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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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Tweakers' Asylum Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Emailed the plans to you... posted by cdc on November 4, 2007 at 09:27:44:
Mine are simpler: just about 3 of the silver mica cap values that Al sourced for me and a single 20 Ohm resistor. The R value was determined by Al based on measuring the characteristics of my specific speaker cable. Didn't go for the Percy Audio better Rs that Al recommended.
I did not go into soldering, just twist nuts. I didn't use the silver spades, just tightened them into the posts with my cable spades and Herbie's post washer dealies. So I only have the little brother of yours. I did not shield them either.
This was the second set I used per Al's suggestions. First one had just one cap and a 10 Ohm R, but those were with Cat 5 DIY cables earlier.
Both sets worked great as you described.
When I first used silver mica cap arrays in R-Cs for AC filtering, per Al, I did experiment with shielding one of them. I'd read from another inmate that he liked it better. So I housed it in a piece of copper pipe and ran a ground wire from the copper to the ground pin on the plug, filled it with sand and sealed the top with a copper washer. I thought it worked a little better. Al was skeptical. By the time I'd switched to X-caps, I abandoned the shielding, but can't tell you that was the right decision there as I didn't compare.
The R-C arrays for the AC filtering are also what Al published. They replace silver mica cap arrays, that Al felt were too vulnerable. So the array of 4 different values of caps are all X-rated. Each cap value has its own 120 Ohm R, then the set are in parallel. I hand twisted together and clamped by screw into the plug, so again no soldering done. The plug is epoxied onto the end of a slip to thread 1.25" electrical PVC fitting. The wooden cap is epoxied onto the back. Inside it's filled with sand for mechanical damping and a little extra safety if it blows. Heat shrink on the threads in front for looks.
I've now experimented with 3 different value sets. Don't ask me the specific values of the caps, as I can't remember and they're too small to read off, but Al set me up with something like a factor of ten ladder. The caps are one for each of 4 descending values, then another type has the caps doubled at each value (the one shown), then another type with the caps tripled. In each case the cap(s)for each value have only the one R of the same value. So you can think of it as a 1X array, a 2X array, and a 3X array. Most of the ones I have are 2X and they're in all the available outlets adjacent to my rig. They work cumulatively.
Meantime, I just started experimenting with the sound of the 3X and 1X in the same system. Don't have an answer as yet, but there is a subtle difference I can detect. The idea here was to get as wide a range of cap values into the AC as available to me with the 4 values of X-caps I had on hand. My understanding - primitive and incomplete - is that it's like successively smaller openings in wire mesh as an analogy catching different size stuff, only in this case it's different HF freqs.
Only Al can explain all the complexities of this and he warns me that I'm oversimplifying this and it may not work as I think. So I'm playing it by ear, literally!
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Follow Ups
- Nice job; you went all out! - bartc 13:46:33 11/04/07 (0)
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