Jub-Like Drone Build (Jubilee)

[Autobocs]

Now my Christmas is complete, what an amazing build.

Also looking forward to the result, Fantastic job.

PB

[Guest David H]

Dave, this is for you....................

Thanks, that was one of my first Eliptracs, I spent several days on that set to get that finish. now I can do it in hours.

I look forward to your thoughts on your Jub project.

Dave

[jwc]

I am in love this thread. Keep it coming.

jc

[Panacea Engineering]

It's ALIVE.....!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We hooked up the portable rack, connected up the bass bin and top to the crossover and fired her up....! Played a little Rightous Brothers, Eagles and a few other selections and it is now playing on the local FM station. Of course, we have some of the finest acoustics known to man in the shop. Concrete slab with nine gazillion things to reflect off of, sitting 3 inches off the floor on a four wheel dolly and it still sounded damn good....! The bass bin sounded a little muffled and boomy at the same time so I started checking and low and behold, under the crossover was a huge hole to the dog house. In my rush yesterday to get it set up I forgot to put the top hatch cover on and the crossover conceled it so nocely. Installed it and everything seemed to normalize. Dave, your Eliptrac horns are as clear as a Bell and playing in Mono, the speaker sounded pretty good to these ears. We pushed it pretty hard looking for cabinet resonance as now is the time to find it. The cabinet is solid as a rock, I guess the extra bracing is doing the job. I am all the more excited to get the testing started and see what we can come up with on the passive. Please excuse the dust, the Maid sucks....!

If you look to the right side of the stand, you can see my High Dollar FM Antenna - two Rat Shack Alligator jumpers, abot 15 inches each for a total of 30".....works great as I was able to pull in a bunch of five bar stations. The A102 amp is as quiet as can be but there ws a bit of static on the tape player, it was not grounded...silly me.

Let the good times begin.....!

[Panacea Engineering]

Tomorrow, Tuesday, we will set up one of the Golden Jubilee's as the reference standard to compare everything to. I will be out of the loop on Wednesday for a Colinoscopy (sp), what a way to split the Holiday week.....! All test equipment should be set up by Friday and hopefully we can spend all weekend testing these things. Wanted to mention above but forgot to; while observing down into the dog house with NO top hatch, there was some movement on the passive, not much, but you could see it. This is encouraging as when they are sealed, there should be a lot more interaction of the passive, There was a definate change in the sound when I put the cover on. Hopefully, the testing will pick up what is going on in there.

For RAW playing in Mono, it sounded pretty good, to these OLD ears, very encouraging........

General question: Should the testing be done outside?

Thanks for your continued interest,

W. C.

[tomlang]

What is a Golden Jubilee -- a factory built Jubilee?

One thing I noticed with the University Dean speakers I built -- one 15 inch woofer, no passive is the incredible amount of pressure generated inside the doghouse. If you set the panel on real loose or leave out any of the screws it will either rattle like hell or send alot of air in and out of the holes.

[Guest David H]

there ws a bit of static on the tape player

Refresh my memory, what is a tape player? Lol I still have a mint Nakamichi CR-7A

The sae rack is cool, used to drool over that gear back when I still had tapes.

I am pleased the testing is good so far, are you going to post measurements after your weekend of tuning?

Please excuse the dust, the Maid sucks....!

Yeah, I need to fire mine as well - Keeps collecting stuff I will never use.

Keep up the fine work

Dave

[Panacea Engineering]

Dave,

The "Tape" Cassette player is the third one down in the rack. It ia a SAE C102 Computer Diret Line - Cassette Deck. I have a whole slew of quality cassettes. The tape drive is in a drawer that "ejects" when you push a button. Most tape decks have a door that opens, this has the whole mechanism that slides in and out. Below that is a SAE D102 Compact Disc Player. The very top of the rack is the Pre-Amp SAE P102 and below that is the Tuner SAE T102.I have been totally dedicated to SAE equipment ever since I ran across it in the 70's. A good part of Wardsweb's web site is devoted to SAE, with all the history anyone would care to know. All I can say and this is just my opinion; it is some of the finest Solid State equipment that was ever manufactured. All of my equipment is the 02 Series of Computer Direct Line equipment.

I am going to hook up one of the Goldens today for a side by side comparison. I am hoping that will give me some benchmark to compare the two cabinets I built, to. Having them on the dollys is not all that good, but the acoustics suck anyway. I did notice one thing yesterday, when I went into the part of the building where I live (the office, if you will), I could hear the Jubilee and it sounded great from about 100 feet away, through an open door. Remember, everything so far has been Left Channel Mono.

Again, when I start the actual technical testing, I am going to need a lot of support from you guys. I have as of yet not been able to get logged in to the site where you download RTA/REW (I think that is it). The site, for some reason will not take my registration information. I have ordered the Tascam TracPac II, which will give me another mic to go along with my DriveRack RMA I microphones. I have never run the "charts" so to speak,so I am really going to need guidence, to provide you guys with wharever information you need to help me tune these things. I am sure that WE will get through it, as all I have ever used was my ears, to tell how good it sounded. I am very impressed with my first imnpressions of the NEW speaker. Ofcourse, I am just a bit biased........[6]

[PrestonTom]

WC, I am glad to see you are still working on these.

RE: the measurement software. The package I use is a freeware program called "HolmImpulse". You can find links to it over at the DIYaudio forum. There are two threads that will give you info on how to use it. It seems to be fairly robust in terms of compatibility with various hardware and (Windows) operating systems.

In a clunky fashion it will do impedance plots. I found these useful for tracking down air leaks in the back chamber. Impedance plots are also useful in tuning up ported cabinets, although I personally do not know how to adapt those for tuning a horn-loaded drone setup. Fortunately, there are others who are smarter than I am (many, many others).

Good luck,

-Tom

[Panacea Engineering]

Tom,

I am sure that it will take the expertise of many of the members here to get through all of the "stuff" that needs to be tested on these. Again, I am the total Novice when it come to that, so I will HAVE to rely on the knowledge of you guys to help me. I doubt that there is any one test software that will reveal all that we need.

I downloaded Woofer Box Model and Circuit Designer – Version 4.5 12/4/2009 by Jeff Bagby, Paul Verdone and Charles Laub that seems to be a pretty comprehensive package. It came from a Parts Express article on TC Sounds Passive Radiators found at this link: http://techtalk.parts-express.com/showthread.php?t=209863

Please let me know what you think of this tool. In any event, I am looking forward to getting started on the technical side of what the passives can/should do for the cabinet.

W. C.

[Guest David H]

I took a look at the Jeff Bagby software, very interesting. I may have to give PR's a go some day.

I am anxious to see the LF test results on your Jubs, when are you starting the tests? This weekend?

Dave.

[Panacea Engineering]

Dave,

Hoping to get started Saturday morning, The Tascam came in, have the software loaded, Laptop is charged and the weather looks great for the weekend, Highs in the mid 60's. We will throw the back door to the shop open, roll em out and let em blow......[]

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me hear them as I have been doing all the research on testing that I can find. if someone has a simple process, I am certainly ALL ears........

W. C.

[Panacea Engineering]

Just wanted to do an update before all of the testing starts. The plexiglass came in yesterday so I figured I would get the hatch covers replaced with it. I tried the table saw, a very large band saw and ended up hand cutting with a variable speed Jig Saw. It gave me much better control as the Plexi has a tendancy to melt as you cut it. I could control the speed of the blade and cutting speed and it worked perfectly. I used tape to mark the cut line and to assure that the plastic face (Shoe) on the Jig Saw did not scratch the surface of the Plexi, even though it had a protective sheet. Below is the cutting process and yes, I definately need to wear glasses when looking at something this close.

[Panacea Engineering]

Drilling the screw holes was a piece of cake using a SHARPE counter sunk bit. I was really scared that it might chip, bit it didn't. Here is a pictue of it secured. That crooked brace is about to drive me batty and I will make an adjustment to it after all of the testing is done and when I paint this area black. It looks like it is out of level but it actually the angle that is off. Trimming with a Jig Saw will correct it. The Plexi makes it appear to be MUCH worse than it actually is. The bare wood shows EVERY imperfection. I am using 3/8ths inch foam gasket. The only way I could get it was in double sided sticky so I left the white paper on the Plexi side. Is there something better that can be used here as Ireally do not like the way this works. I am thinking about cutting strips out of an inner tube and glueing them to the wood side and leave the other side clean to mate to the Plexiglass.

Finished product:

[Panacea Engineering]

OK, we started setting up for testing today with the laptop, downloaded REW, Tascam interface and Mic, and several other programs that are daunting to say the least. I am in a world of NOT understanding what I am doing. I had someone on the phone today helping me to set up and my damn battery went dead...anyway, this is going to take much longer than I anticipated, but what is new....! We set the Jub-Like Drone (Speaker A) out the back door, noise floor dead silent. I am ready, the speaker is ready if I could only get all of the software and hardware to cooperate.....tomorrow is another day....! I am having trouble getting the Tascam drivers loaded and I think it is probably a Windows 7 issue as probably nothing I am doing is compatible.....following is what I am using, a Dell Precision M6400 Laptop, Quad Core with all of the bells and whistles....

[Panacea Engineering]

We are connected to the Jub'Like Drone with all of the connections of a Surgery Suite....If I could only get this $h!t to work....!

Anybody want to buy a Maverick......we have several...!

[Panacea Engineering]

Anyway, I decided to take a break and get one of the Golden Jubilees ready for a comparison test to the Jub-Like Drone. I opened the top to discover that the dog house was completely packed with foam. Very interesting indeed.....maybe this is the secrete of the sound of these base bins...who knows. I also wanted to research further the quality of the build, and I was not disapointed at all, the quality is absolutely excellant. I am really looking for any defects in workmanship and I just can not find any. The builder is a true craftsman.....

[Panacea Engineering]

I removed the grill covers to expose the innards of the horns and the quality continues......This will be the reference speaker that all of the testing will be compared to, when and IF I ever get this $h!t up and running, talk about frustrating....Now the Tascam software is telling me to contact customer support for further information on loading the damn drivers for the interface......getting really pissed...!

[Panacea Engineering]

Final picture for today. it is refreshing to find out that the builder rounded the braces front and back. Where they used two and the brace behind this one is a single, I used three braces per turn, so I feel confident that the cabinet is very strong, brace wise. I will attack the software/hardware problem again tomorrow and hopefully we can make some forward progress.

[seti]

Very cool. Ya got to have the stuffing : ) The rounded wings were definately on the jubilee pictured with pwk but not on the cinema model. I wish I was lived closer. Thanks for the update.