Soon to be tube driven line arrays

[xlr8]

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=351186394&albumId=402338

Just wanted to drop in here and show you folks the speakers we're building. They are certainly a work in progress. When the whole system is completed it will be an active 4-way setup with 2 st-70s driving the mid/tweets and and some sort of solid state amps driving the midbass and bottom. I've acquired some nice mahogany veneer to match the rack. The shelves of the rack in one of the photos are made of solid mahogany, although, I do not know which variety.

The sound these speakers make is very good. Results of initial testing show some real promise here! I'm using some of the very cheapest of components in my system, including DIY cat5 speaker wire, RG-6 innerconnects and DBX active crossovers and 1/3 octave EQ. The midrange section is currently being driven by what I'd initially considered a "questionable" amplifier, a basically stock st-70. Honestly, it makes me wish I had the cash to get the other 70 tubed and up and running, but the other one has a couple other problems aside from needing to be re-tubed. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_20 My original plan of going at these full force has been soured by forces I cannot control at this point. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_17

Thanks for looking, and hopefully I'll have this mess cleaned up sometime soon!!

[Vince]

Is that a ribbon tweeter? Interesting speakers. Keep at it. Vince

[nyazzip]

reminds me of pictures i've seen of the Grateful Dead's soundsystem from the mid 1970s.....
but i dunno, bigger ain't always better, is it? when you have that many speakers in the mix, i would suspect you'd be getting all kinds of phase/cancellation/imaging issues that a simple(r) system would avoid.
but, i dunno- nothing beats a 4x12" guitar cab, or better yet, 2 of em, although i hate to admit it. maybe i'm just jealous. tell you what though, i won't be jealous on Moving Day Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_07

[xlr8]

Vince,

Yes, they are ribbon tweeters that were pirated from a dying set of maggie MG3as that I bought second hand a few years back. I got tired of glueing the voice coils back to the mylar and decided to try an entirely new speaker instead.

nyazzip,

Yes, there can be nasty "comb filtering" effects when stacking drivers larger than about 2 inches like this, but the long tweeter or a long line of very small tweeters cancels this effect, according to Dr. Jim Griffin. It can also be somewhat tamed by what has been reffered to as "power tapering" the array, but I have not yet felt the need to do this. I am still tweaking however, so I may try it just to see what it sounds like.

So far, they really do sound better than anything I've owned to date. They sound sort of like electrostats, but much more lively. They will let you know if a source is any good or not really quick. They playback what is fed to them, no more, no less. They seem to be quite efficient. I don't feel they really need the level of power I'm talking about driving them with, but I like it loud sometimes.

Acoustic instruments sound the best so far. I have a buddy I play guitar with and we were sitting in front of them the other day playing with a song that was playing over these things. He stops in the middle of the song and says "Man! It sounds like Dom Williams is sitting right here!" That in itself says something to me, because this fella could give a rat's rear end about hifi stuff. I, however, am not ready to say that yet. I need to finish them before I try and draw a conclusion like that.