finished speakers

[chefsinc]

Hi guys,
after a year of researching, web surfing I have finally finished my first real project. I am extremely pleased with the outcome.
the project has a slanted baffle and uses a 2 and half way configuration. it also uses a series crossover that i have found to be a bit easier to tweak by ear. I do not have any measuring equipment whatsoever so all done by ear and calculations.
thanks to andy g's sight and rabbitz for his help with suggestions as well.
i hope you like what you see.
the drivers are vifa xt25 tweeter, vifa p17j mid woofer and a peerless 8" csx 217 woofer

[TurboFC3S]

Surprised nobody replied to this ... those look fantastic! What is that verneer, looks like Ebony with heavier grain.

Nice work!

[imjatse]

Nice work! Did you enclose the bottom woofer separatley?

[fgroen]

Looks nice. How's the sound?

One point of feed-back: get black screws for the speaker units, or use a black permanent marker to make the current screws black. Will look much nicer.

[TurboFC3S]

Originally posted by fgroen
One point of feed-back: get black screws for the speaker units

I was going to say that, but figured it's one of those personal choice things ... and maybe it looks better in person. Black chrome screws would look killer with that ebony verneer though

[planet10]

Originally posted by TurboFC3S
What is that verneer, looks like Ebony with heavier grain.

Looks similar to the maccassar ebony on these CSS bipoles.



dave

[chefsinc]

thankyou for all your positive comments.

I think they sound fantastic deep deep dry bass, forward midrange and ncie highs. this is the way i prefer as I listen to a lot of smooth jazz and like to hear the voices created in a live typ environment. I tweaked the series filter by ear to what I wanted and have played around with the baffle step inductor for the mid woofer until i got it spot on. I am actually suprised that the PJ17 can really put out some bass notes when the filter is optimised for it.

a bit more about the project.
this project was done in parallel to another one exactly the same but using slightly different drivers.

the woofer is enclosed in its own seperate section with heavy damping of bitumen pads, thick wool and acoustic foam. it is heavily braced and and is capable of very tight deep bass, with very little reinence if you have your hands on the side of the cabinet. the 8" woofer also runs paralell to the series filter for the top mid woofer and tweeter giving me around 3.5 to 4 ohms to the amp, as i have a Nad c350 and a rotel power amp it is not at all any trouble with either amps.

the chrome srews were purposefully used and I like the contrast that they give with the black and the local veneer.
the veneer itself is a local Borneo species similar to the Ebony Macasar by looks at that photo supplied. I cannot remember the name but living in a Million year old rain forest certainly does have its advantages for using unique timbers.

I have just fnished the second pair and they use as well a series filter ontop and a paralell inductor for the 8" woofer in its own seperate as above.

this time I put all the drivers closer together and the mid woofer used was a Vifa PL18 as i had heard it had a greater amount of midrange clarity compared to the PJ17 mid woofer used previously.the peerless woofer and the vifa tweeter remain the same.
Whom ever said that this 8' inch woofer has no low bass extension must have been joking. I have listened to medium levels of jazz music and the bass guitar is vibrating my chair, without any resinence from the cabinet itself.

it has at times been a real struggle as I live in Borneo and the DIY hi fi is absolutley non existent and I had to import a lot of drivers and crossover parts from Australia as well. I had to use also car bitumen and sound deadener as i was not prepared to import too much otherwise the costs were getting too high.
I also went and bought a shed load of pillow stuffing as it is cheap and basically the same stuff as acoustic stuffing anyway.

so i will post the biger brother to this one in the next couple of days as I have started anothr project using a seas 5" aluminium woofer in a mini cabinet, and a tannoy mx4 tweeter that i have modified using a philips 80"s face plate, the mini monitor will be coming soon!!!

[David Gatti]

Thats really great work chefsinc, just my kind of speaker The look of that base works well too.
The ebony-style veneer looks great, what glue & finish did you use?
We'll be very interested to see how it c ompares to it's bigger brother. Keep us posted.

[chefsinc]

Hi David,

thankyou very much. it has been a ongoing project for at least 12 months and as I work six days a week it has been very difficult to spend time between the kids and get them completed.
the finish on them is a low gloss lacquer sprayed on, using compressor and spray gun, and the base is two 16mm Mdf boards glued cut primed and spray painted black low gloss as well. The feet i installed are Jamo spikes with rubber feet from Speakerbits in Melbourne. whom I had to get most of my stuff as they send via DHL and gets to me with in a couple of days. So a big thankyou to Margo for all her help in getting the inductors, binding posts capacitors and the PL18 to me very efficiently.

the front baffle I forgot to add is 32mm thick and the inside edges have been bevelled to allow the mid and woofer energy to pass cleanly into the cabinet. the mid woofer and tweeter area is sealed (no port tube) which i found gave a nice transient response on the low mids and did not allow unwanted midrange energy behind the speaker to smear any midrange detail.
because it is a 2.5 way the mid woofer does produce some nice dry bass with out too much boominess because of its sealed cabinet. and this allows the 8" woofer to go nice and deep and work up to about 250hz before dropping of with a second order filter, which also has a Zobel fitted.

the upper midrange has a nice series filter wich is a bit of a mongrel , Based on an AR design and have taken some major clues from Ken Perkins Nebula design on Parts express showcase.

the big brother is actually not biger but I think even better as I have had the oportunity to find all the faults in the first design and then rectifyin this one. I call them Sabre MK1 and MK2 9 (sabre is my speaker brand) that I thought of. No I have not registered the name yet so nobody steal it!!!!!!

I will be moving to China next month and as I work in Hospitality industry it is difficult to continue this addictive hobby. But I will just have to ask our Hotel engineer if I can seak down to his workshop on my day off and build some more designs.
I will be close to Aurum Cantus so will probably make a design using there drivers.
And I am sure I can get some nice chinese carpenter to knock up some beautiful cabinets for me.


cheers and will post photos of Sabre MK2 later this week.

[chefsinc]

Sorry david forgot I used just simple white wood glue on the MK1
but on the MK2 I have mixed white wood glue and fine MDF saw dust to make a paste in which i used to stick the front baffle on.
was a bit of a risk as I have never done it before but I must say it has worked incredibly well. It is actually stronger i feel than just wood glue alone. it fills any gaps as well as acting like a seamless piece of wood as the mdf absorbs the moisture of the glue it seems to seep into the mdf and become one with each other.

an experiment that really works!!!!

cheers
chefsinc