Finally - some speakers

[Variac]

OK, My wife has foolishly left town again for two weeks.
After getting home from dropping her at the airport I got right to work! I am upgrading my Basszillas to Platinum edition spec.

Since Dick Olsher used the Fostex 208EZ and Aurum Cantus 2si
I was in luck, as I had planned on using them anyway and had them on hand..... Actually I lobbied him pretty hard to go with these

Well as we all know, the trick is the crossovers and the new edition has LOTs of crossovers-very different than the minimalist approach. Well, I'm still wiring the crossovers, but here are some pics of the new top baffle with the drivers in place. I have some ideas to make things a lot more compact, but first I am making it exacrtly top Dick's specs- then I have something to compare my mods to.

[Variac]

Ok, I know... It's huge- about 5' tall and none too graceful.
This will push the known limits of SAF!!-At least in my house.

Boy, it sure seems to have everything I like-gotta get it wired!!

[jonz]

They look beautiful...just one thing..are those casters you have installed on them?Do they roll around by themselves..when they hit those low notes..?

[Variac]

Well, those casters aren't politically correct, but I am forced to keep them against the wall when not in use. And to sound perfect the open baffle needs to be 3-5' from the rear wall.

So I just roll 'em out..... They must weigh at least 80 lbs so I think they don't move much!! I wish I could get rid of the casters though because in order to have my ears align with the tweeters
I have to sit up in the chair with good posture -not that relaxing. Thanks for the good comments. I swore that I would follow the directions on veneering that I got here - then I figured
that the baffles are a lot smaller than the boxes and I could use a brush instead of the specified foam roller to spread the contact cement. Well, what a disaster of glue clumps and boogers!!

Sooo if you look close in person, they are a bit lumpy. The lesson is - follow the directions.

[Variac]

Hello to all that have followed this thread!

I am now listening to my Basszilla Platinum Editions and I wanted to give a quick review.

As we have discussed briefly, the Basszilla was originally a
bass box with a low pass xover and a small open baffle with a Fostex 208 (or Lowther!) with no crossover.

This new edition is a full 3-way with LP filter on the bass,
LP and HP on the Fostex F208eZ, and a HP on the Aurum Cantus
ribbon tweeter.

Dick Olsher, the designer says that not having the Fostex try to reproduce low notes makes it clearer and less strained sounding.

I remember Lynn Olsen tried a single cap crossover on his Ariels
and came to the same conclusion about the tweeter he uses sounding harsher with such a low sloping crossover.

So , I'm not saying that a very simple crossover , or no crossover and letting drivers roll off naturally, doesn't work, I'm just saying that some knowledgable people say be careful, it's often just wishful thinking that a more complicated crossover isn't required.

OK, moving on,

First a confession- My version is not an perfect clone of a Basszilla Platinum. Instead of the now specified Eminence Magnum HO 15" bass driver , I'm using JBL 150H drivers which I got new surplus. They were used on over $4000 apiece speakers I believe, so the quality is good- but they may have different response than the Eminences.

Also, my bass box is a bit bigger than Dick specifies, and I calculated my own tuning and tube port size. Dick specs a slot the width of the box.

The Fostex and AC are exactly what Dick specs, as are the crossovers for them.

Finally, the JBL is considerably less efficient than the Fostex/AC combo so I have had to use an adjustable L-pad to cut the mid/tweet. I will eventually bi-amp the speakers, so I haven't worried about this, BUT some will throw up their hands when they hear how I am choking the other drivers this way.
I'm sure that they will only improve when they get their own amp, and I put the JBL's on their own...

So these aren't flashy sounding speakers, instead they are very smooth in response. The high end is very resolving but not bright in the least.

I expected the ribbon tweeter might sound kind of tizzy and lightweight and maybe a bit of unatural silbilence on voices.

Instead, here is the first revelation: That aurum Cantus 2si tweeter is VERY GOOD; sweet and relaxed, not at all harsh-yet all the detail seems to be there. In this case it is crossed over higher than most tweeters, but not as high as most super tweeters typically used with full range drivers. The manufacturer gives some good advice on how to cross it over.

The Fostex sound very natural. Quite solid, imaging is good, but I am now discovering how many of my recordings are poorly recorded. Tone seems very accurate and good.

All and all I am very pleased. At the moment I am driving them with the gainclone I built my son, but the plan is to use a Pass SOX on the mid and tweeter, and a gainclone or my Hafler 220 on the bass. The Hafler 220 was what I was planning to use for the bass, with 110 watts/ch, but I am beginning to believe that the gainclone on the bass would sound better.

The bass driver seems to be a winner- it really makes drums as well as stand up bass sound real and tuneful Of course that knowledge doesn't help anyone because they can't get the driver, BUT it is generally true for any quality 15" pro type driver....


sooo.... This speaker showed me what people mean when they critisize a system for having a "High Fi" sound- This speaker doesn't call atention to itself- it just tries to get the music right.

I am going to stick with this speaker system, and improve it with a bi-amped setup and experiment with slight mods to the crossovers. It is definately a "Keeper"

[Variac]

So, an update....
After a few days I realized that to say that these had a sound similar to electrostatics was completely wrong.. the mid bass was too heavy. Then later I realized EVERYTHING was bloated.
Something was wrong

SO I figure out that the 15" driver was slowly breaking in and getting more and more output- getting more bassy but also muddiing up the mids. So.... I put the 2 cabinets facing each other with just the 15" drivers hooked up and out of phase,
so that they were pretty quiet, considering I cranked them to insane volumes. The idea was to stop any further gross changes to the woofers

After 5 hours of this I hooked everything up again and turned down the bass so the mid and tweeter were more prominant, and things were a lot better- plenty of deeper bass but delicate mids and highs....!!

My inductor is about 5% lower in value than Dick had specified for the bass LP filter. I had figured that it couldn't matter much, right? well I found I had an extra inductor sitting around that was exactly right to add in series to equal Dick's spec .so I hooked that up and then it was too bass shy in the mids, so I took it back out. 5% was quite noticible and since I used a differetn bass driver, not too surprising that I would need some difference in the xover.

It still sounds very very good. Very tight bass and very delicate mids and smooth detailed tweeter response.

Incredible dynamics of course, due to the efficient drivers.

So, I'm impressed how easy it is to spot flaws, and how hard it is to get things right. It is really amazing how the thin low mids ruined the sound of the entire speaker. Now the claim of electrostaticness makes sense. Love that tweeter - I suspect that Dick deserves a bit of credit here too for his crossover.

[ace3000_1]

The Fostex sound very natural. Quite solid, imaging is good, but I am now discovering how many of my recordings are poorly recorded. Tone seems very accurate and good.

Thats what happends when you got a semi decent system, somtimes i wonder if its a good thing to have a decent system or not as you can never go back to a crappy system and some recordings sound daft. I know for one after having a decent setup that id never go back, i normally remaster my music thats been recorded abit daft on the comp.

Great job variac, keep up the great work! and all the best in the future experiments.

Trev