So this is a bit of a funny story really. Many years ago now (2007 IIRC) I built an audiophile system in my car. It comprised mainly of two Phoenix Gold amps, a large sub amp made by Marc Anthony (a Cerwin Vega rebrand) a full front stage of Clif Design mids (3.5" and 6") and a rear stage of Fujitsu Ten 6x9" components. Basically a guy who used to work for Eclipse (the American name for FT) sold me a set of prototypes. There were only ever five sets of these prototypes made. Then I sold my car and the system with it, but took out the 6x9s for some odd reason and lugged them back to the UK with me in a suitcase. I still have no idea why I did that, given I've never used them in six years. However having sold off a few things recently I've decided to actually use them. So last night I ordered myself a kit of stuff. Here are the speakers (on the left) Only mine have silk tweeters which were never used on the retail model. They also have different adjustable crossovers. I decided against building enclosures given live in a flat with no garden. I went with these, as the gray compliments the gray woven silk on the drivers (pic of that first) And the boxes. Some half decent cable. And one of those tiny Chinese amplifiers. I know it's not exactly audiophile grade but it is small enough to mount under the desk top. I will be using these speakers on my desk with my PC as speakers/monitors. I'll post some more pics soon but right now I'm itching to get out my solder iron
I'll be interested in how this turns out. I've still got the 6x9's from my old car build in storage but never bothered boxing them due to the lack of sensitivity of the drivers
Yeah I have to say that a lot of the 6x9s I've used over the years have been rather clumpy and hard to drive. It's weird because something compelled me to bring them with me when I left the USA. They sound truly incredible though. I'm not taking anything away from the Clif Design stages because they were breath taking, but these FTs are incredibly easy to drive. The cones are pressed silk composite and they weigh pretty much nothing. I've been looking at valve amps tbh. I know the little chinese thing is going to seriously hinder the speakers, but I'm not looking for overall volume (given I live in a flat). If the little Chinese number can put out a half decent sound at moderately low volumes without distorting then I will probably leave it be. I also have a set of alu Tannoy tweeters that a friend gave me, so I may chop them into the sides or something and buy a second amp at my leisure. That way the sound should disperse all around the room if I decide to play music And then there's the head unit I bought home with me. Infinity DIN unit with a tape deck and CD. The radio wouldn't work but again, this thing sounded so bloody good I couldn't bring myself to part with it. I got a 24 amp Dell SFF PSU and wired it up with the speakers and was going to build a rival to the Bose Waveradio but sadly it never came to be If the amp sounds crap I will probably build a small enclosure for the head unit and then jack into the multi CD line to give me an AUX in.
I have a similar amp, a Lepai 2020 powering a pair of bookshelf speakers for the TV in my bedroom. The PSU it came with was weak, but since giving it a better one i had spare it's been a fantastic bit of kit for the money.
Cool ! I have a serious Dell power brick that outputs 12v. I got it with a SFF system that died. If the PSU supplied is lame I can easily hack the Dell brick around to supply more amperage. I would buy a better amp but tbh I want it to be stealthy and not a big old lump. I may just buy an extra one and biwire the speakers using one amp for treble and the other for the main drivers.
yeah, the lepai ones apparently the psu being weak is a common thing, in some cases people have foudn it'll cut out and power off as you turn up the volume dial. The one i ended up using is from an old router, i think, and it's not particularly higher rated though it is much heavier and chunkier. and yeah, i got mine and screwed it to the corner of a chest of drawers which the TV and speakers sit on. the only thing i dislike is the blue LED lit volume knob, but it's behind the TV and speakers and only really visible from outside my window. There's a good article on tnt audio somewhere where a guy reviews one of the really cheap amps and finds that it's sonically very good, just stripped back to the bare function of amplifying a single analogue signal.
The cabinets came today. They're a lot more compact than they looked which is nice. I wanted to flush mount the tweeters into the cabinet but I just don't think there's enough room I'll have to surface mount them. I also don't think much of the binding terminals but I do have some Tannoy ones I can look at using I'm off to my mother's to collect all of the gear so I'll probably hunker down later with my tools and soldering iron and get to work I do want some padding for the inside though as I worry that the cabinets may be too small to give a decent bass drop.
Don't worry about it I can always just pop round my local cheap shop and buy a pillow It'll only cost me about £4 for a cheap one, and it's the same stuff inside
Nearly done ! I went over to Mum's yesterday and picked up the speakers. I also nabbed an old pillow for wadding So, mini log time. First up was rotating the cups in the back of the cabinets. Sadly I could not find the Tannoy ones booo You'll notice the cabinets are trapezoids. I have a bit of a thing for trapezoids as you'll see later Any way, a quick check to make sure the drivers fitted A relief. Cutting carpet with a jigsaw always ends in tears. So the biggest challenge ended up with how to mount the tweeters. I could not flush mount them sadly as there wasn't enough room so I had to surface mount them. This led to issues because the surface mounts supplied with the tweeters stick out a lot and are angled. Funny little cup things. I wanted them just straight on the surface, so a mod was needed. There are many ways of mounting the tweeters on this kit, and one is to mount them on poles in the center of the bass driver. Here is one of the mounts... And here is one of them after modding. What I did was cut it off using the Dremel, then drill three holes through it. One for the center screw which holds in the tweeter and two for bolts that go through the cabinet and have nuts on the other side. So you have to basically fit the two long bolts, screw the tweeter into the mount, push the bolts through the box on the completely tweeter assembly and then do the nuts up inside. This mod took a lot of thought, but finally I got the tweeters in. And then it was crossover time. The crossover has two modes. One uses the black chokes and one uses the white one. The black ones are for quality, where as the white one allows for more volume. I decided on quality so I removed the jumpers that set the WS (white one). Time for Mr Solder (the name of my solder iron). Time for a bit of soldering. Fit the crossover. Cut open the pillow I pinched from Mum's (it was mine) And tear off and fit the wadding For those that don't understand the wadding.. I will do my best to explain. When you have a small sealed box it's sometimes not the correct size for the woofer. With car woofers they have much stiffer spiders and surrounds (spider is the yellow diaphragm) and so like much bigger enclosures as they are used to working in literal 'free space' environments. Due to this the speaker can sound rather bassless. When you add the wadding it basically slows down the air flow inside the box, which slows down the sound waves and sort of 'tricks' the speaker into thinking it's in a bigger enclosure. Cool huh? So here they are, both assembled. Work time was about three hours. I then spent about an hour testing them on my Sherwood amp (circa 1998) that I use for the TV. They sound really nice, but then I kinda knew they would. Couple of non flash day time glory pics Yummy trapezoids ! Talking of trapezoids... I used to hover between being obsessed with audio and being obsessed with computers. Autistic people have to have that one thing they are obsessed with. Without it my equilibrium becomes very cloudy. So back in the 90s I was big into audio. Far more than computers because the internet was still in its early stages. Here is a shot of my old rig. Panasonic 3D0 used to supply the sound. Rogers E40 valve amp (I used to work there. This thing was worth about three grand) Soundmaster 400VZ wired to 1 ohm pushing 2kw Cerwin Vega Stroker (one of these) 1600w RMS. It has dual concentric spiders, the front one of which is fully adjustable. Crown 10" compression mids, 6" Rainbow mids (look in the cupboard flaps). Any way you'll note the Stroker was fitted to a trapezoidal folded horn which was built by yours truly I'll get some more pics up of the speakers finished (I have to fit the logos and am toying with using the grilles I have.. More to come soon !
Well crikey oh riley, the postman came with not only the amp but the speaker cable too Cable And the amp. And the power supply. Apologies for the inconsistency in the photos. The sun is playing peek-a-boo. I was chuffed to see it was 5 amps. That means no hacking around... I had to tag the wire as it was very hard knowing which was which so I tracked them and put a bit of heat shrink on the negatives.. And stripped them. Then soldered them... All done Got the amp out.. But wasn't happy with how it looked.. The writing looked appalling, so I dug out some old dinoc I had lying around.. And bingo bongo, ten minutes later.. That's better Time to put the badges on the speakers. I used glue... And start wiring it up And done. What truly left me in shock was not only how good this little amp sounded, but the balls it has. The sound it puts out is absolutely gorgeous, and it has enough power on tap to drive the speakers hard to make lots of noise. It even has a lovely deep warm bass to it too. I really couldn't be happier with it and I'd strongly recommend it.. It shipped from the UK, you can get them here... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/380724772807?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649 Video incoming...
They look really good. Id be tempted to get some kind of grill on them but thats just me and i know my niece would be poking them if it wasnt there. Makes me want to do silly things with car speakers again!
The grills stick out around two inches and have a center hole for the tweeter (there is an extra set of pole mounts that are really long) and thus look a bit weird. Thankfully there are no children around so they'll be semi safe. I may look at getting some different ones Just sitting here listening to Cole Porter's It's De Lovely. And it sounds it
Yeah I hear you on that. Sadly with a one bed flat with no garden it would be really hard to finish them in paint I can live with it.
