Mods to Yamaha NS-10 Speakers????

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

I have a pair and they've always sounded a bit too honky in the midrange for me. After finishing up a nice small Mini Aleph I dragged them back out and hooked them up to the Mini. The high end is fairly passable,but that honk in the mids still makes me want to put em back in the basement storage room.

Has anyone out there ever done any mods....different drivers....modified the original drivers.....etc, to these speakers? I'd be very receptive to any suggestions to get rid of that annoying midrange honkiness. Or would these cabinets which seem pretty solid be the basis for re-use with other drivers?

Mark

 

[cowanrg]

if i remember them right, the cabinet is like a drum. if you could simply dampen the cabinet, im sure you would see a huge improvement.

 

[The Paulinator]

There could also be a Canadian goose stuck in the cabinet. Remove the largest driver and lead him out with a little trail of bread crumbs. Works every time for me.

 

[usekgb]

I have a pair and they've always sounded a bit too honky in the midrange for me. After finishing up a nice small Mini Aleph I dragged them back out and hooked them up to the Mini. The high end is fairly passable,but that honk in the mids still makes me want to put em back in the basement storage room.

Has anyone out there ever done any mods....different drivers....modified the original drivers.....etc, to these speakers? I'd be very receptive to any suggestions to get rid of that annoying midrange honkiness. Or would these cabinets which seem pretty solid be the basis for re-use with other drivers?

Mark

Hi Mark,

The Yamaha NS-10 was never a "good" sounding speaker. The reason so many studios use these is, the translate well to so many speakers in people's homes. If you can make a mix sound good on NS-10's, chances are they will sound good on pretty much anything. One thing a lot of people have done is, place a piece of tissue paper over the front of the tweeter. This mellows out the harsh "rip your head off" high frequencies that the original NS-10 tweeters had. Later, Yamaha came out with a new tweeter that was made to emulate this technique. The newer tweeters sound quite a bit better.

On a side note, I might be interested in buying your NS-10's for my studio if your are willing to part with them. I am the speaker reair tech at Performance Audio here in Salt Lake, and I am pretty good at tweaking studio monitors to get a little more performance out of them.

Cheers,
Zach Griffen
Speaker Repair/Sales
Performance Audio
2456 S. State St.
Salt Lake City, UT 84115
zach@performanceaudio.com
www.performanceaudio.com

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Hi Zach,
I agree, they are pretty lousy speakers. The cabinets are pretty well made though. You probably don't know of me but I work at CLACO Equipment and on occasion with Greg who also builds speaker systems. I dojn't think he knows much of the NS-10's though being a sound reinforcement sort of a guy.
There is quite a bit of fibreglas material in them....fibreglas has never been a very good damping material IMHO.

Donno if I could get much out of em, or should I have you do some tweeks on them for me? $$$? I am more of an electronics person than speaker person. This particuluar pair are the later NS-10MC's. The Mini Aleph drives em nice and to fairly high levels so it would be nice to get at least some use out of them for a second system. Don't need to tone em down much, I think these later NS10 tweetrs are more toned down than the earlier ones. No real need for covering up the tweets here. The honk I'm hearing seems to be woofer related.

Mark Gulbrandsen
CLACO Equipment And Service
1212 South State St.
SLC, Ut

 

[usekgb]

I don't know you personally, but we do do work with CLACO from time to time. I'd love to hear your mini-Aleph sometime. I've never actually heard any of the Pass Labs stuff, but I do have a Zen V4 that is almost done. As far as the honking in your NS-10's, there's not a whole lot you can do. That's just how they sound. Maybe you could bring your Aleph by Performance one of these days. We've got some Tannoy Reveals on display that sound pretty good.

Keep in touch,
Zach

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Zach,
I also have a pair of overbuilt, high biased Aleph 2's that I could bring by. The Mini isn't quite finished as of yet but is playing and sounds really good within its power range.

I've always liked most of the Tannoys alot! The 2's ought to make em do what ever they're capable of! I'd also be interested in hearing your Zen when its finished.

As for the Yamahas, I think they'd work better if the enclosures were properly ported. I'm just not equipped with the proper software to make any calculations on doing that.
Mark Gulbrandsen

 

[mb]

There's some good info at http://www.dillonacoustics.com/Loudspeaker_plans/Yamaha/Yamaha_XOYA1.htm, including a schematic of suggested XO mods .

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

 

[Guss]

correct link

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Thanks for that link guys....Thats exactly the mod that I need to do!!
Mark

 

[Da5id4Vz]

I thought that the official NS-10 fix was to tape a tissue over the tweeter.

(but Ive been told that the NS-10MC had fixed that issue)

http://www.bobhodas.com/tissue.html

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Yea, the MC verson is not bright sounding by any means. The tissue repair still doesnt take care of the 7db peak. There is that bad midrange glare that the 7db peak causes. I can't believe they didn't fix that too...... Guess at the price they sold them for its hard to do everythng right.....

I'm going to start by just doing the mods to the woofer section of the x-over and see how they sound. I can also get the parts to do that part of the mod locally so I'll pick them up tommrrow.

Exactly what is the x-over point on this speaker? Anyone know?

Mark

 

[mrfeedback]

Mark, the first thing that I would do is ditch the factory fitted BP electros and replace with PP versions.
The networks shown in the diagram work, and are required on a lot of speakers.

Eric.

 

[Nappylady]

(hijack)

Usekqb,

I'm located in Taylorsville and I've visited your store--I was very impressed! I was also astounded at the price tags. (This was before I realized that yes, pro audio gear REALLY IS that expensive to make.)

I've built my own sound system for PA use, including a really, REALLY nifty mobile rackmount-ish enclosure, and... I was wondering if you guys are hiring at all? I already have the skills for making those neat custom boxes you guys make...

(/hijack)

 

[rabbitz]

Mark, the crossover on the original NS-10M's were 2000Hz, 12 dB/octave. I think the crossover mod is for the original model and not the later one. Puting a port would not be a good idea as they have been optimised for a sealed enclosure.

If you dislike them, check out the prices these get on eBay.

Cheers

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

What I am going to try before I dump them is to just do the mod for the woofer as thats where they seem to ahve the trouble. I picked up the parts today to do one x-over and I'll give it a try. will report back later on tonight.
Mark

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Ok, so I installed the 25 mfd and 12 ohm across the woofer and a good deal of the glare is now gone. Took but a few min. to do! What actual effect this has had on response I don't know, but they are sure more listenable now. I did this first on one speaker and listened to some old mono recordings where the glare was quite annoying. The difference was obvious with one modified and one unmodified playing at the same time, the difference was very apparent.

Mark

 

[KT]

Dammar on the mid/woofer helps

Mark!

I've always wanted to do that crossover tweak but more important things got in the way.

My roommate owns these speakers which we use in the living room system. I always thought they were peaky and papery sounding... not great at all. But being the "commmon" system and all, I don't want to put any of my better stuff out there.

I put two coats of dammar on the ns-10 cones, and that helped the peakiness a lot. Sometimes the system actually sounds pretty darned good. I definitely recommend this tweak for the ns-10s. It can really transform them.

My tweeters sounded deader with the tissue paper, so I just let that be. I wouldn't put dammar on the tweeter, just the woofer.

Still, I don't think the speakers are great. The dammar does make them sound much better, though. Pretty decent for a background listening system.

Good luck,
KT

 

[mrfeedback]

But A Few More Minutes........

Ok, so I installed the 25 mfd and 12 ohm across the woofer and a good deal of the glare is now gone. Took but a few min. to do! What actual effect this has had on response I don't know, but they are sure more listenable now. I did this first on one speaker and listened to some old mono recordings where the glare was quite annoying. The difference was obvious with one modified and one unmodified playing at the same time, the difference was very apparent.

Mark

Mark,
Fitting the RC network across the tweeter flattens, sweetens and extends the highs out past hearing range.
The RLC network reduces distortion due to operating the tweeter at its resonance frequency.
Tuning the RC and RLC networks requires software, soundcard and a jig, bit is very well worthwhile.

Eric.

 

[Mark A. Gulbrandsen]

Eric,
I only did half the mod....just across the woofer. Since these are the NS10-M version the mod was only for the original NS10, not the M versions. So I figured I'd get rid of the peak from the woofer anyway..... and it did make a big difference.

I wonder what effect that mod would have on the M version tweeter?

For what I can get for these on E-Bay, I can buy better components and build another set of small monitors.

Mark