Dali Ikon ribbon tweeters from eBay

[Juha]

I decided to try my luck with some Dali tweeters from China. The product arrived as registered air-mail from Peking. It only took 10 days. Tweeters were in original factory package.
These appear to be the real thing. They are featured in large Dali Ikon speakers from 2006 onwards. Tweeters are combined cloth dome and ribbon. They are available on ebay:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/pair-Famou...711204#vi-desc

I tested with a multimeter. All elements had uniform resistance. To test how they sound like I connected the the tweeters on old 80's Genelec passive boxes. These have decent looking crossover circuits. Original woofer Peerless 8 inch, tweeter was Audax HD 100 d25. The Audax sound is not smooth, it has too much distortion.

Well, was it any good. It was fantastic for just 50 GBP. Not as good a my Magneplanar 2.5/RT. Some Steely Dan and streaming JazzFM sounded good.

A bit too much sibilance. I found info on Dali crossover at http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/Dali800.htm. I will try some resistors to bring down the level of the ribbon tweeter.

Also tried some speaker analysis software to see problems in response. These are difficult to use. Uncalibrated mike does not help (used decent AKG). Any suggestions on simple analysis software?

Will report back soon.

[HighFidelityGuy]

They look interesting. So can the ribbon and the dome be wired separately or are they hard wired together?

Also, I love the way the seller says they got them "in a special way"?

[Juha]

Ribbon and dome tweeter are wired separately. They have standard wide/narrow clips.

Sound is open and airy. Soundstage good. Listening with Squeezebox Classic, Wellemann K8020 Tube Preamp, Quad 522.

[HighFidelityGuy]

Thanks, Juha. Are you running the domes and the ribbons or just the ribbons?

[Juha]

I connected dome and ribbon in parallel. The original Audax tweeter is not connected. The Audax tweeter is 8 ohms. Dali tweeters are also 8 ohms.

According to spec dome tweeter is 3 khz to beyond 20 khz, ribbon 14 khz to beyond 30 khz. Without filter the ribbon starts way below 14 khz. Dome is a bit nasal sounding. I'll try to get some resistors tomorrow.

The sound is phenomenal. I just slapped the unit on a random crossover / speakers.

[HighFidelityGuy]

Ok thanks.

[Folkboy]

Late night mind ramblings...

Could something like these be used with Fostex FE206 (Tony Gee's Solo 206) horns? I know people add supertweeters (like Fostex T90A) to the design, but could these be an affordable alternative. Also, would they need putting in a box or on a stand for on top of the horns?

[Ali Tait]

There is an affordable Fostex supertweeter that works well with their full range drivers. May need an L-pad to pad it down to the sensitivity of the main driver though-

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fos...2&ved=0CF0QsAQ

[Juha]

I am still working on Dali Ikon tweeters.

After some initial experimentation there was a small accident. I got speaker cables crossed and fried my Quad 522. Yes, yes, you should never fiddle with live speaker cables. I am sure most of you have similar experiences.

Well the Quad went to service. A local shop found that 4 of the 8 main transistors were shorted. The original RCA transistors are not available. All 8 had to be replaced with DaDa Electronics recommended substitute. In Estonia this cost 90 eur for labor and 50 eur for the 8 transistors.

On my test system the Ikon dome tweeters sounded a bit too prominent. So I did an L-Pad to attenuate 2 db with two resistors. Also installed a suitable 1 uF capacitor on the ribbon tweeter. Sounds even better now.

This is good fun. But fiddling with the crossover will never end.

[Welder]

Hi Juha

I’ve used this for speaker building for a while now.
http://www.speakerworkshop.com/

There are more complicated and more accurate applications out there but they cost money, sometimes lots.
You will of course need a decent microphone, preferably two.
An impedance test jig is also a great help.

My view is, there comes a point when the measuring has to stop and you need to start listening to the speakers in the environment you’re going to use them in.
I find Speaker Workshop is perfectly adequate to get you to that “listening” point.