I had this posted on the headphones section but didn't receive any responses for five days, perhaps I should have posted it here instead.
I recently made ESL headphones, just to test my materials - I am in a (long) process of building big electrostatic panel speakers (160cm x 25cm), and I wanted to get a taste of the ESL sound.
I had a piece of 1mm aluminum, and I fashioned round stators from it. 5cm in diameter. I made the spacers from a cover of a plastic bucket - also 1mm in thickness. I don't know what the material is. Spacers are about 5mm in width, so the area for the diaphgram to move is 4cm in diameter. The diaphgram is cheap wrapping plastic (of the Elmu variety for those in Finland) - it's thickness is stated as 10µm on the box, material is LD-polyetylene.
I glued all the parts together with superthin soldering strips lodged in the right places for the electric contacts. Then I applied a bit of graphite powder on the diaphgram with cotton pieces. I measured the surface resistance to be in the order of 22 to 42 kilo-ohms per centimeter.
After the glue had dried, I soldered all the wires, put the drivers in their case (full sized headphones previously closed, now drilled open, with relatively tight ear cushions). For driving the ESLs I have two Hammond 125D push pull transformers and a high voltage source. Signal comes from my 1W Darling amp with approximately 250v signal swing, 5k / 4R OT.
I also put a lot of cotton on the backs of the drivers.
I thought I was good to go, and started experimenting. On the first try I got some sound, but it was very very weak even with the source and Darling amps volumes at max. Barely able to hear anything. At this point the bias was 405v and transformers at 4R / 27k. So I tried progressively bigger transformer ratios, and got a tiny bit more sound. Then I made a new voltage source, with 742v bias and transformers at 1.5R / 27k.
With this I got an ok listening volume, maybe 3/4 of what I usually use (I don't listen super loud), but even now I have Darling volume at 100% and source volume at 100%. What is more puzzling is that I have absolutely no bass. None at all. When comparing with my AKG601 headphones and with EQ (my source is a computer) I found I have no action at all pretty much below 700Hz. The response starts dropping around 1 - 2 kHz.
The sound is quite good on the highs - excellent imaging and presence. I find ESLs to be quite promising. However my first experiment is clearly not done right.
So, no volume or bass. Where did I go wrong?
Is the diaphgram area too small, with only 4cm diameter?
Did I use too much graphite - I think I did, but could this contribute to these problems?
Is the LD-polyetylene completely unsuited for ESLs? Could I have used too much tension?
I'm pretty much at a loss here for explanations. Any help would be appreciated.
I recently made ESL headphones, just to test my materials - I am in a (long) process of building big electrostatic panel speakers (160cm x 25cm), and I wanted to get a taste of the ESL sound.
I had a piece of 1mm aluminum, and I fashioned round stators from it. 5cm in diameter. I made the spacers from a cover of a plastic bucket - also 1mm in thickness. I don't know what the material is. Spacers are about 5mm in width, so the area for the diaphgram to move is 4cm in diameter. The diaphgram is cheap wrapping plastic (of the Elmu variety for those in Finland) - it's thickness is stated as 10µm on the box, material is LD-polyetylene.
I glued all the parts together with superthin soldering strips lodged in the right places for the electric contacts. Then I applied a bit of graphite powder on the diaphgram with cotton pieces. I measured the surface resistance to be in the order of 22 to 42 kilo-ohms per centimeter.
After the glue had dried, I soldered all the wires, put the drivers in their case (full sized headphones previously closed, now drilled open, with relatively tight ear cushions). For driving the ESLs I have two Hammond 125D push pull transformers and a high voltage source. Signal comes from my 1W Darling amp with approximately 250v signal swing, 5k / 4R OT.
I also put a lot of cotton on the backs of the drivers.
I thought I was good to go, and started experimenting. On the first try I got some sound, but it was very very weak even with the source and Darling amps volumes at max. Barely able to hear anything. At this point the bias was 405v and transformers at 4R / 27k. So I tried progressively bigger transformer ratios, and got a tiny bit more sound. Then I made a new voltage source, with 742v bias and transformers at 1.5R / 27k.
With this I got an ok listening volume, maybe 3/4 of what I usually use (I don't listen super loud), but even now I have Darling volume at 100% and source volume at 100%. What is more puzzling is that I have absolutely no bass. None at all. When comparing with my AKG601 headphones and with EQ (my source is a computer) I found I have no action at all pretty much below 700Hz. The response starts dropping around 1 - 2 kHz.
The sound is quite good on the highs - excellent imaging and presence. I find ESLs to be quite promising. However my first experiment is clearly not done right.
So, no volume or bass. Where did I go wrong?
Is the diaphgram area too small, with only 4cm diameter?
Did I use too much graphite - I think I did, but could this contribute to these problems?
Is the LD-polyetylene completely unsuited for ESLs? Could I have used too much tension?
I'm pretty much at a loss here for explanations. Any help would be appreciated.