New Polk speakers, JBL subwoofer and wiring tweaks

Gentle reader,

Thanks for stopping by here to see what I've been up to. There have been many changes in the den/listening room. I'll start with the audio ones.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I'd found a like-new late model Polk Audio center channel speaker. Since they are selling new ones for less than $90 on ebay, I decided to keep it. Just as well as I discovered the woofer on the old Polk Audio central speaker had frozen and would not move! 

I sold some things on ebay to finance the purchase of matching late model Polk Audio speakers to match, sonically, the new center channel unit. To my delight, I found a "previously enjoyed" pair on ebay and won them for $61.00. Here the room is with them:

Yes, the face/drivers color is slightly off, they nicely contrast with the Axioms below. The important thing is that they were designed to match sonically with the center channel. These are model 30s, they make model 40s that are basically the center channel standing vertically. However, and you no doubt have noticed this, the 30s have the tweeter on the bottom. "What the heck?" That is the way they are designed to work. Plus, if you look closely, they line up horizontally with the tweeter in the center unit. Yeah, I planned it that way all along. ;-) Here's some more photos comparing the old and new Polk Audio Monitor speakers:

Basic two-way design. Note that the tweeter, now unprotected sits as close to the woofer as possible. Note the tiny reflex port on the old Polk, below the woofer. Speaking of woofers, they have rubber, not cheap "foam" surrounds, so no worries about them falling apart in later years.

See how large the reflex port is on the newer model? Note also the twin terminals.

The twin pairs of three-way binding/banana terminals have jumpers connecting them. This is for "Bi-wiring" the speakers. Ideally, one would have TWO stereo power amps from the same maker.  One putting out, say 50 watts per channel, the other 200 or so. It takes way more energy to drive a woofer than a tweeter. So, remove the jumpers, pull the caps out of the bottom terminals if using banana plugs, and run TWO pairs of wires to each speaker. The wires from the bigger amp to the woofers, the smaller amp to the tweeters. Some cable makers produce single cables with four wires in one unit for bi-wiring purposes. Not cheap, though.

Although the older units only have spring terminals, Polk Audio at least made them 3/4" apart and with holes large enough to accept banana plugs. So what are banana plugs? See below:

Above is one Monster M Series cable I bought via ebay to use in the main system. Why? In order to utilize the JBL subwoofer I found at Salvation Army:

Take a careful look at the photo above. Note the "LINE LEVEL IN" and "HI LEVEL IN" terminals. The former, is directly from your receiver or preamplifier outputs. In a home theater receiver, they usually have one or two RCA outputs marker "SUBWOOFER". Connect one or a pair of cables from there into the RCA inputs and you'll have all your Bass come from the sub. Another way, if you want to control where the Bass comes from is via the latter larger terminals. From your front channel speaker outputs, or in my case from the stereo amplifier, run speaker wires into the input terminals. Pay attention to polarity, and left or right. Red in red, left in left, etc.

These are the cables that originally plugged into the Dynaco power amp to feed the Axiom speakers. Below is the new cable cut in two with banana plugs and new speaker "pants". If you go two pictures up, in the close up you can see the difference in size of the total plugs. The important thing is the banana tips are always the same size. I got this cable cheap because it was only one and the insulation on the + side was gone.

No problem, red electrical tape to the rescue. These M Series cables have a mix of thick wires and thin wires. Monster thinks that the high frequencies will travel the smaller ones, the Bass, the thicker ones. True? Who knows. The only plugs I had the would fit these wires are Monster's units the screw on like wire nuts.

If you look closely at the two photos above, you can just see that there are two red and two black wires in each cable. These would work for bi-wiring. I bought some new Nakamichi banana plugs, but they would not fit the cables AND the covers. I'll find some use for them, I'm sure.

(Above is the Belden/Hubbel cable for the JBL, the AC-9 for the Dynaco and the Pangea AC-14 for the other (12") subwoofer. Note how BIG the AC-9 is!) I had a power cord/cable that I'd made for one of the CD units with Belden 19364 cord and a Hubbel plug plus an Asian IEC plug. Since then, I scored another Pangea power cable which replaced the one I made. So, I removed the stock zip cord plug on the JBL and installed the Belden. It was made to have a three conductor cord, so I soldered it in.

Above and below you can see the power cable plug I had to adapt to the massice Pangea AC-9 which has 7 gauge wiring and is huge. The plug came via ebay from Hong Kong. It was a job to make it work. One of the connections broke somehow in the factory molded on plug.

Above shows all four speaker cables attached to the Dynaco amp. The bottom ones (twisted blue and silver) travel into this room, the "office". More on that in a future episode.

Above, although it looks a mess, it is what I had to do to fit the new cables. So, in conclusion, the new ones come FROM the amp, TO the INPUTs on the JBL Sub, the OUTPUTs have the original Monster cables with the braided sleeves that connect to the Axiom speakers. I've been playing with the crossover frequency and Bass volume to find the right balance of Bass verses rest of the frequencies.

Below, is a Pangea AC-14SE cable I got via ebay with an IEC to C7 adapter. Looks funky and perhaps straining the cable.

Above and below are the two pieces. Note how small the three IEC terminals are. Those 7 gauge wires have to be attached to the female version of these. 

Below, is the newly completed cable with a purpose built AC7 plug.  Again via ebay from Hong Kong. I knew these plugs existed out there some where. One can buy Pangea and other brands of cables with an AC7 plug molded on, but they aren't cheap.

I ended up removing the ground plug from the male plug, it was no longer needed and I had to plug  it into a two-terminal outlet as you can see below.

Since we are in the den, prior to all that I'd done above, I decided to get the LP shelf off the edge of the Asian rug, it made the shelf tip back and just looked wrong. 

Above, to the right, you can see the rug is free of the shelf. I had to empty the shelf and move the heavy oak filing cabinet in order to move both off the rug. I also had to get it out from under the stereo shelf so that I could move it towards the left wall.

Note what the wall to the left of the shelf has on it right now, above.

Above is the corner where the filing cabinet used to be. Note the authentic Battlestar Gallactica recruiting posters to the right of the window and the new location of the sunset photo I shot from Skyline Drive MANY years ago.

Finally, above is the new home for the blue painted (why did the previous generation paint nice wood?) oak filing cabinet that someday I'm going to strip and refinish. As noted above, the floor radio sits in the corner now with the black and white TY cat on top.

Thanks for looking and suffering through my obsession! Over 30,000 hits so far!

Scott

I found a floor radio. What's a floor radio? They Were Called Console Radios Once. Take a look.

Gentle reader,

Long before even I was born, there was no television. No Internet, almost no telephones and they all were attached to buildings.

Families were entertained by radio shows. To even call it a "show" confuses things. One had to use their imagination to fill in what they were hearing. It was a shared experience than carried over with TV. 

Then the Internet came along and companies figured out how to make it possible to access the Internet while on the move or without wires. Now so much of the western world and some of the eastern world spend their time bent necked looking a small screens. Sigh.

Below, is the "floor radio" I found at Salvation Army for $26.24. That's 25% off their $34.99 price being it was 25% off Wednesday.

Looks old, doesn't it? Well that's the idea. 

Note the three cut out areas behind the grille. I did not notice that at first. It wasn't until I took the back off did I see the three speakers.

Below is another Thomas reproduction radio atop the floor radio so you can gauge just how big it is. The small one and the others can be seen in my post about them from some time ago:

The Robb Collections: The Radio Collection 

Below is how it was wired in China. The device on the left is the cassette player. Basically it is crap. Yes it plays cassettes, but they don't sound as good as FM!

So you may be thinking, "The wires look OK to me." USA electricity is AC for alternating Current. That means the electricity is turning on and off sixty times a second. This can produce an audible hum of 60 Hertz in music or other reproduced sound. The AC power cord is parallel to and touching the speaker wires. A no-no. By the way, the three speakers, called "drivers" are top to bottom: Tweeter, Midrange, once called squawker, and woofer. Each provides a portion of the sound. Bigger is lower, smallest is highest in the sound spectrum of 20 to 20,000 Hertz or "Cycles per second". An electronic device called a crossover separates the music and sound and sends the signal portions to the correct drivers. Get it?

Below and above, you can see that I moved the AC cord to the opposite side of the cabinet. I also neatened up the black (input) and white (output) wires of the transformer. A transformer reduces the 120 volt AC voltage to whatever voltage is needed to work the device. On the board of the amplifier/tuner is a device that converts AC to DC voltage called a bridge rectifier.

Lastly, I loosely filled the speaker cabinet with polyfill which should improve the sound by damping the sound (half of it) that comes out of the back of the woofer.

Below is a photo I made of the floor radio "in situ" in the corner of the listening room. I'm toying with selling the rest of the radios in the collection as I only used one on Sunday nights listening to old time radio on WAMU 88.5 FM in Washington, D.C.

Thanks for looking,

Scott

Bought the ultimate SLEEPER car: Volvo V50 T5. Yes, a station wagon!

Gentle reader,

First off, a "SLEEPER" is an unassuming looking car that has speed and performance hidden inside. When seen in traffic or at a stop light, no one would suspect it's potential to "blow the doors off" of their own vehicle. 

When I was 16, my dad, may he rest in peace, pretty much forced me to go take the Colorado driver's examination. I told him I hadn't studied. So we went and I failed. This would have been 1972 or so. I was saving my money from my first job at a Mobil gas station. $1.65 an hour was minimum wage then. Plus, I didn't like station wagons! After many years of VW buses, they finally bought an American car: 1973 AMC Matador wagon. Pretty blue, but that's all I could say for it.

There WAS one station wagon in Denver that I would have gladly owned and would STILL love to have. Called a "300" by Chevrolet. It was a TWO_DOOR station wagon. Same basic body as their El Camino which was a pickup car based on the midsize Chevelle. The 300 was only made in 1964 and 1965. Historically, aside from the 1955-1957 Nomad which was a sporty fastback two-door wagon, they also sold a less expensive two-door wagon. I don't remember what they were called.

Well, over time and having kids, I came to own a few wagons: 1974 Chevy Vega (two-doors, four cylinder with four-speed manual trans.), 1975 Ford Torino, 1973 Chevy Laguna, and 1988 Chevy Caprice. The last one, had a 305 cubic inch Oldsmobile V8 with a Quadrajet four-barrel carburetor. I got those massive secondary barrels open one time before the computer realized it and slammed them shut. 

I forgot the most recent one and my first turbo (the V50 is my forth): 2002 Subaru WRX wagon in WRC blue. And before that one, "G-G" as the kids named it: 1985 Dodge Aries wagon. Red with red velour interior. Loved that car!

G-G would have been perfect if it had a manual transmission AND I could have gotten it to pass emissions testing!

The Subie was fun, and my wife was right, now that I look at the pictures. It wasn't much of a wagon. But still......

Since then, there have been many wagons that I've admired, Vovlo 1800ES which was a sleek two-door that the British refer to as a "Shooting Brake". Weird name, I know. Lately, they made a Jaguar X-type wagon that is gorgeous. Cadillac not only made their first wagon, a CTS, but one can or could get a "V" version with a supercharged V8 and six-speed manual trans! The Oldsmobile Vista Cruisers and  Buick's version called Sport Wagon are nice looking and desired by many. I have, in fact a book called, Station Wagons. 

But enough about historical or present day wagons or as the British call them, Estate Cars. I've admired other Volvos, especially the V70 line, the top of which was the V70 R which is all-wheel drive with a T5 turbocharged five cylinder engine with 300 horsepower and 300 pound-feet of torque. Electronically limited to 155 mph. We test drove the lesser, but still fun, V70 T5 with a five speed stick, but the seller wouldn't come down on the price. We were looking at a used V40 Volvo at a used car dealer, but sadly, even though they are all 1.6 liter turbo four cylinders, they only have automatic transmissions. That day and that dealer is where we found and bought the Capri XR2 four years ago, next month.

Now, to the present, my wife said she'd feel better if I was driving something, "from this Century." So I began a search. I drove: 2000 Honda Insight hybrid, cool car! Mazda 6 sedan, Mazda RX8, liked that one! Mini Cooper S, loved that one! Ford Focus SVT, and a couple other ones. I found a one-owner 2005 Volvo V50 T5 with six-speed manual transmission at Auto Buying Service:

Used Car, Truck, and SUV Dealership, Fairfax, Arlington | Northern VA   

I really liked everything about the car and bought it. It was well taken care off and had records to prove it. In like-new condition as you will see.

I never would have chosen a grey vehicle! But talk about NOT sticking out in traffic! They call it "Slate Grey". Below, you can see the V50's size relevant to the Capri XR2's. 

Nice clean, sleek front end. Can't tell if the headlights are HID or halogen. Like the Audi TT we had, the high beams are MUCH brighter than the low beams.

The only subtle clues to it's potential for speed is the "T5" emblem and dual tailpipes.

Versatile five doors. Note below, the "floating stack" which houses the radio and HVAC controls.

I love the three-tone interior, it's light and airy and made from sturdy fabrics rather than needy leather. Plenty of backseat leg room.

How DO they make those marks so precisely when vacuuming?

Above, the six-speed "stick" and floating center stack. Behind is ideal for a book on CD box, although a trash bin was an option for that location. Below, the proper number of pedals.

Below, the potent 218 horsepower, 236 pound-feet of torque turbocharged five-cylinder 2.5 liter engine. Properly setup with the intake in the front and exhaust in the back. Intake air enters a scoop to the right of that yellow sticker at the bottom of the photo, through the air filter and to the rear and though the turbocharger. From there, the hot pressurized air travels to the front below the bumper and through the intercooler. From there, up into the intake (right behind that same yellow sticker). See the little vent in the lower right (8 openings) air from the radiator fan is sent through a passage inside the hood to the little rectangular opening that is the battery cover. This sends cooling air to the battery. I've never seen anything like it.

Below, sensible 16" wheels with the first set of Michelin tires I've ever had. I hope they last, because at $135.00 a piece at Tire Rack.com, they will probably be my last!

Now, lest you are not convinced that the V50 is a performance car, take a look at the two articles below about the upcoming V60 wagon/S60 sedan. The V60 replaces the V50 AND V70 wagons. It falls between the two in size. 

So, you may be thinking, "OK, that Polestar V60 looks awesome, but my minivan has more horsepower than your grey Volvo." Possibly true. But the "anonymous grey" Volvo has the top engine available and the six-speed borrowed from the S60-R. It is a performance car in every sense important to me and disappears in traffic. I LOVE it!

That's it for now. Thanks again for taking the time to read my humble blog!

Scott