almost done with my new M8a towers (1 Viewer)

[Andrew Pratt]

I finally finished painting the side cheeks for my new towers and have been glueing them in place the last 24 hours so here's some pictures to bring you all upto speed...sorry about the images its pretty dark in my HT room and I can't left these anymore to take them upstairs to the natural light. The sides were painted with numerous coats of various paints trying to get the right look. I first tried spraying on Rustoleum's "black" hammered paint which I couldn't get to look uniform (I generally don't like spray paints) I then ran out and the wal-marts were all out of the black so I tried a different brand (Tremclad) and their charcoal was silver so I then bought a can of the rustoleum hammered black and rolled on two coats which worked much better.

This one doesn't have a larger version but gives you some idea of how they look altogether.


Front view


here's how the grills turned out.


Here's a close up of the top showing the side cheeks and the nice ostrich leather. Its a little greener here then in real life due to the flash.

 

[Anthony_Gomez]

looking good

I like the leather deal. Unique to most DIY projects!


the center to center spacing looks really wide. Any reason behind it? Do let us know how they sound!!!!

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Ya just had to ask didn't ya Gomer...

 

[Andrew Pratt]

the center to center spacing looks really wide. Any reason behind it?

Read the 4th post in this thread for an explination why.

 

[Patrick Sun]

This speaker design has an ultra-low crossover point (around 1.25KHz IIRC) and very steep slopes (at least 6th order, 48dB/octave), and that allows for a "larger than usual/conventional" gap between tweeter and midwoofer. Jon Hancock designed them (he's in the HTF member list if you wanted to ask him more details of the project, or he might drop by one day).

Andrew, no felt around the tweeters?

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Patrick I'll be adding in felt to the grills at some point soon I just haven't got round to doing it yet. Also if anyone wants more details go here or heresince I have a bunch of links on my web site about the project.

 

[Anthony_Gomez]

Damn!!! 1.25khz!!! no wonder such a steep slope Why do you have to be so far up north :frowning: I'd want to give them a listen.

 

[ThomasW]

AudioXpress will be publishing an article detailing the design, development, and construction of these speakers. They are currently editing the copy for final approval. We don't yet know when the article will be published.

As a result of pending the article, we prefer that there be very limited technical discussion regarding the design. They (AudioXpress) can refuse to publish the article if in their eyes the design info has received too much advanced press.

In advance of the article, we provided construction info to a handful of interested persons. With this info was a agreement that they would not discuss any specific technical aspects of the design.

We are pleased that the 'beta' builders have provided positive feedback regarding the performance of the speaker, and that most have honored the nondisclosure agreement.

After the article is published; we will be pleased to discuss at length any and all aspects of the design. Believe me when I say it's not your typical 2-way......

Regard
ThomasW

 

[Andrew Pratt]

Anthony the designer of these speakers (Jon - see link to HTGuide above) lives in california and I know he has a set of these that you could listen to if he's available (he's extremely busy)

I tried to get these pictures to link over to some higher resolution versions like I did in this thread but for some reason it didn't work. Anyway if you go to the original thread and click any of the images it should open a new window with full resolution versions if you want to see more detail. There's also some pictures of them been built.

PS

Why do you have to be so far up north

I often wonder the same thing

 

[Jon Hancock]

Having pretty much recovered from some back surgery in February, I've been pretty much buried alive now at work, and do have a lot of travel coming up, including overseas.

I have a set of the MKIV's, but they're stashed away while I'm working on a new system and re-oganizing and packing for a possible move later this year.

I expect to be be at the Northern CA DIY meet the end of May, with a tower version of this system as described here

As you can see from that thread, I've got a busy milestone list to complete for these to be done on time. All parts on hand, so it's just a question of setting aside some hours every weekend...



Obviously, a few details of this new variant are different from the original bookshelf design, but the midwoofer driver and crossover concepts are descended from the same lineage....



And yes, they look a lot like a certain brand of speaker some folks may be familiar with, but there's a long story behind that, and why I'm not in the least embarassed about it- and why the original founder of Avalon at times has introduced me as the "grandfather" of that marque.

While the bookshelf 8" two way can be readily built with the minimum of a sabre saw and a drill (router recommended, table saw useful), this other variant would be more of a challenge...



Best regards,

Jon

 

[Chris Carswell]

Jon Hancock - Marsh?
BTW, what Motorcycle/s were or are you into?
How's Tibor ???
I'll email if need be.
-Chris

 

[Jon Hancock]

Hi Chris,

Tibor is doing pretty well, fairly happy with his MTM variants- they're really nice, with Zebrawood veneer!

I'm something of a sport bike fan, have an old CBX, too, and a Hawk 650 V twin. Lusting after the new Interceptors... but spending money on speaker parts and tools!

-Jon