With the successful outcome of the newly developed 2-way stand mount speakers Scott and I have been busy designing a floor stander version using 2 x bass units with the same excellent ribbon tweeter. This will be a 2½-way design in a Bass Reflex front ported cabinet. I did post a sketch image of this on the stand mount thread.
Anyway whilst waiting on what finish the first customer of the new stand mount speakers wants, I have taken the time to start this build. Here is where I am up to:
These shall have a full face black leather finished front baffle. This is why you can see a recess created round the inside front of the cabinets so the finished baffle can be fitted in place after the main cabinets have been veneered and varnished. The main carcass of the speakers shall be finished in a (new to me) Tineo Veneer. I think this may also be known as Indian Applewood. Lynn spotted a sample of this last we were over at the veneer specialist and as it is different from the norm and has a unique grain structure I decided to take a chance and ordered a small bundle. This arrived last week.
next up is to start the veneering. More photos to follow.
Last edited by Toppsy on Tue Dec 20, 2016 12:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
They should have a bit more LF extension than the standmounts, but equally significant will be greater dynamic range the doubled cone area will provide. I'm looking forward to seeing the Tineo veneer -it's not often encountered (I've never knowingly seen any). I do like these ribbons too; providing you don't drive them too low, they sing.
OK finished the veneering of one speaker. This Tineo is certainly different. It has come out redder in colour than the small sample we had but in some ways I rather like it. I decided to oil these as this gave a richer tone to the finish with a semi-matt look. It should contrast rather well with the black leather front baffle. In real life it looks much more appealing than the photos suggest especially when the light catches it and shows all the subtle nuances of the grain structure.
Here are some photos I took in the new conservatory as the light is more natural there:
I having a break from building for the rest of the day and a welcome glass of wine or two. I should have the other speaker veneered tomorrow then I can start on machining up the front baffles.
More progress overnight and this morning. The front baffles are now complete and I have temporarily mounted the drivers and port tubes onto one baffle and temp placed this in the recess on the finished speaker. They look now so much together with the black of the front baffle and the black vains in the veneer contrasting rather nicely with the veneer overall. As said the front baffle is not fixed in place as I still have add the wool damping to the cabinet walls and the additional MDM-3 acoustic damping. These will be installed at a later stage when I have the pcb's for the XO'ers that Nick has very kindly offered to design for me based on Scott's filter designs.
Some photos:
My job for next week is to veneer the second cabinet and apply the finishes to this by which time I should have all the XO components from HFC and the XO boards.
If anyone who is in the process or near future of building some wooden boxes, be they speaker cabinets, turntable chassis or amp chassis and fancies some of this Tineo veneer I can sell you consecutive cut leaves at the trade price I paid. Leaves are standard veneer 0.6mm thick, 155mm wide x 1550mm long.
The hope is these will sound as good, if not better, than the stand mounts they are based on but with deeper bass and more dynamics, then they should be quite something. Certainly the simulations that Scott sent me based on his filter design show great promise but we won't know until I build the XO'ers and hook them up to the speakers and even then we may have to fine tune the filters. One cannot stress the importance of simulations and measuring the speakers when it comes to having a successful design. Tuning by ear alone can only go so far but measuring the speakers in room with a purpose designed and calibrated microphone through quality software and a decent soundcard is really the only way forward and can highlight the areas in the FR that need some work to make a good sounding speaker a better more integrated speaker. Nick showed me the benefits in using a mini DSP when it comes to developing a XO'er. Minor subtle changes to say a single inductor in the HF filter from using say 18AWG wire and upping this to 14AWG wire (same mH value) can make quite a difference to the attack on the HF.
Something Nick also suggested to me a while back now that it is not wise to develop a commercial speaker or a speaker one intends to sell to the public that has been voiced on a single DIY SET power amp as this will not be typical of the amplification the general hifi listener or customer will be using. The precept being that the speakers may work perfectly well on the DIY valve amp but fail to deliver on a typical SS commercial amp. So now I have several power amps from a NickG designed 300B SET to a Musical Fidelity A300 and a Conrad Johnson LP66S PP and a vintage Rotel integrated.
