Mini Karlsonator (0.53X) with Dual TC9FDs

@ freddi & xrk971: thank you again for all the help and answers and not trying to bring me down (but rather motivate me actually which is the pupose of forums isnt it? help and motivation)- Is greatly appreciated and good souls should always be recognized!!
 
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now what about this - sorry im being painful but is difficult to know where to go when you are a noob - if i reduce that design you are talking about by half (12"/18") and shove in a 5/6" woofer (or mid woof - not a puppy anymore but not yet a real woof) with a 2" tweeter with so a tuned k-tube on the facing down panel. Would that work? Would that pack enough bass without unbalance the sound much? If is unbalanced, does a HF/LF pot would help? a soft EQ maybe?(on the source for example like a phone app or so)

If you want to use K tube biggest tweeter would be a 1in dia dome. A two in full range in a Ktube might sound too much like a speaker in a tunnel with echoes. At least that was my experience with a 3in driver.

You should never worry about too much bass - the K'nator is one of the few audio designs that will get you as much bass at the low shelf as at above the baffle step frequency. That is, no baffle step correction needed. So match your tweeter sensitivity to the woofer sensitivity of maybe 2-3dB less than woofer and it will sound great. You can always pad tweeter with resistors.
 
hello X - have you experimented with K-tube/compression driver combo where the K-tube is shorter than Transylvania Power Company's ~5.3" long "THE TUBE"? Top Karlson experimented Carl Neuser said he once ran a 3" total length tK-tube with ~2.5" slot. Not sure of the slot parameters - it may have had a "square" nose rather than round from elliptical or pointy nose from exponential. It ran from 3K5 and up (which with Eminence's generic 3K5 crossover, had a real world HF corner of around 2K5 using their original APT50 compression driver and APT3 adapter)

Also - have you considered faster flare K-apertures? - the may give up a bit in the polars, or force the effect downwards a bit but subjectively, may "sound good" with certain drivers as this one suggested by Carl for one of my one-off little 8K's - -IIRC this was nice with W8-1772 and FE206EN but 206 could sound good with a very tight aperture - I didn't experiment much with driver/aperture swaps.

I might mount a K-tube in this cabinet which currently has an Eminence Delta Pro8a - - don't know what expression Carl came up with to describe that aperture. He's an engineer.

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it was designed around the Fostex FE166EN but the driver got destroyed in the builder's flooded basement. Its got pretty good flexibility in driver parameters to do well with the L Cao F6 whose qts is over 0.6 - maybe around 0.7 - I'll have to re-measure my F6 pair. They're way more sensitive in the midrange than an Eminence Beta10cx and somewhat more than than Eminence's Delta Pro 8a. Bowed acoustic bass sounded good with the F6 - - FE164 had a leaner sound due to lower qts and probably more subjective "snap"

Be sure to ask xrk971 what to do when picking a K-project - I think his akabak model for the Karlsonator has been pretty good and there are several scales which have worked. The dual PA130 XKi built in the XKi thread would be a neat and punchy little speaker for relatively low driver cost.

I want a new K which can reproduce a drum kit near live levels - the original Karlson K15 from 1951 can do it - - I think a good "K-10" can come close. Maybe a Karlsonator 10. I have 0.62 scale K15 and Karlsonator 12's loaded with Beta10cx and one old "K10" loaded with a Delta 10A which can probably do a good job once I make an appropriate crossover.

I made a crude "6" and the pa130 had too much motor for it. It did make deep bass at low power but then the speakers bottomed out easily. Added wood blocks inside and filled up part of the port and better but not awesome. Sounded ok though.

Moved on to the double xki version. Have to tweak it some. It is very much louder.
 
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I made a crude "6" and the pa130 had too much motor for it. It did make deep bass at low power but then the speakers bottomed out easily. Added wood blocks inside and filled up part of the port and better but not awesome. Sounded ok though.

Moved on to the double xki version. Have to tweak it some. It is very much louder.

What do you mean a crude 6in version for the PA130-8? If going with a Karlsonator, the 0.53x scale version is excellent and doesn't bottom out easily at all. Or are you referring to XKi scaled to 6in?

When built per design the 6th order band pass nature really controls cone movement well. I don't believe I have posted a design for a single PA130-8 have I?

Anyhow, just saying when you build not according a simulated design, the driver won't probably be well matched.
 
I would think a Karlsonator 6 to be too large for PA130 - power handling would be compromised. The dual PA130 XKi cabinet should really have a lot of punch and good sensitivity.

Its interesting that the Karlson6 prototype is tuned to about 60Hz, then the next step, Karlsonator8 is tuned right on 40Hz (as shown in TheJessMan's Z plots), then Karlsonator12 about 38Hz. It might be useful in some instances, if the Karlsonator 8 and 12 could be tuned somewhat higher. Perhaps xrk971 would illuminate as to how to accomplish the re-tuning.


Karlsonator 12 with Beta10cx - near center of a back wall- woofer center about 52 inches from the floor - the graph would have more bass with the cabinet sitting on the floor

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xrk971 simulation of Karlsonator 12 with Beta10cx - the simulation indicates a bit higher tuning than the 38Hz I see with my K'nator 12

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Karlsonator 12 tuning with Beta 12LTA

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Karlsonator6 vs a 7 cubic foot midbass horn loaded with a Communy "buyout" 4 ohm woofer (horn "a bit" closer to room corner)

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Karlsonator6 - L. Cao F6 graph from another room vs a Karlson 8 size coupler with 8 inch Crunch brand casr speaker

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Karlsonator6 - L. Cao F6 vs a one-off "SK8" coupler loaded with Eminence's Delta Pro8a

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L. Cao F6 fullrange speaker free air resonance vs its impedance in the Karlsonator6 prototype

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its an amazing little fullrange, and subjectively a lot louder in the midrange than Eminence's Beta10cx and somewhat louder than their 56oz magnet 8 inch DeltaPro8a midrange - plus L.Cao's F6 can probably reach 20K on-axis without a whizzer. It would be very nice for folk music - probably opera - things which don't require pounding bass - a subwoofer would fix things. There used to be a ferrite version of L.Cao's 8 inch speaker but dropped - it may still be made under a different name in China (?)

Here's the 8" ferrite L.Cao - used to see it on the Chinese marketplaces - can't remember if Nelson Pass auditioned a set or not (?)

http://www.onecaudio.com/LCao_eng.htm
 
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yeah conversations here always turn sideways. I have put a pa130 in a .53 box. The high end is nicer but the xki box kills it in the low end.

I wanted to see what the karlson 6 box was size wise. It was the largest box intended for a full range speaker?

So now I've burned some scrap wood up and I've got the double Xki boxes to play with.
 
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yeah conversations here always turn sideways. I have put a pa130 in a .53 box. The high end is nicer but the xki box kills it in the low end.

I wanted to see what the karlson 6 box was size wise. It was the largest box intended for a full range speaker?

So now I've burned some scrap wood up and I've got the double Xki boxes to play with.

Wow, you have built all of these and are burning the the 0.53x PA130-x K'nator? That's one of my favorites - true that bass on XKi digs deeper, but it's a very nice rich sounding speaker. Too bad no photos to share with us :(
 
most of the original Karlson were for fullrnage or coaxial woofer including K15. I'm not sure if there were any 18 inch fullrange or coax in the days of Karlson's K18. His K18 could run smaller drivers on adapter plates and had an upper compartment for tweeter and midhorn.

The full size Karlsonator, GregB's "Karlsonator12" is excellent with fullrange - the best I've heard Beta 12LTA vs open baffle and reflex. A helper tweeter is necessary with Beta 12LTA. (one KSH1005 would suffice) Also the best I've heard for Nirvana Super10. Currently, one of my K'nator12 has Eminence's little Beta10CX and their ASD1001 - it goes to ~38Hz and can play loud without cone jumping. I have more efficient 12" coax with 80oz magnet which would be about 6dB louder. IIRC, Karlsonator12 goes deeper than K15. I've run Nirvana Super10 in K15 which was also excellent.
 
WOW !!!!! I'm mightily IMPRESSED ! A true leader of the Mighty Karlson Army has arisen ! how does the double aperture cabinet perform? how about the over/under double driver single aperture cabinet? - how do both of those fare compared to the side-by side double driver K?

twp pym1298 and a K-tube might be punchy
 
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I like the looks of the ~triangular aperture on the over/under speaker - seems like that might sound clearer than a radial arc which blocks more of the upper speaker - ????

RJ type are another old idea probably worth exploring

Yeah I had the same thought but it is a lot more directional. I'm really curious to know how the different wings effect the sound. The ugly double arc one is just as clear, I think. It does look a lot better, though.
 
hiya, it is the xki the guy posted the dimensions for in one of these threads. I think it is a little mellower than my single xki box for those speakers. Or maybe I just executed it better, not sure. As you said somewhere before, it is much louder. I've only hooked it up to the little lepai amp so far and it is clear until the amp cuts out. Soon, 3116!
 
3116 sound 10X more powerful than the little Lepai :D - I'd go for a dual PA130XKi but want more treble power - plus like something which can hit real hard - K15 can do a lot more than its meager graph would indicate. Would a dual over/under 12 XKi work well? I'd be using some old pym1298 which like a kapp12a and unllike iowajosh, would have to depend upon washingtonjesse to make the cabinet:D

with regular K - what aspect do we want ? - Carl Neuser at times has favored "high aspect" - my K18 has nearly a 2:1 height vs width, but I think there's some 1/4 wave action giving a dB or so boost around 80Hz. I've run and tested it with the port in the center and split to two sidewall hugging ports. It sounded very good with a K-tube or topped with a Unity horn. I used to play it with a taiko drum beat - and 300 watt amp - could get a pretty good whack at the couch and not excessive cone movement.

A Karlsonator 10 smaller than Karlsonator12 is still on my list of wants as is the "Perfect K10" with something like a B&C 10. I do have a Celestion TF1020 which would make a nice cheaper cheerful 10 inch XKi/K10 within its 2mm xmax


the K-tube normally resided inside this coupler - you can see its mounting hole. It sounded very good - loved it on the Beatles and lots of opera - only have one cabinet as was built as an "experiment"

Its currently loaded with a vintage EV18B whose moving mass is less than 80 grams. I ran 18" in two other cabinets. A little K18 didn't go low but sounded great with a Smith Distributed Source Horn on top. I added an extra cavity attached to the top of the front chamber to reduce the amplitude of the cavity peak. MMJ incorporated that feature into his "KARLFLEX"

there are four thick dowel rod struts bracing the aperture and the removable rear panel has two strips of 1.5" high x 3/4" plywood on edge for bracing. There's a laminated curved reflector panel per 2nd and final "Acoustic Transducers" patent.

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