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RE: Old Fashion Walnut 2.5R

Posted by Hoshi (A) on October 22, 2010 at 08:41:32

In Reply to: RE: Old Fashion Walnut 2.5R posted by RickeyM on October 21, 2010 at 19:36:31:

Hey Rickey,

Isolation of the ribbons can be fairly easy and straightforward. I simply built a separate base unit for them. I couple of key points I would recommend to anyone else thinking of doing this.

The challenge is getting the distance from the ribbon to the mid-bass driver correct within factory tolerance - specifications. I think if you measure the distance between the edge of the ribbon closest to the mid-bass driver, the spacing is around 3 inches. Because of this, the piece of wood between the edge of the ribbon on the tweeter board and mid-bass driver ends up being about an inch in width. Mine ended up being just shy of an inch. You will also end up being around two inches on the tweeter side of the mid-base unit. In order to make up for the mass lost with an inside board down to 2 inches; I thought I needed to make up for the loss of wood and ended framing the back side of the mid-bass driver. I also drove screws into the actual driver and did not rely on the rear fames to hold the drive in place like many here have done. I must confess that most of this was not done according to plan. If I would have factored all this in from the start, I may have just used thicker wood; 8/4 instead of the 4/4 that I used. I would however recommend using 4/4 for the tweeter board since you’d want to keep the front and back of the ribbon at least flush with the frame.

I ended up with a 4 inch wide tweeter board and base. I did not check the wood after I originally ripped, routed and sanded. It sat in my garage for a couple of weeks and the climate made the boards warp a bit. This is not really visible at distance but I know it’s not perfect. Now, when I line it up next to the base driver it does not aligned perfectly. If I would have double checked it before final prep, I could have fixed the imperfection. I would advise that once you are done cutting, routing and sanding, the tweeter board is stored inside the house to prevent the wood changing due to climate variation.

Also, mount the “L” bracket taking into consideration the weight of the ribbon tweeter. I mounted my “L” bracket pretty much under my ribbons and attached the struts next to the ribbons and mounted it to the wood base. I just thought I looked better this way. I didn’t realize how heavy that tweeter unit is and it now throws the entire ribbon unit off balance. If I were to do it over again, I’d mount the “L” bracket on the opposite side of the ribbon driver itself to give the unit better balance and stability. I had to use some bricks and a small bag of sand to give the tweeter unit better balance. Also, I used four adjustable spikes under both mid-bass and tweeter assembly. I was almost going to use three instead of four spikes on the tweeter base and I’m glad I didn’t. The spikes are adjustable and will enable you to make minor adjustments to level things out. I used Parts Express part number 240-670 which are excellent in quality, give you the right height and have the right price.

Those ribbons are pretty amazing. A cool feature that I did not realize until I started to play music is that the ribbons actually dance with the music. At moderate to loud volume levels, you can see the silver metallic ribbon move with the music.

I hope I didn’t scare you off with all the detail. Heck, I did all the hard work for you. I will report back in a week or so to let you know how things sound once my crossovers are fully broken in. Now go just do it so you can enjoy them during the long winter months.

Hoshi

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