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Wood to Aluminum MAHL V2 tweeters


Dave A

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I have been dragging my feet on these wood V2 tweeters until I sold some old ones off. Guess it is a lesson in making to many before you know how they will sell. Anyway working on them finally and up first is the Zee bracket for Panelhead who has been very patient in his long wait.  Then there is another one for a guy off the forum who wants to have a strange design. He is going to make a decorator set of Cornwalls by filling in the 1/2" recessed portion of the motorboard and so he will need a 1/2" taller boss to flush fit the front. Will be working on the rest later this week and expect to cut the first one tomorrow to see how the wood to metal knife edge seam works out. Pretty confident the Walnut will work well but I might have to get some northern tighter grain Red Oak to make that work. The Red Oak from this area has been a problem with such coarse wood grain and pick outs.

 

  The aluminum can be seen more readily from the front on the V2's so if that makes people excited I suppose they will end up painting the clamp plate bore.

 

  I have mixed feelings about doing special order singles and I guess I am going to stick my feet in that water. Told the decorator Cornwall guy it will be extra since it is a design and machine path for just his purpose and I don't ever expect to sell any more. I will see how serious he is before I start. Mentioning this as there is a possibility I would do this in other cases also as long as people are willing to pay for my actual time above and beyond the normal.

 

  Still thinking of free standing also but it will quite frankly be late spring before I get to them. I have way to many KPT-904's,100's,200's and some 415's I need to get done and out the door along with some Altec A7's  which have been here to long.

wood to Al 2inch wide zee braket tweeter.JPG

half inch extended.JPG

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I'm going to need a pair of wood horns in the future for a modified K-Horn project I'm working on. It's nice to know you would be willing to work on an individual basis for custom installations. I know I would gladly pay extra for the custom work.

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1 hour ago, kevinmi said:

I'm going to need a pair of wood horns in the future for a modified K-Horn project I'm working on. It's nice to know you would be willing to work on an individual basis for custom installations. I know I would gladly pay extra for the custom work.

Looking into mid horns also and debating the medium they will be cut from. Any opinions on 1.4" or 2" drivers for these?

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31 minutes ago, Dave A said:

Looking into mid horns also and debating the medium they will be cut from. Any opinions on 1.4" or 2" drivers for these?

I would think that 2" drivers would give you more options. I love my big wood horns with 2" drivers.

1-30.jpg

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4 hours ago, Dave A said:

Looking into mid horns also and debating the medium they will be cut from. Any opinions on 1.4" or 2" drivers for these?

Go with 2" and suggest https://www.parts-express.com/prv-audio-adm25-50-1-3-8-18-tpi-driver-to-4-bolt-2-horn-adapter--294-2941

so the K55 and A-55G can be used.

 

That's what I used with the 2" mdf Elliptrac.

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16 hours ago, Wirrunna said:

Go with 2" and suggest https://www.parts-express.com/prv-audio-adm25-50-1-3-8-18-tpi-driver-to-4-bolt-2-horn-adapter--294-2941

so the K55 and A-55G can be used.

 

That's what I used with the 2" mdf Elliptrac.

Interesting idea but what I really meant was 1.4 or 2" throats on the drivers themselves. Had not thought about the K-55-V driver but it sure can crossover low enough and sounds good. Listening to a 2" horn driver the first time was a real revelation.

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4 hours ago, Dave A said:

Interesting idea but what I really meant was 1.4 or 2" throats on the drivers themselves. Had not thought about the K-55-V driver but it sure can crossover low enough and sounds good. Listening to a 2" horn driver the first time was a real revelation.

Even though the K55 goes down low enough it's throat size is not even a full inch, more like 7/10 of an inch!!  This yields a throat area of .385 square inches. While it has remarkable performance for it's size, it's hard to compete with a driver that has a full 2" throat and a 3-4 inch Voice Coil, which yields 3.14 square inches or 8 TIMES the surface area! This is exactly like comparing a 5 1/2 inch woofer to a 15 inch woofer!! Guess which one will have the least amount of Intermodulation Distortion and 9 db greater output capability!!! This is something that PWK won a Audio Engineering Society Silver Medal of Honor for, for good reason, and why, with all the "advancements" in audio, we can still all say: "Paul was right!!!!"

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OK @Panelhead  your tweeters are done. First set ever, well the first good set goes to you. I went ahead and redesigned the clamp plate while I was at it so I could incorporate Heli coils in there for strength. I am not going to do this in Red Oak until I can get better northern wood with tighter grain as it does pick out to much with my current material.

Walnut V2 1.jpg

Walnut V2 2.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had some Walnut crotch wood I cut some lenses out of just for the heck of it. Some spalted Walnut also I am going to try one day and on the ridge top there are some Dogwoods I think I can get stuff out of. A pink and cream mottled appearance and really different. You start looking at all the wood out there and wheels start spinning. Mulberry of all things is yellow black and so is Osage Orange. Going to try a set out of Black Locust too this spring as I think it looks good and I have plenty of it well seasoned and I think stable enough to use.

DSC_0101.JPG

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My wood choices have been based on Klipsch veneer types in common use. I am rethinking this as I like the endless variety of wood. Good dense wood is a blessing when machining although Walnut seems to cut like butter even though it is not all that dense. Some of the really hard woods I guess can be hard to stain or oil though.

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  The local woods are great potentials. The tight grain for machine work would eliminate some. 
  Used to cut hardwood north of Nashville. Railroad cross ties and rough cut lumber. Mostly large, open grain. 
  But black locust, persimmon, and maybe dogwood are great candidates. Maybe others. My hardwood cutting was limited to very large trees. Had to get 5-6 cross ties plus lumber to justify cutting and transportation. 

  I have several rosaries made from olive wood. Very tight grain, lot of dark streaks running through, large color variation. Time to spit the olive pits from your evening martini out on the hill above the house. 

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Of course, any species having "tight grain" is indicative of many lean seasons of growth.  Northern, or high-altitude, or arid regions would yield the best in that respect.  Unless by "tight" one means merely "hard to split because it's all twisted together" which would then include at least beech, Ironwood, and even sycamore...

 

Something tangential which I really, really wonder about is when it became customary to call a "horn" a "lens."

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