Ric's Speakers and more.....much more.
My last pair of speakers were highly modified Gallo 3.1s. They had no xover on the midranges, damped baskets on the midranges, damped spheres, hardwired drivers using PCOCC wiring on the midranges and silver wire in cotton for the tweeter, Teflon Bypasses across a pile of Auricaps for the main cap, no binding posts, and the woofers were put in separate 80lb boxes (the ones shown below). Pretty fair sound!!! he he. However, being the ever tweek, I was bored, so decided to sell them and make a pair of open baffle 3 ways using 4 carbon fiber drivers that were Anthony Gallos rejects for the 3.1. I figured they were probably still fine. It is no wonder he did not use them....they measured a serious peak around 3K and were unusable.....so, I was left without a speaker and had only my modified Vifa tweeter....so, I looked around the net and found a driver at the GR Research site that looked like it might work with no xover and ordered a pair overnight. I mounted them in my 80lb. contrained layer boxes and mounted the tweeter on top and within 2 weeks of tweeking equalled and even bettered the Gallo speakers.......considering this is a $45 woofer and a $27 tweeter and only a cap and resistor on the tweet for xover....this is seriously cheap and seriously good. Here are the details:
GR Research M165 6.5 inch woofer. Back of basket damped with EAR SD40AL. Deflex Magnapad Gold pads on the back of the magnet. The magnet wrapped once with pure cotton paper and then wrapped with ERS material. A three eights inch diameter circle of felt glued to the very tip of the dust cover.
Vifa D27TG-35 dome tweeter with the back of the tweeter cut off, its magnet wrapped in cotton paper and ERS material.
Xover.....nothing on the woof/mids and all that is on the tweet is a resistor combo of 2 Caddock MK132 10 ohm resistors bypassed by a 20 ohm nude Vishay resistor (all three resistors paralleled) and then a 2.7uf cap combo consisting of a 2.2uf GE poly cap, a .47uf Sonicap and a .1uf Dynamicap.
Wiring is solid core PCOCC 18 gauge on the woof and a combo of naked solid core PCOCC 18 in cotton on the ground of the tweet and solidcore Wonderwire in cotton on the hot of the tweet.
The tweeter is set back 2 and one eighth inch for time aligning. The entire front of the speaker is felted.
The tweeter is mounted from the rear through a flared cut out on a three quarter inch thick piece of highly refined particle board. It is nailed on the bottom to another piece of highly refined particle board that acts as the base of the tweet. Between the base of the tweet and the woofer box is four pieces of microsorb.
The woofer box is made from two different thicknesses of highly refined particle board with visco elastic damping glue (Swedac) between the layers (you can use Green Glue). It is cross braced using the same combo inside in both directions. The cabinet was originally a dual cabinet for two 6.5 inch woofs. The total internal volume is around 1.4 cubic feet. A port is made out of 2 inch inside diameter PVC pipe and is 4 inches long. This tunes the speaker in the cabinet to around 38 hz. The inside of the box has deflex panels and long hair wool in it.
No binding posts. Biwired and hardwired. See pics below. You can make this speaker look as good as you can imagine. You could make the tweeter baffle smaller and more cooly curved, etc. The woofer box could be done anyway you like with exotic woods, veneers, paint or whatever. This speaker is something that I put together quickly to give me great sound. I don't have any WAF to deal with. So, if it sounds great that is first in my book. However, my next open baffle speakers will be finished mucho better.
You can see the over 2 inch set back of the tweet from this angle. Tweeter mounted from rear of tweeter baffle.
Notice the small piece of cotton paper keeping the copper wire from touching the ERS material. You can see my cap and resistor combos here and yes, you must use the cotton ties along the wire for best sound.....don't want any nasty resonances. Also notice the piece of Microsorb that is sticking out from under the tweeter base.
Not pretty, but oh so sweet sounding. The total cost of the speaker if you made it exactly this way (finishing it better no doubt) would be somewher around $5-600. I thought it was cheaper but still that ain't a lot of cash for a monitor that is 88+db sensitive, easy to drive, and sounds as good as most any monitor under $5000.....yup it is that good. However, as good as this is....for very little more you can make it mucho better. I was going to do this but will be doing something even more dynamic shortly but here goes:
Three way version of above that has open baffle midrange: If you use one of these woofs in a ported box like shown above and then another one on an open baffle above it with the tweeter above it you can get mucho better midrange. Nothing like an open baffle midrange. You would use something like a 7mh coil on the woof, nothing on the open baffle woof and the same combo as above on the tweeter. This would be crazy transparent in the midrange. If you wanted more bass inpact and sensitivity you could use 2 woofs in a box, 2 woofs on an open baffle and then the Vifa in between the mids or on top and you could then get rid of the resistor on the tweet.
My next speaker: fully open baffle and biamped: What I plan on doing is to use this 6.5 inch driver on an open baffle with the Vifa tweet above using my current 25 watt super amps and then have 2 Eminence Alpha 15As on an open baffle below it running from 40 hz to 200 hz. They would be crossed over using a coil and notch filter. I will show the circuit when I am done. The Eminence woofs will be driven by some 25 watt chip amps. I will be using a Behringer equalizer on the bass to make the bass within plus and minus 2 db at listening position for super clean bass. Later I will equalize the bass to give me bass into the 20s but will then need more powerful amps on the woofs. The midrange will be set back (time aligned) from the woofers and the tweeter will have the same setback as shown above. I plan to have this speaker done sometime in Nov. or Dec.