Mar-Ken10^2, double the love

[planet10]

Colin, one of our beta buiders in the UK has built the 1st set of twin Alpair10 Mar-Ken10^2. Here are his comments:

I must say I am rather impressed with these and so is Stratmangler. Even my son was impressed with them before they were veneered.
They have VG solid bass with good transiant attack. They do need a little more than a SE 300b (7W) amp can provide to get them really*singing and sound really good on a 25W SS amp. However, my preference is to listen to them driven by my GM70 monoblocs that provide 35W of SET. Really impressive sound.

As I mentioned before. I think you should feature this design in your plans catalogue. It really is that good.

Colin worked from the single driver Mar-Ken10 plans with guidlines from me via email.



I have yet to draw up the plans. If anyone wants to pursue these, contact me about helping beta a full set of plans.

The same treatment has already been done for the EL70, and can follow for all the MA drivers.

dave

[chrisb]

nice grain matching on the veneer work, Colin

[planet10]

More comment from Colin.

[motosapien]

Dave,

Did you get enough interest to pursue this? That cabinet would fit nicely in the majority of listening rooms and with the success of Colin's build I'm surprised there is not more interest.

[planet10]

motosapien,

I have initial drawings for the original A10. And for the EL70. Probably won't need changing for A10.2. This will be part of the plans package for this design. I will also be adding a Twin to the A7/CHR document. There will be discounts on the plans package as we work thru the documents completion phase.

dave

[motosapien]

Good to hear it is still in the works. Your cabinet R&R along with MA's line of drivers can bring full range to the masses. You are well positioned for a significant new trend in audio.

I started looking a full range designs because of my tubelab amp project. I was surprised to find that these MA drivers along with your and Scott's cabinet plans are perfectly well suited for many types of amplification.

[AlanElsdon]

Excellent looking speakers; I followed the link to Colin's comments and noticed that the units are connected in series. I have just finished building some amps by Paul Hynes designed for running up to 8 B200s in parallel so I wondered if there is any reason for / against to try the Alpair 10s in parallel?

[planet10]

I feel that Mark has really pushed what FRs can do into new territory -- getting some help from Fostex's best engineers and Mark's encouraging end user input has really helped push things forward

Scott, myself, and others were ready with all the work we'd already done to adapt our enclosures to the new drivers. Mark has been very helpful with seeding drivers to encourage this. He has priced the product very aggressively.

The net result is a whole new level of performance (and especially performance for the cash outlay) for diyers.

dave

[planet10]

Originally Posted by AlanElsdon

Excellent looking speakers; I followed the link to Colin's comments and noticed that the units are connected in series. I have just finished building some amps by Paul Hynes designed for running up to 8 B200s in parallel so I wondered if there is any reason for / against to try the Alpair 10s in parallel?

The only reason for series connection is that most amps choke on 2-3 ohms. Can you tell us more about your amp?

dave

[AlanElsdon]

Originally Posted by planet10

The only reason for series connection is that most amps choke on 2-3 ohms. Can you tell us more about your amp?

dave

Dave,

It is an unusual design (7 components in the amp) using Depletion Mosfets - this may sound opportunistic on my part but I am showing the build on another web-site. I will pm you details.

Paul Hynes designed it to run a line array of 8 b200s which are wired in parallel giving .75 ohm load, he felt that when using series/parallel to give a more reasonable load it did not sound as good as all parallel. I think it is more akin to a buffer as there is no gain.

I am using it at the moment to drive my Maeshowes, using CHR70's, with a small gain stage. As soon as I saw these speakers I started to think about buying another pair of Alpair 10s and making them (after the FH3's of course!!).

Alan