tromprof

I bought a new SL-1200 MKII new from Amazon a couple of years ago when the had them for around $300. I don't play a lot of records anymore but I get a smile on my face every time I use it; what a nicely made piece of equipment! I will give it to the kids in 30 or 40 years when it is time to go into the old folks home.

I don't think you would want to spray the insides, it would decrease the volume of the horn, and if you didn't like the change, then what? If the bass bins are vibrating, perhaps adding more bracing at the opening of the horns would help. It is really hard to redo a perhaps less than stellar build.

I have always been drawn to the sound of Tannoy speakers. I owned a pair of Tannoy System 12 studio monitors and to me they sounded like a nice pair of Forte size Klipsch speakers, just more restrained. BTW, I always thought Klipsch was "hi end." I guess that shows were my working musicians income bracket is. []

The website ( http://billfitzmaurice.net/ ) also has a forum that shows a number of builds. If you do this my advice is go slow and think ahead, it will save you time and wood. It is well worth the effort though, nobody sells a sub made as well as I made mine and you would need to spend $2000 to get this kind of performance and sound quality. It is a seamless transition from the bottom end of the La Scalas to the sub on music, and turned up a little,completely theater-like or better for movies.

Graceful is a hard adjective for me to apply to the sound of a speaker. Music can be graceful, a performance can be graceful, a phrase can be graceful. All a speaker can do is either let those qualities through or muddy the water. For me my K-horns let grace through where it is properly recorded. And for a big speaker, it also gracefully hides quite nicely in the corner.

I had the engineer friend and his wife over for dinner tonight. Afterward played the Balrog scene from Lord of the Rings and the exploding moon from Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country. Needless to say we all had a good time and a good laugh. Although he is not an audio guy he planning on incorporating a sub into his next house (being an engineer he plans ahead, and I am sure it will it will be truly part of the house). As far as plans, those interested in the tuba subs need to go to: http://billfitzmaurice.net/.

If you have a little experience this build is not super hard. The engineer friend is mostly to keep people like me from doing stupid things requiring the constant re-cutting of pieces, and the great shop keeps me from having to buy those wonderful clamps (which are worth more than I have in the sub) and a good table saw. If I was going to do this again on my own, a table saw would be a must buy, I don't think a circular saw would it do very well.

Thanks! I used General Finishes water based stain from Rockler, we have are lucky enough to have a store nearby. The color is "Shaker Maple."

I wish I had taken a photo of the Behringer when I was doing RTA. It is very strong down to 25hz, falls off after that but I can still hear the 20hz test tone quite clearly.

Stiff and heavy! I guess around 80 pounds.

Yes, but it will be a pain. I wound up caulking all around the driver because of a leak so I hope it never becomes nesc.

Finished and in place! A nice water based stain, and several coats of a wipe on polyurethane. I also had a 1/4 inch glass top made for it. I am using a 300w "Bash" subwoofer amp with the crossover around 90htz and a Berhinger DEQ2496 to even things out. Music is fantastic, and it is really fun to turn it up a bit for movies. The Lord of the Rings was indescribable, the whole house was buzzing. []

The business end. Sub on its side.

A good view of the underside.

Driver installed. We decided to go ahead and put it in before attaching the top so it would be easier to get to all the bolts.

Before the top goes on

As I mentioned earlier, my friend has a nice shop. Take a look at those clamps!

Good overhead shot.

The gluing begins! We used PL adhesive as recommended. We also used "pocket screws" and then filled the spaces in with extra PL.

After cutting doing a dry run to see if all lines up. I am glad I did because it didn't line up and I had to redraw my lines.

The driver. A 10 inch Eminence pro sub driver:

I have enjoyed reading about the DYI sub builds and thought I would add my own. Over the period of several months I built this with lots of help from an engineer friend who has an incredible shop in his basement. Thanks to him the project took 4x longer and came out 10x better than if I had done it completely myself. The sub is Bill Fitzmaurice's "tuba table" and does a fantastic job working with the La Scalas, and has bass that makes my mighty K-horns seem somewhat lacking. I chose to slightly alter the plans by using 3/4 inch baltic birch for the exterior panels instead of 1/2 inch, which required reworking some of the dimensions so the important interior dimensions would be correct. Here are the build pics: The first cut!

FLAC is lossless compression is it not? Can one easily convert FLAC to mp3? Our Creative Labs Zen xTra players I don't think support anything but mp3 playback. I do need to get started on a music server and any compressed format just sounds like a compromise for that. I suppose if I was really into it I would digitize my LPs at better than CD sound quality but don't think I have an analog to digital converter (ADC?) that will do better than CD redbook 44.1 sampling rate. At this point in time I htink our digital music files are primarily for portable use though we'll hook an mp3 player up for use out by our above ground pool, in the garage, or even in our home at times. Yes FLAC is lossless. Media Monkey will convert FLAC to MP3 for ipods etc so don't be concerned about having to have multiple formats, just save anything you have as a FLAC file (which is best quality), and let the MM program do the rest. As far as records, I haven't done that and don't think I want to. Too large a time commitment for me.

Even in great shape a $1000 for the pair seems high these days, much less for modified ones. I would pass unless the price comes down.

11,492 tracks, 299 GBs. Using FLAC via Exact Audio Copy, Media Monkey to catalog and play. [8-|]