speaker crossed at 1.5 Khz, if I remember correctly. The dome was selected because of it's low Fc and it's electrical robustness. It could be disassembled and reassembled easily, and the mylar dome could easily removed from the voice coil former with an Exacto knife (if you were careful).
Unfortunately, it was expensive at $10-15 each at a time when the average cost of a tweeter found in Infinity's product cost 2 bucks. More on this later.
The original cone material was made of styrene which we got from stationary stores in the form of document protectors. It worked, and was open, but sounded like hell- very shrill and brittle.
Seneca tried dampening the cones with all manner of goos with some success, but suddenly came up with the idea of laminating aluminum foil to the styrene. There may have been some discussions with Marty Gersten at Ohm about this. Marty was very willing to discuss his baby and would sometimes mention something in passing that spoke volumes.
The first attempts used silicone heat sink compound, both clear and white, and there was an order of magnitude of sonic improvement.
Unfortunately, the heat sink grease was difficult to work with- very messy and it got everywhere, including the seam where the cone was glued into it's shape.
Ultimately 3M 33 spray adhesive was settled upon to both laminate the foil to the plastic and hold the seam together as well.
When we actually got to see an Ohm F the first thing we noticed were the striations in the metal parts of the cones and the slits in the paper parts. Seneca immediately built a tweeter with that diamond pleated foil you could get at the supermarket back then, and the improvement was very noticeable.
Until this point, Seneca was selling these things as add ons, and he took a pair down to Chatsworth for Arnie to listen to. Arnie cut a deal with Seneca and got a license from Marty at Ohm. I don't think anybody got paid.
I'll pick this up later- I gotta run.