Tomtastic

I've been seeing a lot of consoles lately at thrift stores. We had one about 25 years ago we also picked up at a thrift store for cheap back then. The one we had, had 15" drivers inside and very nice 3/4" wood, very solid. Had tons of bass. I keep thinking I might pick one up and yes, rip out all the innards and put new speakers and hardware inside but they are so big, I don't know where I would put it. I did find one small one lately. I'll post some picks. Consoles are sooo coool! First one is GE, (I think). Second was Magnavox with Micromatic player, 3rd is the small Sears Silvertone with pull out LP drawer. I was so tempted but I walked away.

Also the Shorthorn, which when I first saw the kit speaker at the thrift store that's what I thought it might be. So I quickly looked up the shorthorn on my phone to get an image to compare but I quickly discovered it wasn't that for sure but I hauled it home anyway because I was curious and then found the Aristocrat. And on another subject, I finally found the 15" version of the Aristocrat, I read a post about it at one point a year ago and couldn't find the name on it. It's The Royal. It was the same as the Aristocrat but larger for a 15" driver, but I suspect they didn't sell them very long. Maybe only in the early 50's. Posting a link to it here so I can find it again. There's some pictures of it there. http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/electro-voice-royal-corner-horn.400244/ Yes, it's been fun most of all. I can't wait until my next project but I'm not certain what the bass horn will be. La Scala, or something else.

I've had a difficult time determining if PWK actually drew up the plans himself on the Aristocrat and other EV folded horn designs, if I had to guess I would say no. I would say at the least, back in the 50's when EV was licensing the designs, anything that was corner-loaded was Klipsch-designed because of the patents. There was one brochure on the Aristocrat and a few others that had mentioned they were Klipsch licensed designs (trying to find it). I believe there may have been an arrangement for EV to sell the corner horn enclosures in exchange for selling EV drivers to Klipsch. It's a rear folded horn or back horn and corner horn since it uses the corner. So a rear (or back) folded corner horn. Ah, here it is but the image scans weren't high quality. Even the design plans list Klipsch design, again, maybe because at the time corner horns were Klipsch domain. Odd, since PWK didn't invent the corner horn, merely perfecting it. http://www.itishifi.com/2010/01/electro-voice-and-licensing-from.html

Link to article on the original Aristocrat Yes, it's a horn. PWK designed it and he thought it was. Placement is 1-4" from corner. Or near a wall with some loss in bass efficiency. The original Aristocrats were crossed at 800hz but I'm using 80hz high pass for mid and I have the bass driver set somewhere around 140hz, so there's some overlap.

And after everything was in, but before I had the top grills made and bottom grills installed.

Finally, with the tops attached. Then the front board cut out. From there it was just the rear top board and added some trimming for the amps. More sanding and finishing. Staining, lacquered. Then time to put the speakers in. Final pic, when I had them done, I remember stopping in to demo some 802's. They sounded pretty good, base was pretty tight and fairly thumpy and deep, treble and mids didn't really impress me, seemed average. And way overpriced.

All hands on deck (tool arrangement). Lower cleats installed. Top and sides glued and drying. And one last shot before the tops went together.

Riser boards installed. Bottom board for top section installed and drawn out for cleat locations. Went ahead and installed feet at this point.

Yes, basically that's right, and every info I've read suggests it was a PWK design, patent around 1954, IIRC. The K-horn is going to be more efficient since it's a longer horn path but for this pair I used a full-on subwoofer and amp, so the lower Aristocrat bin is handling up to 125hz or so (with dedicated amp) and the mids 80hz and up. If I stuck with normal driver for Aristocrat bin, I'd have to rework how the mid/HF would be arranged, not like this at all. So I guess this would be like a 2/3rd's horn or something. It's not fully horn loaded. The bottom is a folded horn, the HF is compression horn, the mids are cone woofers, sealed enclosure, a concept design I guess. I started with using the original plans for the build which called for 1/2" wood, but really should be thicker 3/4" at least. Got a few more pics on the build.

Couple more showing the dual layers. Inside, top, side and back views.

At some point, (looking at the date of the pics from my phone early April '18 I decided it was better to go thicker. 1/2" is just too thin! We can do better than that right? So I doubled them up for 1", nice, solid and heavy.

Road trip in the McLaren at some point in this stage. lol, just kidding. I did see it on a trip out of town and had to take this photo. Then I had to take my real car for a safety recall and I saw the GT so I had to get a photo of that too. Then it was back to work.

First pic had trouble with one back side, using a makeshift jib to hold it in place while it dries. Second pic, decided to start a second box instead of using the kit box I brought home. Wanted to catch up the second box to where I was at on the first box then proceed. Aristocrat kit is on the left with University driver on top.

Some build pics if anyone would like to see. Had to find room in messy garage. Still don't have it cleared out but hopefully by this summer I'll get more space. I'll post rest of the build next post.

Not much, will be trimming out the front of the lower bins with 1" oak board. It will basically be a frame to hide the screw holes and front edge. But I haven't got those made up yet and installed, probably here when it warms up a bit. Garage isn't heated. I think the baffle board stain is good enough on the lower sections to be as-is, don't plan on using fabric on the Aristocrat lower sections like the original design just because using metal frame for 12" driver and the wood is stained and I have fabric on the top hat section so that would look odd with both covered. Just today wife was listening to something on them, had them cranked up, I thought I liked it loud. "Good grief!", I says. She's like "What? Hell yeah, sounds good." Well she grew up with Khorns so... Original Aristocrats Stevedel? Might be worth more if they had the original drivers in. Fitting multiple drivers is tricky because of the rear port design, makes the 12" driver placed about the middle of the box which doesn't leave room for much above that. 2-way is doable but 3-way, might have to have the tweeter vertical, off to the side. Which is why coaxial is the most common probably. The one I have is just a kit with a University coaxial, figured out it wasn't EV-built pretty quick. I'll strip the cream paint off it, make a new cover. Have to look at the controls which were moved to the back and see if they work. All in all for 15.00 it's not bad but they only used 1/2" wood, for those drivers it's probably OK just seems really thin. I sort of miss working on them. Built them from Dec' '17-April '18, took awhile because of winter. Going to build some fully horn-loaded speakers next. Need to get those K-400's and drivers off the shelf and round up the rest of the bits. Have no idea where I'll put them but why worry about little details like that.