Full range Speaker project

[Macca]

I built cabinets with the above and am very pleased with the results. I used the plans from commonsence audio. They are doing 20% off at the moment if you are quick(till 1/11/09 I think)
http://www.commonsenseaudio.com/

Clive Smith

What cabs did you use, Clive?

[steve dixon]

i'm with clive, i've already built the commonsenseaudio ambience cabinets and installed an 8" firing up and a 12" front firing audio nirvana drive units. i've had plenty of wammers and hifi fiends listen and not had a negative word, i also exhibited at scalford hall and had loads of very nice comments with many people leaving vowing to 'get stuck in' straight away.

i wouldn't consider buying a commercial pair of speakers ever again. if your anywhere near preston you can come and check them out, to get a better idea of what you might expect.

if you read the reviews on the common sense website you'll see them favourably compared to speakers costing many thousands of dollors, my rationale was that if 90% of that was bull then i'd still end up with speakers that would compare to a £5,000 pair of commercial speakers.

good luck
steve

[Ali Tait]

I'm no expert either! As I said,if you ask on the Audio-Talk forum,you will get all the help and info you need.Another good thing about these,you can get all the drivers for about 300 quid,and then all you need is a bit of birch ply.Nick has since added supertweeters,but these are not a fortune either.If it is a big sound you are after,I'd go for the sachiko horns,fantastic slam and attack from these.A pair of these with a 2w valve amp was more than enough to fill a 30 meter+ room at a previous diy meet.

[Puffin]

I have some of these that I picked up a few years ago for £25!!! They were hardly marked and so not used much. I intend to take the back off and run them like an open baffle with the 15"bass units run actively.

[John]

Sounds an intersting project

[SPS]

my view is vintage drivers are the way to go, but you need to know what you want..

the goodmans 201/301's fetch high prices for good reason, but they do need something at the top as previously said, the 201 more so than the 301
that can get expensive too, a good 98 db tweeter is not cheap.

the reason is they way they are made.. they are designed for less watts, so the voice coils are lighter, and shorter, and they have much less xmas ( forward and back movement) this means more of the the signal is converted to cone movement .. i'm not sure how much of advantage this is though in reality... i'm using some 600watt bass drivers and they work very well..

modern speakers including many 95 dbs+ ones stll are capable of taking 500 watts upwards.. in the pro music scene this is the fad..

the other point is the resonant freqency, many 12" pro speakers are around the 55 hz mark, The old goodmans are around the 30-35 hz mark as a comparison so will go slightly lower, the role off of a speaker is partly determained by this..
you can't win though, the higher the efficiency, the more the driver tends to role of the bass... and that's another can of worms how to get over that..



cheers
steve

[Marco]

Trouble with most vintage full range units is they are lacking top end, seem to excell in mids..

That can often be resolved by upgrading the crossover components. My Tannoy Monitor Golds were a little like that with the original crossovers, but opened up massively with new caps, resistors and inductors in place of the old stuff

Now there is sparkle and clarity at the top end to die for. It was like having a completely new pair of speakers!

Marco.

[Macca]

Well I've e-mailed for a price on some Audio Nirvana 12 '' as these seem to be exactly the sort of drivers I had in mind.

I may well go with their Open Baffle design as this will be a really straightforward build and if I don't like it I can always put the drivers into a full enclosure instead.

I'll report as and when...

Cheers all

[Ali Tait]

I've heard the smaller Nirvana drivers in OB's and they are very good.I think you'd be happy with them.

[Stratmangler]

No lack of bass from OB's to my ears.Try asking Nick at Audio-Talk about his,using an Eminence Beta 12-inch and a Fostex full range.They sound great.Another choice may be the Sachiko double horns.These are a large cabinet,and use a Fostex 8-inch driver with a Fostex supertweeter.A huge sound and very sensitive too.

I agree - Nick's OB's sound great.

The Sachiko's are unbelievably good - I heard them driven by a 6em7 single ended amp (1 watt output) and they did everything effortlessly. Hearing them playing seriously heavy rock was a revelation. The only thing I can say against the Sachiko's is that to call them large is an understatement - IMO they're bloody enormous.

Chris