Support Our Troops..

so upon arriving home from Seattle (yep, I will get to that soon), I was greeted by this:











check out that Basie line-up! I wish we still supported our troops like this - with 16" vinyl!

Me

A German in NY

After CES, Frank swang by for a few days of fun and I was able to take him to hear a few systems.  Some of the pics he took arrived in my inbox so here they are.

 The centerpiece of one of the systems was a pair of Steve Berger's "Bronze 50" amps and our host broke out the "good stuff" for our listening. (click the above for higher res for your desktop)

The system was nicely tucked into a Downtown Loft and it is still a work in progress but still sounds wonderful.

The other pictures range from the abstract to the silly.

And Finally, the night before I met Frank, I watched Ghostbusters with the boys and had to document that the building we passed was real.

Cheap Labor the USA.

Sure everyone in the corporate world uses and abuses interns for free labor.  In order to compete in this local economy, sometimes you need to get a bit creative and bend the rules a bit. Below are pictures of recent production from the kitchen table....ummm I mean factory of metalwork that needs to go out tomorrow for plating.

 Worker Leo who I assure you is at least 18 assembles a motor.

Worker Isaac who is most certainly 16 assembles a step up housing

The workers stand proudly by their creations

Next comes the QC inspection by highly trained outside consultants.

When the QC experts approve the workers are allowed to celebrate for 1 minute.  This celebration can be in the form of dance or Spongebob.  Tonight they chose dance.

I must admit that is it a bit tough to make sure the workers show up every day and all it takes is a little bit of "American Ingenuity" and my time proven method assures a happy worker ready to start work at 8AM every morning.

OK robert... you can make your CPS comment now :-)

All Washered Up. I Must Be Nuts.

In getting ready to get some metalwork to the copper plater I ran into a snag that has been bothering me for some time.  I hate washers that are substantially bigger than the head of the nut they are designed for.  Below is a typical 1/4" washer and a 1/4-20 cap nut.

To get around the issue I simply went to a 6mm washer which has a much better fit.

Alas the 1/2-13 cap screw looks even worse with its mating washer.  It is the lathe to the rescue helping be convert a washer with a more appropriate OD for a better "fit"

 

 

 It still didn't feel right to me so I opted to try a button headed screw and ended up with the same mismatch

The reworked undersized washer was next and has the best feel for me thus far so I made up 10

All of this reminds me of the fun I used to make of Sean for having to turn down all kinds of screws to meet Franks aesthetic for the Artemis Labs TA-1  The more I think of it, the more I actually feel I may be nuts.

while I was measuring....

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time to send an early Philips Norelco 9710 back to Dr. Low Mu... they are fun, but not really crisp... a steal of a deal when they were US$20... killer for just making music... not too loud.. not expecting the ultimate...


so I measured them.. I had to... it needs about two cubic feet instead of this one cubic foot box, but you can quickly see why people like them.. as my friend Lenny says, "dashboard sound"... that memory of driving around on a beautiful day and your favorite song comes on the radio...

just another data point...

Me

Lowthers are on sale....

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I was talking to Jon about some things... and he mentioned a sale.. 20% off....

Link to Lowther America sale



this makes a PM6A a pretty good deal... I need to ask if that applies to cones and baskets.. (evil grin)....

Me

1 meter auto-interconnect-formers

A friend wanted to give the modules a listen and I always say the easiest way to give them a whirl is to simply cut an interconnect in half and solder it to the boards. 

Then all you need is any old thing to mass load it.  In my typical style i looked around until I found something I could recycle.  It may not be pretty but it certainly is functional and musical to boot!

RCA MI-1432-A Field Coil Woofer

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greetings...

I am just trying to post some rough numbers on the 1432's... when I called Steve Schell and he did not have any published numbers, I figured I should just take some and post them... I suspect the Q numbers are quite good... as should be Fs... but the Vas was not working properly into my test box.. so I had to use the slightly less accurate added mass method..

so.. for what they are worth, here you go:

Some Teflon capacitors for the LCR RIAA corrector....

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one of the beautiful things about using dave's discrete inductors for riaa (besides the fact that they are 80% nickel!) is that you can choose your own capacitors... none of this "riaa in a can" business that you get from other companies....


so here are some shots of the caps I use... true foil and teflon... silver leadouts... and potted in wax.... the best I have found so far....


Peace,
Me

Snow Jobs and the pyramids.

Snow removal and ice have occupied much of my time so I thought to look to the Egyptians for their wisdom.

I present you with a substantial amount of 80% nickel for a 10-10-300B amp.

I'll admit that full bandwidth 80% nickel IT's and OT's are a bit above the mark but I have to say I was so pained to take the OT's out of circuit after the listening test that I had to do another pair to replace them.

Unfortunately the 80% 300B outputs are only good for an honest 3-4W@50hz and that is what brought up the mini-pyramid approach for a 15W full range 304TL on 49% cores.

Stax Records

A month or two back, a bunch of texans were in town to pick up some horns and generally just take up space in my listening room... so I made them get out and about the town... and here are some snaps from our visit to Stax Records...


The original Stax building was torn down, but thankfully a group of locals rebuilt it properly. The original recording space, which was just the old small theatre, was rebuilt. They also built a really nice music school next door.. and the above typical rural southern church is an original that they moved piece by piece to the inside of the museum... they flushed out the rest of the property with museum exhibits and a record shop... nice!


If you are unfamiliar with Stax (I am not sure how anyone who is interested in music could not be aware of Stax, but...) then think Motown with an edge to it... some things were laid back, but think Booker T's Green Onions or anything by Otis Redding... there are a lot of heavy names from Stax, but I have recently been really digging Ruby Johnson... how she is not a household name is beyond me.... have a YouTube listen here


and then there is the obligatory audiogeek content... wow.. they had a large format Altec system.... apparently not really used, though... it was "restored" for the museum... ouch... veneered... no compression driver.. and a cheap plastic 12" in the horn... man, what a shame... I really need to volunteer to turn this into a working audio display... I do know some of the people involved in making the museum happen.. I guess I need to finally add it to my "to do" list...


and this is what they actually used for monitors... it is amazing that their records sounded as good as they did! Inside one cabinet is a jensen woofer... in the other, an Altec... then they are upside down... and the horns are in the ports... man.. I could not believe my eyes when I first saw this a few years back...

and finally, there is that... as you all know, I am not into "bling"... but I would totally cruise in that car.. the super plush white fur... the huge gold grille... that color! yeah, people still talk about Isaac Hayes cruising down McLemore in that car.. an inspiration for kids in the neighborhood...


there is a box set of Stax singles... it is truly amazing.. if this music is your style, then I highly recommend it...

Peace,
Me

CES 2011 - the big Western Electric system....

time to write up the big system before I forget...


Papa joe brought me in to help with setup as he knew they had a big system they wanted to share and a "small" room at CES. Silbatone thinks of CES as just a Munich warmup, so we were not really expecting to get it just right.. more of a test drive... but we knew if everything fell into place, we could have incredible sound. I tell people all the time that horns are the ultimate, but that it could take years, yes, *years*, to get them sounding just right... with all of the resolution and dynamic ability, big horns are walking a tight rope... and this system was not any different... details to follow, but we had a monumental task of getting it going in a day or two...

so now the gear...


up on the top were the WE 597a's... yep, real ones... single WE oil cap bringing it in...


the midrange horn was also genuine WE... the 24... the 24 is a strange horn... it has a very good profile... good length.. mouth size.. pattern... it looks like a multi-cell, but it is not... it has dividing vanes.. but they are not breaking the horn into discrete sections like the 26, a true multi-cell... it sounded absolutely stunning on many recordings.. occasionally when it got really loud (and these guys definitely cranked - one morning my ears were ringing!)... think dynamic peaks on basically low level music... you could hear some distortion.. it was the vanes vibrating.. you could feel them... most of the time, with moderate SPL's, you would never notice.. from what I heard on Sunday morning with Art Pepper, I would say that it is the best vintage horn I have yet heard....


the driver on the mids is from GIP... it is a reproduction 594A.. this particular one has had the steel doubled as well as the field coil.. pole piece is permendur.. no word on whether it is a solid 3" pole piece of permendur (or hollowed like pipe)... I know everyone is permendur crazy, but I am not... dave and I have our reasons, but I will say that this driver did not scream or shout.. instead it did a pretty good job of telling you what was in front of it...


now the double loaded horn with wings... man, that driver was impressive.. I am not a huge fan of moving from a super lightweight metal compression driver diaphragm straight to a paper cone, much less an 18" one, but I did not hear any of the nasties that normally drive me from the room on direct radiators... I tend to like direct radiators at the back of a long, straight horn... the horn load seems to damp out the paper distortions.. they just cannot make it out of the horn.. so this short front horn really did a good job of blending well to the 24 horn... great work, Silbatone... I would not have believed it had I not heard it myself...


now the rear loading.. this is where we clearly had some issues with the speaker... there was plenty of path length... good mouth size... we should have had indredible bass.. and Joe says they did in Korea... I live with bass horns every day (a little more than eight foot straight horns)... and we just were not getting the bottom we should have... midbass was fast, detailed, weighty... very, very good... and the drivers were working.. my only guess is that when the cabinets were disassembled to be veneered and "prettied up", they never got the compression chamber sealed up properly.. when we frantically took the horns apart on friday morning, that is what appeared to have happened... but we just had no time... plus, as Joe said, we had no choice in room placement.. the speakers had to go right *there*... and there only... so, we were hurting down low...


electronics... well, another one of those not quite right situations... the LCR (go slagle nickel chokes!) sounded very good... maybe a touch lean, but I am pointing to the van den hul cartridge as the LCR is selling quickly in Korea after a few "shootouts"... the dcs digital had more midbass... but the phono was passing music through... much more natural that the digital, even with the midbass leanness... so the phono gets an "A"...

the DA100 amp... it was completed only a day or two before it had to ship... so not only was it brand new, but it had slightly different transformers in it than the unit that Silbatone was using back home... ouch.. and it sounded like transformer ringing to my ears... the midrange was very clean... the bass control was great as well... but the highs... well, it just needed the new iron... back in Korea, they say it sounds like the voice of god... I believe them... so no idea why we had problems... shipping? just needed playing time? no idea.....


so what did we do? well, ever hear a western electric 300b? they sound pretty damn amazing from 300 up, right? so, bi-amping was the call... I tried the line level crossover one night around 3am... but everyone else had crashed and it seemed to have some issues.. it was thrown into one of the six (size of my volvo wagon) crates as an afterthought for CES, but I think it would have helped had they finished it up and tweaked it... so we bi-amped through the original western electric speaker level crossover...


and with that configuration, we had great music... saturday and sunday was fabulous.. just one blip on saturday with some noise from an interconnect, but we had music..


I think at least thirty people have asked me what I thought about this system.. so here it is... most people took a look and did not listen... they laughed and walked off.. that is ok.. I am used to that happening in my show rooms... some stood at the back and made up their minds that it was not good... that was a mistake.. people think you have to get far away from a horn... I do not find that to be the case.. this room was the perfect example... in the back, the sheetrock walls were vibrating.. you could hear how the power of the speaker was literally shaking the walls... it made the rear standing positions muddy and garbled... even the back row sitting was not so hot in my opinion.. I liked the front row... especially off to the right.. when you get out of the middle chair, you switch from listening for soundstage artifacts and settle more into the music... and that is what this system did well.. played music.. the real strength of a system like this gets far past your checklist.. top end extension? nope.. bottom end extension? nope... coltrane placed back two feet and three feet to the right of the speaker? I did not check... when the orchestra cranks up for the crescendo does the system scale right along with the instruments? yep, sure did... how do we measure dynamic power? liveliness? I think that is what we have lost in most modern hifi.... it is easy to quantify soundstaging and frequency response.. even amateurs can quantify that.. but subtle dynamic cues are tough.. until you relax.. tap your foot.. enjoy... we had kids in their twenties crying.. and gentlemen in their 80's crying.. so I quantify that as a win.. even if I know there is a LOT more potential in there...

sorry for the ramble..

Peace,
Me