Funniest snake oil theories

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#3,284
tvrgeek said:
This is why modern cars can sit a week and still start buy my TVR wouldn't.
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If that is all that is wrong with any (modernish) TVR then owners are extremely lucky! [It is alleged that about 7 years ago their premises were totally full of returned cars requiring total mechanical rebuilds.....most were only a few months old. A good car marque which went badly wrong. 😡]
 
#3,286
Yeah but they did produce the awesome Speed 12.

A car that weighed under 1000kg with an engine of which no one knew the unrestricted power as it sheared the drive shaft of TVRs 1000HP rated dyno.
The then owner made very sure that customers opted for the race version of that engine which was limited to 680bhp.
 
#3,288
Don't need to go that far Brian, North Argyll is corrosive enough for me 😱

My old VW seems to be lasting quite well though, zinc coated is the way to go.

In time folk here will revert to webbed hands and feet and return to the ocean. We only learned to live on the land so we could enjoy a decent dram 😀
 
#3,289
When I went to one meeting of the "prairie state audio constructors" somebody did a presentation on how the best long-term high-current connection was actually just physical clamping of copper on copper, as it causes a molecular-level weld. It was all a bit over my head and I couldn't figure out the limits of that truth.

My Soundcraftsmen power amps have "5-way" binding posts which simply don't work properly in some of those "ways". For instance a forked terminal on the end of a wire didn't always work if clamped down in the binding post; the conductive washer in the post base did not have any shoulder, and there was no conductive nut face in the screwing clamp head. So sometimes the forked terminal only conducted high current reliably if it touched the center post! A major defect in the design IMHO.
 
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#3,290
Less might be more

KBK said:
The active designs are seeming to move into using digital crossovers these days. I find that I cannot get decent sound out of any digital crossover.

What the audiophools, (as one might call them, but not I), at the upper tier..are looking for..is micro phase coherence in transient aspects of fundamentals and harmonics, so that the entire note structure sound as natural as possible. digital, for all it's abilities, cannot do that. Some aspects of passive crossovers allow for that very well.

When I tried to mess about with digital crossover units, I tried all the best units of the time period. This was a few years back. If you look at the technical side of it, you look that the numerical transform aspects of the hardware, you see that you can get phase coherence, but at a cost - one of the loss of the very subtle aspects of micro phase changes in micro and macro transient function, and how all of them relate to one another, in the given millisecond grouping. (as that is what the ear listens for and hears by)

In that, digital fails. it sounds grungy and gritty/dirty, no matter what you do to the crossover. The best sound I could get out of a digital crossover was to use it as a simple, no extra parameter of any kind...6db per octave system.

Any additional corrections enacted numerical additions and shifts in the chain of levels, and how they were handled, all that would introduce even more error in the all to critical areas of the signal that I mentioned.

At this point in time, the best I've heard or am aware of...is still analog crossovers. Active or passive (or a combination, that is best) but all analog, not digital. Digital is great for venues, overnight set-up, etc, but I still prefer analog even there, and if correctly done, in a permanent install, I can still get more quality sound out of an analog install over that of digital.
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I've been mucking about with drivers I can live with when they're only high passed . I amp each driver separately, and have been high passing the signal fed to each integrated amp with a single NOS silver mica in series with the interconnect. This is easy even for a guy like me with limited electronic skills and a browser to guestimate required values.
So far it's a sound I like better than speaker level x-overs, and the cost is minimal.
Since I'm using inexpensive asian tube amps, this may be an easier load (direct coupled) for the amps as well.
This is still new to me, but after many years of many expensive speaker level parts, I think shallow slope line filtering is an excellent and very inexpensive route to try.
 
#3,291
davym said:
Not a good sales pitch tvrgeek. Who's going to buy your TVR if you tell them it wont start after a week 😀
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I completely replaced the electrical system with modern high quality wiring of correct size (no single 14 ga ground wire to the bonnet for headlights, horns, and markers!), Bosh relays, ATO ,fuses and greased Packard connectors. Completely reliable. It was one of the sale features. ( Well the 5.0 V8 was too) The 00 gauge ground from the rear to the battery was why you could actually see the taillights. Steel chassis is a very poor ground return. The new owner let it sit for a year and only had trouble with a headlight switch internally.

I even was able to get my Morgan to be completely reliable by cleaning and greasing the connectors. It did not take long as it had very few. For those who don't know, the defroster motor was a towel, heater a blanket, automatic choke was you remembering to move the knob etc. They only have enough parts to go fast.

Both cars and speakers are low voltage high current problems. Both are needed to be consistent for a long time. A car is a very hostile environment. If a technique works there, it should be good enough for a speaker. Big terminal block and crimped/soldered lugs is about the best connection I know of. Only a weld is better.
 
#3,293
I wonder if Moss Motors would carry cans of Lucas Smoke. Great complement for Snake Oil.

I think all the smoke was already let out of the wires when I bought it. Maybe it is the Packard connectors with the silicone plug seals that help keep it in with the harness I made. In all truth, it was not Lucas who specified a 27 amp alternator, but it was Lucas whose alternators have a bleeder resister in the regulator that will drain a battery in a week. Delco 80A alternators fixed both the drain problem as well as kept the headlights white at night in the cold rain. It is just a matter of basic engineering. Something we tend to loose track of in high end audio. Electrons don't know if they are going through a voice coil or an ignition coil.

ATO fuses are far more reliable than 3AG series. I am surprised they have not shown up in home amps, but I do see them in car amps. Automotive stranded wire tends to be finer stranded to resist fatigue fractures but I do caution, SAE wire gauges are several percent smaller than normal. 12ga SAE is about 13 ga standard. I am talking high quality wire, not the junk sold in parts stores. XL insulation, 34 ga strands.
 
#3,295
AS teenagers a friend and I shared a 1936 Morgan 4/4. It had been a team car, had cycle mudguards in front, and overbored Coventry Climax engine sporting copper plated head, down-draught SU carb: Reg No was AUY 33.

Unfortunately it had been laid up since the war (WW11) and the crank was warped. After replacing the white metal bearings, scraping and bluing-in, getting it going again several times over one summer, we junked the engine and replaced it with a MG 1600 Twin Cam which had been taken from a crashed full race spec TVR 1600, but slightly detuned: a straight cut ZF box was attached. A manifold (exhaust) was fashioned and the resultant beast was a lot faster than an early E type.

The electrics were totally re-wired by a Post Office wire-man. For £14.00 he supplied the wire and reconstructed a new loom using waxed string.....it was a beautiful job, and needless to say, never caused any trouble. He would have made a great job of rewiring Leak tube amps!.

The car was bought from Peter Morgan at the factory and had a good pre-WW11 history having raced well at Le Mans and winning the Scottish Rally outright.

I went off to Dublin to study and David to Cambridge....it was sold about 6 months later and all expenditure was recovered. To day, fully restored to original I hate to think what it's value would have been.

[I also had the first fully built Trident Clipper (with 4.7 litre Hi-Power Mustang engine - from a crashed Shelby I believe. The factory of course was then the TVR factory, the firms split before production started. There is a pic of it in the Pappa's Pub forum!]🙂
 
#3,300
tvrgeek said:
Funny, I have tinned leads under terminal strips that last for decades. In the computer industry, we high pressure crimp ring lugs on the end and that is what we put in the terminal strip. In a class from AMP, they showed how this was basically a cold weld and was stronger, lower resistance, and more tolerant of flex than hand crimp and solder. Believe me, when y7ou are sending 80 amps through a terminal, resistance does matter, not like in a simple speaker cable. Banana jacks are for test equipment.

The very best speaker termination is the very cheapest. Solder the cable to the crossover board and run it out a sealed hole in the box. The best connector is no connector.

You can compensate for cold flow with a bevel washer stack. OOPS, that means adding steel washers to the magically pure environment. Silicone bronze?

I have an idea for product marketing. Brand a dialectic grease ( petroleum jelly for instance) as "Snake Oil". Sell it to prevent connection degradation. The irony is that it actually is a viable solution. This is how the phone company maintains quality low voltage connections on bare copper. This is why modern cars can sit a week and still start buy my TVR wouldn't.
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That's what I do, run the wire out of a sealed hole and wire nut it to more wire to the amps. The splice is just to be able to disconnect to move. Binding posts and cups are a waste of time. Also, it is just plain old zip cord, no fancy silver or twisted pair. You are correct, the best connector is no connector.

Regular wheel bearing grease works well for anti corrosion compound on electrical parts. Use it in light bulbs, battery terminals, wire connections exposed to moisture, etc...
 
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