Finally I will fit the original transducers that came with these speakers, the mid and woofers are both SEAS and the tweeter is the long discontinued Tonegen ribbon.
When I removed the passive x/over I couldn't believe how all the components were crammed onto a too small plastic plate. The mid caps were hard up against the nickel plated steel screws😱
Worse was to come, removing the tweeters I saw that the chamber of both speakers had a bottom plate that some retarded knuckledragger had had various goes at with different drill bits and the ribbon cable had been twisted to get through the oversized round hole - as it was a ribbon cable why not make slot to take it tightly and fill with hot melt glue any small gap left so that the integrity of the tweeter/mid chamber was re-instated - beyond belief.
Instead I found a waterfall of way too much hot melt glue had been used. Half way down the bass chamber a big bracing bar of MDF is used across the sides allowing the bass to flow front and back - why wasn't this bracing bar heavily chamfered instead of hard edged?
The Heybrook Sextet have very shallow cabinets, perhaps this is part of the good sound. It occurred to me that if hard 90 degree corners are bad news why not use concave glued bracing on all corners, surely this is going to be better for sound quality and easy to implement during construction of the cabinets. I used hard wood concave bracing on all 4 corners. Much bigger concave bracing would be better and easy to do in constructing the cabinets.
Externalising the passive x/overs - Lying in a hospital bed it occurred to me that the soft oxygen tubing would be great to use not as dielectric but to absorb vibrations inside the cabinet. This is what I have used, drilling the back of the cabinets so that this is a tight fit for this tubing, maintaining the integrity of the both chambers. The actual x/overs have been installed inside ply rectangular boxes which hang from brackets which are open top and bottom to allow any heat to escape easily.
Filling - I don't know whether to use more filling in both chambers or stay with the existing. I have used bitumised sheet in the tweeter/mid chamber faces and in the upper bass chamber.
I have a lot of 'blankets' used when moving furniture, they are made of reused material which resembles felt I was thinking of using some of this glued to the walls of the tweeter/mid chamber and also on the bottom half of the bass chamber - any thoughts on this. if it doesn't work it can be easily removed.
With the integrity of the tweeter/mid chamber now corrected I expect a much more musical response from these two transducers and externalising the x/overs should result in much better clarity now they are not exposed to internal vibrations, again any thoughts from speaker builders welcomed.
When I removed the passive x/over I couldn't believe how all the components were crammed onto a too small plastic plate. The mid caps were hard up against the nickel plated steel screws😱
Worse was to come, removing the tweeters I saw that the chamber of both speakers had a bottom plate that some retarded knuckledragger had had various goes at with different drill bits and the ribbon cable had been twisted to get through the oversized round hole - as it was a ribbon cable why not make slot to take it tightly and fill with hot melt glue any small gap left so that the integrity of the tweeter/mid chamber was re-instated - beyond belief.
Instead I found a waterfall of way too much hot melt glue had been used. Half way down the bass chamber a big bracing bar of MDF is used across the sides allowing the bass to flow front and back - why wasn't this bracing bar heavily chamfered instead of hard edged?
The Heybrook Sextet have very shallow cabinets, perhaps this is part of the good sound. It occurred to me that if hard 90 degree corners are bad news why not use concave glued bracing on all corners, surely this is going to be better for sound quality and easy to implement during construction of the cabinets. I used hard wood concave bracing on all 4 corners. Much bigger concave bracing would be better and easy to do in constructing the cabinets.
Externalising the passive x/overs - Lying in a hospital bed it occurred to me that the soft oxygen tubing would be great to use not as dielectric but to absorb vibrations inside the cabinet. This is what I have used, drilling the back of the cabinets so that this is a tight fit for this tubing, maintaining the integrity of the both chambers. The actual x/overs have been installed inside ply rectangular boxes which hang from brackets which are open top and bottom to allow any heat to escape easily.
Filling - I don't know whether to use more filling in both chambers or stay with the existing. I have used bitumised sheet in the tweeter/mid chamber faces and in the upper bass chamber.
I have a lot of 'blankets' used when moving furniture, they are made of reused material which resembles felt I was thinking of using some of this glued to the walls of the tweeter/mid chamber and also on the bottom half of the bass chamber - any thoughts on this. if it doesn't work it can be easily removed.
With the integrity of the tweeter/mid chamber now corrected I expect a much more musical response from these two transducers and externalising the x/overs should result in much better clarity now they are not exposed to internal vibrations, again any thoughts from speaker builders welcomed.