After seeing & touching the PE curved Parts Express cabinets we thot we'd explore the idea of a flat-pak baffle assembly that turned the 1/2 ft^3 (14 litre) PE cabinet into a member of the Fonken family.
The PE cabinet is quite good. Top, bottom, & back are all quite small. Sides are a plywood made of a laminate of 6 layers of MDF. Sides, top & bottom are braced. The weak point is the MDF baffle. They are well finished and come in a variety of flavours (black, cherry, maple). The one down-side is that the MDF is somewhat "soft" and it is not all that hard to damage the edges (pictures later).
We devised and built up a baffle & installed them into a set of cherry finished PE cabinets.
The Success: they work really well. Not quite the finese of a set of FonkenPrime but close.
The Failure: turns out it is almost as hard to build these as it is to build a full set of FonkenPrime. Also a problem was the dimensional consistancy of the 2 pair of PE cabs we have was not all that good. So we had to abandon the idea of flat-pak baffles.
The Upside: someone can have the R&D mules REALLY cheap (see the Swap Meet)
Full plans are here http://p10hifi.net/tlinespeakers/FAL/downloads/rFonken-map-290709.pdf (not there as i write this, i need to run them thru acrobat)
dave
The PE cabinet is quite good. Top, bottom, & back are all quite small. Sides are a plywood made of a laminate of 6 layers of MDF. Sides, top & bottom are braced. The weak point is the MDF baffle. They are well finished and come in a variety of flavours (black, cherry, maple). The one down-side is that the MDF is somewhat "soft" and it is not all that hard to damage the edges (pictures later).
We devised and built up a baffle & installed them into a set of cherry finished PE cabinets.
The Success: they work really well. Not quite the finese of a set of FonkenPrime but close.
The Failure: turns out it is almost as hard to build these as it is to build a full set of FonkenPrime. Also a problem was the dimensional consistancy of the 2 pair of PE cabs we have was not all that good. So we had to abandon the idea of flat-pak baffles.
The Upside: someone can have the R&D mules REALLY cheap (see the Swap Meet)
Full plans are here http://p10hifi.net/tlinespeakers/FAL/downloads/rFonken-map-290709.pdf (not there as i write this, i need to run them thru acrobat)
dave
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They look good, Dave! 🙂
You'll probably find as I did, also at least twice as expensive cost wise going the PE route 😉
Cheers!
You'll probably find as I did, also at least twice as expensive cost wise going the PE route 😉
Cheers!
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Very interesting.
I have to admit, I prefer the look of your FonkenPrime though.
You didn't mention any disadvantage from not having the bevelled edges compared with the FonkenPrime ?
I have to admit, I prefer the look of your FonkenPrime though.
You didn't mention any disadvantage from not having the bevelled edges compared with the FonkenPrime ?
Bigun said:
We are pretty sure that is one of the reasons the FonkenPrime has a bit more finese (ie downward dynamic range)
dave
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