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Jub-Like Drone Build (Jubilee)


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We will be cutting the Baltic Birch this comming week, to start a Jub-Like Drone build. I use the Jub-Like terminology to be sure that everyone understands that this is a CLONE of the Klipsch Jubilees snd are in NO way affiliated with the Klipsch Factory Theatre speakers or sets that have been ordered by various Forum members. Those that have the Factory built Jubilees have a true work of art and a mechanism that reproduces sound faithfully to its intent. They will always be referred to as Jub-Like and will never be called Jubilees.They will incorporate the 12" inch K-12 passives and the drivers will be KappaLite 3012 LF. I am including the term Jubilee in the subject line so that anyone searching will have a chance to view this thread. I will make the AutoCad drawings available to anyone that wishes a copy AFTER the build is complete and all changes have been incorporated into the drawings. Please do not ask me to send you a set beforehand. There will be changes during the construction and the only way that I can end up with an accurate set is to complete the build first. I view this as a community build and welcome ALL comments, Pro or Con. The plans were designed from all of the latest information available and should be accurate to within 1/16 orf an inch.

Disclaimer: If anyone has the urge to try and trash this build for copying a Klipsh Factory build, please keep your comments to yourself, as there is NO intention of producing this or any variation of it as something that Klipsch condones. This is a pure experiment and should be dealth with as such. There is NO attempt for any type of personal gain or to produce these in any type of quantity For Sale. This is and will be a one of a kind build. I am sorry for the disclaimer but I have sen so many negative comments on prievious Jubilee like builds, that I want everyone to understand from the start.

We have completed a set of AutoCad drawings with the revised motorboard for the passives. I am looking for any and all input that anyone feels like sharing and hopefully in a few months we will have a set of speakers that we ALL can be proud of. We know that Roy had a special interest in the use of passives in the design and I hope to stay true to that goal. I want to thank everyone that has had input to this design so far and it appears that what we have developed is true to the original ideas of this design.

The shop consist of a 1500 sq/ft (30' x 50') work area with a Powermatic HPS-67 Horizontal Panel Saw (Three Phase), Dewalt 14 inch Compound Mitre Saw, Powermatic Shaper 3/4" (Three Phase), , Powermatic 14" Band Saw, Large Horizontal Belt/Disc Sander (Three Phase), and a Dewalt (Three Phase) 18" Radial Arm Saw. We are fortunate to be able to purchase Baltic Birch, 5' x 5', void free, 3/4" (19mm) at just under 30.00 per sheet (wholesale). A commercial neighbor goes through about a thousand sheets of plywood a month, building concrete molds and I am fortunate to be able to purchase through them....! It has taken several years to accumulate this equipment, thanks to the economy and eBay....! It takes seven 5' x 5' sheets for a set of speakers. We have been refurbishing/reveneering Klipsch speakers for a few years now and really enjoy the work....! There will be a complete photo build of these speakers, going step by step and I only hope that I can do the build justice......[:)]

This will not be a "Quick Build" as I want to be as accurate as I can and I have two other projects that I am working on. My time is limited as I had planned on retiring the first of October, but it looks like it will be the first of November before it happens. My full time job eats a lot of time and I had hoped to get out by the first of this month, but the logistics of me leaving have become a bit complicated. Guess it is NICE to be in demand.......[:P]

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I don't think anyone will have a problem as long as it is an original design and not a copy of a klipsch jubilee loud speaker system. You could call a shoe box a jubilee if you want and play music thru it.

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As far as the disclaimer, it seems the big problem is when people set out to build just to sell. There is so much DIY no one can really say anything when someone builds for themselves. imo

Good luck, and end up with 10 fingers (connected) when your done.

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I just want to understand this one.

There was an early variant of the Jubilee that used two 12 inch active drivers and a drone (passive radiator). All three drivers were horn loaded. That version was completed but never fine-tuned, IIRC. I don't think it ever went into production and it is anyone's guess on what became of the prototype(s). If this is what you are doing, then whether you are able to reverse engineer or copy what was originally done would also be a guess. So I would not worry about the nomenclature about whether this is a "jub", a "clone" etc

Is this what you are attempting? If so, this could be very interesting. We, collectively, will certainly have a number of questions about this build.

Good luck,

-Tom

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The fact that you spelled this out in advance will surely help your cause. I think you are entering into this build in the spirit of experimental DIY and not to build for ebay or personal profit. Bravo! Alot of us have been curious about the drone jubilee for a long time so you will be answering alot of questions for us. If design can be improved upon I will be shocked but happily so. It is one of my favorite speakers of all time.

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Thanks for everyone's replys so far as I was beginning to wonder if there was going to be any interest. The passive version of this speaker has interested me for sometime and I am looking forward to building them. I want to start off slow as I am also working on building a 300B PP amp, which is taking much longer and costing more than I had imagined/figured...! Trying to split time between the two projects is going to be a challenge as I have a building under construction also.....

Getting all of the panels cut will probably take me through this weekend and I also want to include a lot of pictures, which you all know is very time consuming in trying to document a build. Please be patient and they will come. We will be gluing and screwing using pocket screws (Kreg) and fiberglass/epoxy on joints that can not be screwed. I only hope that these can look half as good as some of the other builds I have seen on these forums as some of you missed your calling in woodworking. Rigma's photo build has been an inspiration and he really has done an excellent job on his clones. To all that have built these before me and posted about it, I say THANK YOU...!

I can tell you that this is definately a design that incorporates the Drone/Passive in the middle position on the motor board. Using three 12" frames does cause the standard dimensions to be changed somewhat, one being an increase in the height of the cabinet. The baffels have been changed to accomodate the third opening which will make for some interesting cuts. As to a 3-D model, yes I have done that in 3D Studio but the looks will be virtually identicle to the original cabinet. I use the 3-D for concepts and also rendering different looks on the face plate.

Again, I would like anyone that has input and espicially if anyone can offer any information or their thought on the passive part it will be most welcome. Getting them built is the main priority now and "ringing" them out afterwards will be the challenge for all of us. I am sure that some of you will want detailed testing and i will do my best to accomodate your desires. I must qualify that I am certainly NOT an audio expert and test scores for speakers is secondary to the sound that they produce, for me.

Let the FUN begin.....!!!

W. C.

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Okay, so this is the "drone build"!

Now it gets exciting. My first question: On the non-drone version of the Jub, the throats are about 45 sq in per driver. I am not sure the throats are that large for the drone version. I am fairly sure that the throat on the drone is not 45 sq in.

My ignorance continues ....

When I have sketched these out, you will quickly see there is not much elbow room in there. What are you planning in terms of the "rubber throat". This is the rapid flare in the first part of the horn. IIRC, in order to make things fit, you may have to sacrifice this first rapid expansion, IMO.

Curious about your approach and reasoning ...

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Glad to hear from you again, it sounds like the project is coming along nicely. Frankly, I think posting this over at Audiokarma would generate alot more responses than here. Sure, they may be more generic over there along the terms of horn speakers, etc. but I think it would serve your project better.

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Typically a PR has to match the excursion of the AR(s) at the tune frequency. What PR can handle the excursion of two jubilee woofers?

What are you going to do about cancellation. Your going to need ramps that wrap around the exit path to delay the point where cancellation begins.

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I have seen those plans before, but with all due respect I don't know how much design/calculation went into the throat dimension.

The engineer who designed this (Roy Delgado) s gave us a clue when he said something to the effect that the drone when it feeds into a horn system needs to be "properly loaded".

Well, this loading is in part due to the immediate flare just after the throat. Hence my question about whether an initial rapid flare (rubber throat) would be used on the drone. A second way to affect the loading is the size of the throat itself (compression). The standard way to size the throat is a calculation that provides a size that is proportional to the following: Fs (free air resonance of the driver,drone), VAS (a volume of air that has the same compliance as the driver's suspension) and the Qts, which in this case, I am guessing, is pretty much the Qms of the drone.

Now certainly the Fs can be manpulated by adding mass to the cone, as DJK mentioned. So you have some room to adjust things. But where do you want to tune the drone. Perhaps below the active drivers (or "tune" the active drivers above this), this would minimize the overlap between the actives and the drone. If you do this then the throat on the active's may need to be sized differently then what is done in the "conventional jubilee". Again, I am only guessing. But keep in mind you are not simply porting the back volume with a drone (as is usually done). Rather you are also horn-loading this "port". I think that is what the original "hint" was about (need to properly load the drone).

BTW, Roy Delgado did have a patent on this idea of feeding a port or drone into a horn. Unfortunately, there was little detail on the necessary specifics.

I am not being negative, I just think this may be more difficult to reverse engineer. At the very least, if the cabinet can be designed to allow room for mofidifcations that would be great. But perhaps I am making it too complicated and that simply adding mass to the drone will allow enough tuning. I have been wrong before.

In either case, good luck

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Tom and Everyone,

I must say that you guys are "ALL OVER IT".....! [8-|]

We have plans for mass loading the PR and also variable slots for the motorboard. It is truly going to be a huge tuning project and hopefully everything is covered in the present design. I really don't want to put the cart before the horse as much more detail will be covered during the assembly phase. I can see from the start that there will be many varied opinions, so we will see how it turns out. Like any other experiment, you have to allow for adjustment and I am totally sure that some aspects of the design will be changed during the construction of the cabinets. I feel that the design is solid so far and only time will tell as to how they will turn out.

I appreciate everyone's input so far so pleasse keep it coming. I have to go and sign some change orders for the new building.......since I am the Contractor/Owner, I guess I will have to approve them since I was the one that caused them....[:D]

W. C.

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I think that your idea of providing variable slots (throats) is an excellent one. Just keep in mind the detail about how the bottom (& top) of the throat meets the start of the first ramp. I am sure there is some clever way of making this transition variable also, but I will confess it is beyond me.

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"Typically a PR has to match the excursion of the AR(s) at the tune frequency."

No, typically it's 2x to 3x the displacement per driver.

" What PR can handle the excursion of two jubilee woofers? "

The one I linked to above.

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Note......these comments were posted before by me elsewhere.....

I have read Roy's patent on porting a horn. Which doesn't give enough specifics for me to understand how to move forward completely with porting the jub but it explains the benefits. Patent 5898138.

The two things that kept me from doing that project full scale last time was the question of how to arrange and "throat" the two drivers and the drone and how to tune. Thing is.....I guess I don't have the best understanding of tuning a bass reflex cabinet with a drone to start with.

The patent talks about the drone and its axis with the horn (in the patent case not on-axis) but also speaks of tuning to where the drone would produce frequencies from 35-80Hz while the driver produced frequencies above 80Hz (mainly). This being important as to provide "minimal interference". So with the jube.....the drone and the drivers are the same axis but where would you tune?.....40Hz and below or 50Hz? The speaker in the patent...this may have been more relevant as the cone driver was a 6.5" woofer.....and the horn could be shortened to obtain lower frequencies with the port/drone.

Also....I'm assuming there would be three slots of ~45sq inches loading into the rubber throat as instead of two. Is the horn still calculated as having a throat of ~90 sqin....I'm assuming so as it is still the jube cabinet. If the drone is to produce lower frequencies with "some" but small overlap in frequencies....then I would assume the rubber throat wouldn't be overloaded.

I attached only a segment of the patent about the above explaination....but you can google the entire patent...which is a good read. It explains the flexibility with porting a horn in general and not just what was done with the example speaker/horn in the patent.

Also attached is the throat/baffle arrangement....ignore the dims....as the arrangement is the idea.

jc

post-16499-13819663563864_thumb.jpg

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This should be a great build to follow and hopefully an opportunity for me that doesn't understand a lot of the technical aspects to gain a little more knowledge. I want to make sure that I understand the basic objective for the build and Roy's initial objective when the Patent was done; is this strictly to obtain a better low frequency response in a horn loaded bass bin? After reading through the patent information, that's the main thing that I took away from it so I thought I would ask. While I'm at it I'll ask another question; is the reason that this hasn't been pursued by Klipsch or others that I'm aware of because of the market or that it's easier to add a sub to handle those specific frequencies? Regardless to the answers, I'm really looking forward to this build and wish I had half of those tools in my shop.[:D]

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