Yet MORE speakers. Foreign LPs and more....

Gentle reader,

I've been busy scouring the thrift stores looking for new equipment to play with and music to play.

Last weekend, I spent several hours replacing the stock screw terminals on the KLH® and ElectroVoice® speakers. They went pretty smoothly. I actually bought the parts from a real "brick and mortar" store: Radio Shack®. But, I wrote "several hours". Yes, the majority of the time was taking apart the new solid oak tower speakers. More to follow.

Below, you can see the newly crowded den/listening room.
The tall A/D/S/® tower speakers in front, are just in the photo to show the scale of the newest units which are to the left and right, and wooden.

In the corners where the A/D/S/® tower speakers normally sit are a pair of home-made tower speakers made by someone, I assume a man; but I don't know for sure, in Maryland and later donated to the Salvation Army®. How do I know he was in Maryland? He scratched his MD license number in the back of the cabinets.

They were marked $39.99. But Wednesday is 25% off, so $30. They are truly one-of-a-kind. First off, they are made of SOLID oak boards. They stand 36" tall. The front and back are are made of one-piece 3/4" by 9" boards. The sides top and bottom are 11 1/2" wide made by joining three boards. As you can see he did a fine bit of joinery.

It has always been said that speakers should be made of very dense, non-resonant wood, preferably what is called MDF: Medium Density Fiberboard. Originally particle board was used but it is more fragile than MDF and quite cheap being comprised of sawdust and glue.

However, I can see his point in using oak, aside from the obvious beauty. It is a a very heavy hardwood and dense. Plus, the woofers probably don't go deep enough to reach oaks free-air-resonance frequency.

He chose all Radio Shack® components. 6 1/2" poly woofers and 4 1/2" tweeter, L-pad on the back and spring-lever terminals. The internal wiring is not ideal because it is thick strands of copper. Very fine multiple strand wire is better for sound conduction.

As you can see, I used the double-banana three-way binding posts and had to remove the cheap terminals by breaking them off. I drilled the holes 3/4" OC in the old terminal base plates. The wood is too thick to mount them directly.

You may be thinking, "So, why did it take so long?" He used RTV Silicone rubber glue to secure/seal everything to the wood. Took a while to cut through the stuff. I wanted to see what brand drivers he used and the internal construction. PLUS, that thick wire was very reluctant to being soldered.

Here are photos of the oak speakers:
As you can see, I need to clean the fabric on the DCM speaker on the left. He made nice frames for the grille and carefully cut holes for the drivers and port. For the port, he used plain old PVC drain pipe. Here is a close-up of the drivers:
Here's the whole front:
Here's a side view, a careful look shows the joinery:
This made me think at first he used oak plywood or perhaps oak veneer. Nope, solid wood, 3/4" thick. Here's the back showing the tweeter's level pad:
As you can see, he screwed the back on, no doubt using RTV as well, or wood glue, maybe. Here's the three-way binding, double-banana post attached to the original terminal plate:
Here, again is the photo of the two new speakers:
The one on the left is made by DCM® and in the USA. http://www.dcmspeakers.com/ DCM® started in 1974 (the year I graduated High School) introduced their TimeWindow® speaker to the world which used transmission line technology to boost the Bass from small woofers. Later they created the TimeFrame® speaker. Same technology, but arranged differently. These are TF275 models which were made in the late 1980's to early 1990's. The sold for $400 a pair. They use coaxial drivers. 6" woofer with a tweeter mounted in the center of the front. England's Tannoy is most famous for using coaxial drivers. Almost all after-market car speakers are coaxial.

The fabric grille covers all sides and wraps around under the top and bottom plates which are also oak. NO seam can I find. I assume it is machine knit like a sleeve and slid over the speaker body. It prevents one from seeing the drivers but also protects them. Here is the side view:
Quite skinny. Here's the rear terminal cup. Note double bananas which I love. These come with spring terminals, which I hate, but, they are 3/4" spaced AND made to accept double bananas!
So, how do these two sets of speakers sound? Great! They both don't go real deep, but that is due to the small woofers. Great sound stage from both. Both are over 90 dB efficient which is nice.

When I get new speakers, I invariably get torn over keep or sell. For instance, I loved my first set of DCM® speakers, the huge KX-12s:
They were in DCM®'s words: "modified transmission line". 12" woofers, 6' mid-range and small Magnavox® horn tweeters. Super efficient at 99 dB at one watt. Great Bass, but when the A/D/S/® came along, they didn't sound so good.

I've been having fun pasting ® all over the place. ANYway, I will continue to listen to them for a while then decide which to keep and which to sell. As for the oak ones, I could replace the woofers and tweeters with better ones, the crossover and wiring and a proper port to match the new drivers. Parts Express® (tee hee!) has a nice 6 1/2" woofer that reaches all the way down to 30 Hertz, the current ones only reach 50 Hertz.

I'll think about it. Now, for the other thing, the foreign LPs I found:
From the left, the first four are from Columbia: Score from The Godfather or in this case el Padrino, two Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and a Henry Mancini. In the middle on the Melodia label and made in the USSR is some Glazunov ballet music. Next are two Mahler symphonies from South Africa.

I have a number of foreign release Herb Alpert LPs and CDs. They also had a Columbian copy of Herb's Christmas album but inside was a different record. I hate that!

Next time, I'm going to do the promised comparison of the two Sony DVD/SACD players.

Thanks for looking,

Scott