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BEC

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Posts posted by BEC

  1. Well, for converting to the AA, he could reuse 2.5mH inductor and that is all.  As I mentioned most of the AL crossovers do not have the zener diodes (expensive) shown on the drawing above that  you need to make the AA.  You would also need a 245uH inductor, the autotransformer and the caps.  You could get by with my 3654 autotransformer which is like the T2A and is a bit less expensive than the 3636.  Again, hard to make that work out as a worthwhile project.

  2. The T2A had taps for 3,6,9,12 db.  Does not have the 4db tap you would need for the AL-3.  Neither the T2A or the T4A are manufactured now.  My 3636 could give you any attenuation between 1db and 12db. 

     

    On another subject, I think you will find the conversion from AL to AL-3 not to be economical.  At least never made any sense to me anytime I added it up.  Assuming you are going to also replace all the caps because of age, then you are left with only the two small air core inductors on the AL board to reuse.

  3. No proximity issues? Did you test that with some wattage moving through the coils? Really curious on that point.

     

    I expected to find proximity issues, was prepared to address them, but did not find that.  I never did work out the first one like that I attempted, the CF-4.  Turned out to be a non-issue with this particular crossover for the RF-3/RF-3II.  Other RF series crossovers may be a different story.  But, someone needs to work this out.  We will see destroyed crossovers with no factory replacement available.  I have already seen this in the Forte, Forte II, KLF-30 and many times on the Heresy II.  Then there are the large numbers of the crossovers out of the Pro line that I see burned up very often.  We will see this on the Reference series also. I might never work this out for something as complex as the CF-4, but am pretty confident I can do this on all the much simpler crossovers in the Reference series.

  4. Dean, you know you never pass up an opportunity to criticize my work.  You also know that I do not criticize your work publicly.  You would get an email from me in that case, not a post to your customer.  Just a little common decency is requested.

    OK, #1.  The inductor is a steel laminate with about the same DCR as the original.  I don't think you can even buy an iron core.

    #2.  A resistor is simply a poor conductor of electricity.  It's qualities are that it is only a resistor and not an inductor and has adequate power handling capability.  There is nothing better than that as a resistor.

    #3.  The original air core inductors are both around 0.3 for DCR.  The schematic says less than 0.5, so the originals are that and so are the replacements.  Turns out, I was not able to see any coupling of any significance between the original two air cores, so did not need to compensate for that.  I really thought that I might see some, so now you know why I wanted an original crossover.

    #4.  The wire is a tinned stranded copper.   Did not come from Parts Express.

    By the way, the deal made with my customer was that I would give building that crossover a shot and that he would pay me after he was satisfied with the crossover.

  5. The cheap iron core is of lesser quality than the steel laminate it replaced. Also, if the DCR isn't the same - the port/driver/cabinet alignment is wrong. I would consider this a downgrade.

    The new resistor isn't any better than the one that replaced it - why bother.

    The original air cores have high DCR values in the neighborhood of half an ohm. They are also in very close proximity to each other. This creates some mutual inductance, and the coil values are adjusted to compensate for this. Moving the air cores apart in combination with the larger gauge wire - changes the Q of the tweeter circuit.

    Building on wood means a lot of extra wire, which increases insertion loss. The wire is partsexpress' cheapest offering. It turns green in less than a year.

    You could have just replaced the 12uF and 5uF capacitors in series with the horn, along with a Mills resistor - and received just as good or better results. The ClarityCap ESA Series sound much better than Sonicap in these speakers.

     

    Dean, I do not usually respond to your ramblings and self aggrandizement, but just have to occasionally.  Instead of taking your errors one at a time, thought I might just ask you one question.  Why do you think I had him send me a crossover?

    • Like 5
  6. I no longer offer full crossover kits.  When I did sell those, I got most of them back to complete.  Some never started on them and just sent the kit back to be assembled.  That was not too bad.  Some sent the kits back partly assembled, not so good.  Some sent the completed kits back to be figured out because they did not work.  Those either had some solder joints that were not conducting or just plain wired incorrectly.  Offering full crossover kits was a mistake. 

     

    I have had much better luck selling just cap kits.  Probably 95 percent get those done and working.  On the full kits, I would guess less than 10 percent got the kit completed and working.

     

    Bob Crites

    • Like 3
  7. Sitting here in my shop tonight testing out a new pair of speakers I have just finished building today.  Over the years, many times Dee would come up here to listen to whatever new speakers there might be in the shop.  He always wanted to hear "Soolaimon" by Neil Diamond.  Playing that for you now on this new set of speakers Dee.

     

    Bob Crites

    • Like 9
  8. How about this:  I have given my opinion about just about everything over the years and will let you know if my opinion changes.

     

    Good caps don't change at all for many years, so no break in.

     

    PWK said letting impedance rise was a good thing to the amp.  I agree with him.

     

    A few of Al's customers have called me to ask why they keep burning up swamping resistors.  Why does Al not seem to have ever heard that?

     

    A speaker with it's crossover, drivers, cabinet and porting should be considered a unit and tested as such.  Acoustic output is the important thing.

     

    Bob Crites

    • Like 14
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