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Ryan's Pensil 10.2 Build Log

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Alright I have finally started on my project! I spent all day working on it. The cabinets are assembled, veneered and looking good. Tomorrow I will do some final cutting and spray the finish on them and they will be ready to come home.

They are made of high quality Baltic birch ply and veneered with mahogany. I will by applying a clear finish to them, specifically ML Campbell Krystal conversion varnish. Hopefully they will match all the lacquered natural mahogany speakers I have already made. I have a few shop pictures so far, I'll get them up here shortly.

I am so excited about these things. Even though I suspect the alpair 7.3 would be more my taste, I have just got to see what the bigger MA drivers can do!

Thank you Scott for the cabinet design and Mark for the awesome drivers.:D
 
Hey Buzz,

By Vifa are you referring to the one that John Busch uses in his cool OB project? If so I have not actually heard it, I just thought it looked like a good one for his design.

I will be able to directly compare these to my baffle mounted magnepan MMGW's and a bunch of 3" tangband projects. I may cart them to a few friends houses and pit them against their commercial speakers and some of my passed on projects.

I have a 12" peerless XLS subwoofer that uses the matching passive radiator driven by a 500W Bash plate amp to help out with the really low notes. I will XO the pensils around 40-60 depending on their performance. For a few weeks the XO will be at 120 for a while to let them break in really easy.

Looking forward to some REAL full range speakers. My dipole stuff can only get down to 150hz and that's with very heavy dsp adjustment. Everyone seems to think it sounds great but I know the sub is doing way too much of the work and imaging suffers.
 
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Thank you I worked really hard on getting these to look good. The beveled edges help the look of the cabinet a lot I think. I made the mistake of routing the bevel before veneering. I would recommend veneering the sides and front and then routing the bevels for next time. Then use edge tape or veneer strips that are not much bigger than the bevel and it would be much easier than all the extra sanding I was doing.
 
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Thank you I worked really hard on getting these to look good. The beveled edges help the look of the cabinet a lot I think. I made the mistake of routing the bevel before veneering. I would recommend veneering the sides and front and then routing the bevels for next time.

When i've watched Chris veneer some of our cabinets (most of which have bevels) i've seen him just iron the veneer such that it folds over the bevel and is continuous.

dave
 
Before listening to the speakers for the first time, I let them run for a few hours. Now I'm listening to them with an 80hz high pass. They are unbelievable. Not even broken in they sound better than anything I have made by a huge margin. I will get the pictures up soon but for now I must hear more.

The Alpair 10.2 is a wonder. It is so hard to believe how much better and well integrated the sound is with a full range when it is done properly. A True full range it is!

Everyone has done a great job pushing the limits in DIY Audio. Special thanks to everyone who did the hard work researching and developing this speaker and giving it away for anyone to build.
 
:DTold ya. Now you see why I want to try both this and the A7 with helper woofers. Taking the load off bottom end should improve sound because of greatly reduced cone excursion as a result of dropping LF. Where are the pics.

Indeed. If the A7 has higher resolution that this than it makes perfect sense. There is basically no excursion on the 10.2 at 80hz high pass. I would expect there would be very little on the A7. The 10.2 might be more forgiving though. Twice the moving mass after all.

I doubt there would even be much excursion with an A6 at 60hz high pass.
 
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