fonken floorstanders mkII in progress

[chrisb]

received my 127's on monday and wacked one in to see how they go...
Not very impressive on initial listen with single driver, but then I haven't packed the enclosure yet, so sounded thin, volume was limited compared to my cheapo desktop speakers, but front panel is not sealed properly yet, guess I should be patient and do the stuffing & seal properly hehehe...

yup, the box needs to be well sealed except for the port slot of course, and now the fun time of breaking the drivers in starts.

Wire them out of phase in the enclosures, and place them face to face with a heavy blanket or two draped over the entire cabinets. Put something very dynamic with lots of bottom* on the CD player continuous play, and run it for at least a week.

*Helen Reddy the Vegas Years is always fun

 

[stevodude]

3 weeks and i've just finished dampening 1 enclosure :-/ slow goin here... probably be another month before I finish the other speaker...

can only end up doin a couple of hrs a week, and I'm a bit slow being my first speaker build.

 

[stevodude]

completed stuffing of one enclosure:



complete with some poly fill:



Tested one speaker with clamps, and actually sounded pretty good, so I will stick with the fill & complete the second one, then glue together & test for a while then do the finish to the wood.

the Poly fill looks denser than it actually is.

 

[planet10]

complete with some poly fill:

the Poly fill looks denser than it actually is

My 1st reaction was way too much... some data from an unfinished experiment suggests that the polyfill is best if only between a point that is between bottom of the driver & bottom of the holey brace, and the port opening.

dave

 

[stevodude]

well I dropped the stuffing down with just a loose amount between bottom of driver and end of the holey brace. Anymore I can stuff from the terminals or the driver holes.
Glued the front on, and doing initial testing it actually sounds pretty darn nice, specially light rock, like John Mayer & Teh Cranberies starting to sound really sweet.
Gotta finish the other half now well,I won't be for a few weeks as I gotta head OS, damn family stuff getting in the way of my hobbies
Just finished off re-casing my burrbrown opamp Headphone amp for travel. 2x9v built in, a bit larger than most cmoy's, but just great sound with my ec3's, wife & 2 kids screamin on the plane next to me and all I can hear is boom diddey wah!

Oh also just picked up 50mtrs of 13awg oxygen free low loss speaker cable, chunky man! hehehe, nice and fat coppery goodness... aparently this is the stuff they use for monster cable, but and 1/10th the price hehehe

 

[OzMikeH]

Way off topic...

Those the Shure E3C? nice headphones. I got a set of those, so good I had to re-record all of my music as lossless. I wear them ALL of the time on aircraft now whether I'm listening to music or not.
I found them WAY too sensitive to use on aircraft. The first stop on the seat volume was really noisy from the TDM, the second blew my head off! Make yourself a 6 inch extension lead with about 150 ohms of series resistance per channel
All of the earpads were hard to wear after a couple of hours except the yellow squishy ones which get very manky very fast. Take a few spare sets of the yellow foam plugs. Alanchan1024 on Ebay is the cheapest I have found.

And back on topic:
Is that Hoop pine ply or Birch? If it's hoop pine please detail what you do to finish it and how well it works.
If the FE127 is anything like the 207 they'll sound thin and harsh on an SS amp with huge cable.

 

[stevodude]

yea SS amp, but about 35 years old, and replaced some components, and the sound is on the warmer side for transistors.
Seems the sound from (mono at the moment) is pretty impressive, clear, punchy not what I'd call sharp, but maybe I just haven't listened to any high end gear to reference, but sounds great to me.
dropped some stuffing out of it, so it's a bit looser, but bass is still fairly accurate at the volumes I'm listening to 15x15W SS amp class AA.2 whatever that means...

Anywho, the finish will be 3 or 4 coats of clear polyester, with 350+ sanding, topped off with 3 or 4 coats of '4xcarnauba wax, 1xparaffin, 1xbeeswax' in a glass jar, put jar in pot of water and heat till all dissolvedm then add equal amount of solvent (paint thinners or oddorless mineral spirits -if I can get it), but also maybe try to get some citrus solvent for a nice smell?.
now mixing the solvent in and let settle and if any wax in not dissolved, place back in pot & swirl intill dissolved.
Applying the wax with steel wool or fingers & then buffing out immediately with a cotton cloth.

taken from: wax finish

also the idea from earlier in this thread, but this probably won't be done for a couple of months. also I put this in here so I can remember what I was going to do with the finish

 

[stevodude]

finished one enclosure, but no finish on the wood yet.
Almost completed the second one, just have to stick in the dampening/driver & binding posts... not long now for complete stereo testing





but sound is great, VERY detailed, good solid mid/bass, not pounding but clarity is great. top end in direct ear view is a tad sharp, but this is in a large workshop, so will be good to try out upstairs soon as second enclosure is completed ( probably by the weekend ), 2 lil children makes it hard.

Next up will be some sort of grill covers to keep my (almost 4yr old) fingers away from the drivers...

 

[planet10]

but sound is great, VERY detailed, good solid mid/bass, not pounding but clarity is great. top end in direct ear view is a tad sharp

The sharpness will reduce as they break in, but it takes some cone mods to really bring them in line.

dave

 

[stevodude]

yea I'll be running them in till christmas time, then I might do some tweaking to the cones. stay tunes for completed stereo-ness

 

[stevodude]

btw my next enclosures will be the curved chang... looks wicked!...

heres a link to my google sketchup 3d image you can download and change: curved Chang Frugal BVR double horn

3dimage above doesn't have the tweeter I added.

 

[stevodude]

Their alive!... MWWWwwaaaahahahahahaaa

well... sort of...

couldn't waituntill the weekend , so I waked in the sound deadening & stuffing in the second enclosure without any gluing, and as you can see clamped.

The sound is fantastic! after an hr or so of listening and a few brews

now I'm pulling the second enclosure apart again and will give the same treatment as the first ( no finish on the wood at this stage), and give it a full run in it's proper environment (upstairs tv area) for a few weeks before I get to doing the finish.

 

[gychang]

You don't realize how small these are until you stand next to them... 12mm material is fine... Chris & i sort of decided to standardize on 15mm for most everything so we could justify buying a lift at a time (and then they ran out of 15 for a bit) So we are now working thru a lift of 12.

Here is a picture of the original build of these for inspiration, now residing in NY, NY

dave

Dave, would the same dimensions work for FE107E? (4" shielded version?)

gychang

 

[planet10]

would the same dimensions work for FE107E? (4" shielded version?)

Greg,

The box would likely need to be smaller... give me some time and i'll see if i can work something up... i know you have been searching for a home for those

dave

 

[Scottmoose]

Here's one idea. Build the recommended Fostex reflex box, above a Chang style vent 600mm tall, internal. Instead of using the port on the Fostex design, a slot vent at the bottom-rear of the chamber, full internal width, 12mm deep & 60mm tall (including the thickness of the material). Like the rubbish drawing attached, though it should give you an idea of what I'm blithering about. Might need a little damping to kill the spurious resonance you can see on the extreme right of the graph. Doesn't control the driver as well as a horn would, but you'd probably need to go to a full-size horn to get LF excursion down within Xmax.

 

[Scottmoose]

& the FR plot:

 

[gychang]

Here's one idea. Build the recommended Fostex reflex box, above a Chang style vent 600mm tall, internal. Instead of using the port on the Fostex design, a slot vent at the bottom-rear of the chamber, full internal width, 12mm deep & 60mm tall (including the thickness of the material). Like the rubbish drawing attached, though it should give you an idea of what I'm blithering about. Might need a little damping to kill the spurious resonance you can see on the extreme right of the graph. Doesn't control the driver as well as a horn would, but you'd probably need to go to a full-size horn to get LF excursion down within Xmax.

Stop Scott, u trying to kill me?, the design seems too good to pass...

gychang

 

[planet10]

When i get home i'll whip up a drawing... anyone suggest a name. A bit of whimsy please (ie working name for the FE167 Chang is "Chili Chang".)

dave

 

[gychang]

When i get home i'll whip up a drawing... anyone suggest a name. A bit of whimsy please (ie working name for the FE167 Chang is "Chili Chang".)

dave

Dave, brilliant, CC sounds better than CSC (Can't Stop Chang). My driver on deck is FE107 (4" shielded), wish I had 167 though.

gychang

 

[Scottmoose]

The response is mostly the same as the regular reflex box (which is basically what it is -I don't pretend it's anything else), but the end correction to the vent isn't going to hurt, especially as it should help direct the output at the listener. Plus, it makes a neat stand & an interesting looking little floorstander.

You can go madcap & do a doubled version of course -just shift the driver to the middle of the reflex chamber, reduce the depth of the slot vent to 6mm & add another at the top of the chamber.

Yes, I'm certifiable. Gibber. A curved front version might be interesting? Have the set of 4 -107, 127, 167 & 207? I don't like to bother Ron as he's so busy at the moment though.