DIY 3-way SH-50 Synergy Horn Clone: Tuning Phase? Pics and vid Included

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#61
Patrick Bateman said:
No offense, but I've always avoided publishing any kind of high efficiency Unity horn projects. Danley Sound Labs isn't a big company and I think that putting designs out there that could allow people to DIY an SH-50 is no bueno.

On top of that, the #1 reason that people shouldn't try and clone an SH-50, is that the crossover is just ridiculously complex. The first time I actually finished a Unity horn project, I spend 75% of the project time getting the crossover "in the ballpark." And it still wasn't as good as it can be.

As I understand it, Danley himself has made quite a few changes to the crossover over the years. So it's reasonable to assume that even the inventor of the Unity horn has invested hundreds of hours on the passive crossover.

Also, in case anyone thinks I'm just being a wet blanket: I actually offered to buy the SH50s that I did a review on, back in 2015. The place I rented them from never responded to my email, so that went nowhere.
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I appreciate your level of respect for Danley and I agree that it's not our design to publish. I obviously think everyone that is interested in building thier own synergy horns should try to reverse engineer them themselves because it's a fun investigative journey that taught me a LOT about speaker building. There was a point where Danley's design decisions all start to make sense and you become aware of the harmony in the design, it's pretty darn neat!
 
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#63
Hello djkidmt,

I too have built a DIY version. Was curious, how did you mount the compression driver? Any pics or details on that? I used a PRV D290P with a 1-3/8"-18 TPI Screw-On. As I have learned, this does not get the Mid and The horn driver close enough and creates a null.

thanks in advance,

matt
 
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#64
I cut up a piece of aluminum plate from the hardware store and counter sunk the bolt pattern of the Faital compression driver.
 

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#66
You could try rounding out the squared off sides of the horn throat inside the mounting plate circle.

I found any step or irregularities on the higher frequency drivers to have a very detrimental effectv on sound on my 12 sided conicals.

Ideally a nice smooth transition aka the AH-400 horns.
I achieved that with a smidge of filler to make the angles of throat rounder, then transitioning to 12 sided or however many.

Same thing if a round throat, say tractrix or Le Cléac'h is slightly misaligned to the driver.
Causes soundwave mayhem.
 
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#69
@watafu Honestly it wasn't a huge concern to model the volume perfectly. The synergy horn design more or less minimizes the external and internal dimensions of the cabinet to make it small, save weight, and still fit all of the components inside. We had to make our dimensions slightly bigger to accommodate our 12" driver's additional height vs the slimmer 12" drivers in the real sh-50. There's not much room for interpretation in the volume of the cabinet. We used slightly smaller diameter bass ports than the original design (who know if that had any measureable effect). our response curve turned out to be great in the end.
 
#70
Cheers for the reply, I couldn't work out how to model it in software but managed to reverse engineer it with all the specs I found and approximate positions of the ports and sizes. I'm about 80% through a build right now and the initial sound check with an unsealed box is pretty decent. Will post an update when it's a little more complete but I'm pretty optimistic it will sound great when it's done!
 
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#71
I've really enjoyed reading all the MEH and Synergy horn builds and into from all these threads👍

I contacted Misco a while back but haven't received a reply yet - hope they are still trading..

Found this about China imports and them - warning politics😀

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184027892/china-tariffs-biden-trump

I'm almost at test phase of my own Synergy prototype..

Might post more on that, but it's a subject that's been done to death really.
 
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