Boozhound Labs JFET Pre Amp Kit

Pre-amp pretty much done! All I really have left to do is cut the piece of perforated aluminum for the top and bolt it on. I don't think I have a picky enough ear to tell the difference between this one and my last one, I am just happy is works and there is no humming or other noises. I decided to go battery operated just because I read that finding a power supply that matches up nicely can take some trial and error, some of them produce some humming or buzzing. Battery power is dead quite. I don't know how long they will last, I haven't been using it too much.

The back piece is plexi glass, i went with this so there wasn't any possibility of grounding issues with the rca connects and the grounding lug for the turn table. I kinda wish i would have put the power switch on the back so the front was plainer... oh well, next time.

K-12 Tube Amp

Here are some pics of the basic K-12 Tube Amp (which i am listening to right now: Album: "Cash" - Johnny Cash)

This is how it arrived out of the box, there really isnt a whole lot to it.

I think that most of the components are soldered on in this picture. The instructions that come with the kit are very good. This was the first time I had done any soldering onto a board like this, but it wasnt nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

This is how it looks "stock" and mounted to a pine board. This is how i will keep it for a while until I get a good feel for how it sounds. The only thing i added so far is a bleeder resistor on the largest capacitor so that it wouldnt hold a charge and potentially zap me when i move it around. Soon I will do a few upgrades and see how the performance changes. I am going to upgrade the 0.22uf capacitors (6 of them) to higher quality ones. I bought some Dayton Precision Audio Cap's for about $1.40 each. You can go nuts and spend way more on Cap's but these ones are supposed to be good. This is the one upgrade that came the most recommended and is supposed to have the best results. If I am happy with the sound after that upgrade I will make a permanent enclosure for it.

Right now the sound varies from good to awesome depending entirely on the audio source; The best sound quality comes directly from a CD source (not-compressed), then from my record player (a little variance from record to record), then my iPhone mp3's (compressed files), some mp3's sound much better than others probably based on who ripped them and the settings they used. Female vocals especially come across very nicely. I really only listen to nicer stuff on it, acoustic stuff or nicer female vocals stuff... Death Cab, Jack Johnson, Elliott Smith, Regina Spektor.... stuff like that.

The speakers I am using are the Fostex Fe126en full range drivers (single driver system, no crossover). They are in a slapped together open baffle frame right now, basically just to hold them and point them in the right direction. They sound very nice. The low end is absent but getting them in a proper vented and tuned (~65 hz) cabinet will help that. The mids and highs are great, at times the highs can be a little much, this can be tamed with a Baffel Step Compensation (BSC) network (like a crossover but much more simple, i think its one inductor and one resistor). I will wait and see how they sound in their actual cabinets before i mess with that.

This is approx. what my cabinets will look like, these are the same drivers i got.

Theres a long weekend coming up so maybe I will be able to make the cabinets then. So far I am really liking my attempted low budget audiophile system. Turning out the lights in the evening and listening to some nice sounding music while watching the tubes glow it quite a peaceful experience. More to come.

Dayton 8's "Done"

Finally had a little bit of time in between exams to head over to the shop and finish up the other tower, it only needed about another hours of work. Mounted the driver's in the cabinet, set up the speakers in stereo and played the first test song through them (it was a Regina Spektor song, cant remember which one, then a TV on The Radio song), they sure sounded good. I was really starting to want to keep them for myself, but I figure I will be able to hear them often enough over at my father-in-law's, and they will actually be played at the levels they were designed to over there.

You can see the receiver/amplifier we are using behind the speakers on a stand by the wall, it is a small one that I believe was Zanes. It sure does sound good! We were just using my iPod with a headphone jack to RCA (not the best setup) to feed it and it sure sounded nice.

We got the speakers over to Tims place and got them setup in his basement to his Onkyo SR606 Home Theater receiver. They sounded good, nice and loud with decent bass, but for some reason not as nice as with Zane's amp in Dad's shop. I messed around with the settings on the Onkyo and got some improvements (was still using my iPod with the headphone to RCA cable), with a lot of level adjusting and other tweeks we got them to sound quite nice, Tim was very impressed with the clarity and volume they produce. Then we popped in an Eagles Live DVD into his BluRay player to see how that sounded and wow! It's amazing (0r maybe it isn't) how much the source of the sound plays in the final product. I know that iPods used compressed digitized music files that lose a lot of the detail and range, so it is better to listen directly from a CD or DVD, or even better a Phono. I haven't watched a movie over there yet but I would expect that the sound quality coming from a BluRay would be very nice. But in conclusion to these towers: I learned a lot building them, more about the actual cabinet construction; these were a big cabinet and a challenge to build but i learned a lot of stuff that works well and other things that i wont be trying again. The hardest thing is trying to build them an hour or two at a time. Most of the mistakes I made were from forgetting what exactly I had done previously because is some cases it would be a week since the last time I had worked on them. As far as finishing them, I don't really have a place to paint right now, I will wait until the summer so I can hopefully do it outside. These will take several coats of primer and sanding before the final paint stages. They would probably be best painted with a spray gun, so maybe I will have to see if anyone around here has one and likes doing that kinda stuff. Now, most importantly The Sound: While some of the drivers have only had a couple hours (at most) of play time while the others have had probably in the 20hour range (and most likely fully broken in), and the sound quality varies significantly based on the source of the signal, I can say that I really like them. While they do have the reputation as being a "Loud Rock and Roll Speaker", I really like them for other genres as well. I really enjoy female vocals through them (esp. Regina Spektor, and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's) and other acoustic or mellower stuff, that being said, I really like them for harder music as well: Daft Punk's "Alive" album. Their cons: they are big, so they arent for everyone or every room. They are going into a semi-dedicated tv/theater room/area, so the size wasn't an issue. Their have been others that have built them that claim they are lacking in the midrange (due to the fact that it is a 2-way speaker between a 1 1/8" tweeter and 8" woofers, usually the biggest you can go for a woofer in a 2-way is 6 1/2"-7") but i havent really had any complaints there. I also don't want to make any final conclusions until I have listened to them a lot more and they are fully broken in. Now the main question is.... whats next?

Another Step Closer to Completion

Spent a little bit of time these last couple days over at the shop trying to get these done. Finally tonight we got one of them all put together, solidly glued, drivers mounted and into the house to test (while Mom and Dad were out to dinner). It didnt let us down. Here are a couple pictures:

Clamping down the front baffle overnight, I have managed to not use a single screw on this project yet, and only a handful of brad nails. The inner tubes worked really well to keep things tight as it dried.

So here is the best picture of the speaker so far, you can tell in the first picture that the front baffle is wider than the rest of the cabinet. I did that on purpose, after the glue dried (24 hours) I took all the clamps off and went around all the edges with a flush trim router bit and that made it look really nice. But who cares about looks? How does it sound?

They can go loud. The bass is impressive, and at some points scary. They can definitely pound pretty hard but they also sound quite good at a more moderate listening level while still providing a nice low end. We tested it with a few tracks from Daft Punks "Alive" album, but also played some mellower acoustic stuff, also a Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker jazz album of Nates. I think that they are definitely more suited to louder harder music, but do very well with other genres as well. I am very excited to get the other one done (it has been glued and is currently drying). Having them set up in stereo is going to be intense.

My Left/Right Tower Project

My center channel is finished and sounding great, its unfinished (not-painted) but i'll paint it when I paint these ones I'm working on now. So looking at the parts I had ordered when I had the high hopes of coming up with my own speaker design, I tried to find a decent proven design using the pieces I already had. I found mention of a design that uses the Dayton Classic 8" woofers and the Dayton 1 1/8" Silk Dome Tweeter in a MTM (Mid - Tweeter - Mid) configuration, I had all of these pieces so I started trying to find the details of this build. This was difficult to do as it was a fairly old design and no-one had built it recently. I eventually came across all the information I needed to start. This design uses quite a large cabinet (just under 4' high, 14" deep and 11" wide) so they need some space. They had a reputation of being able to go quite loud and produce a sufficient amount of bass to the extent that you didnt need a match them with a subwoofer for home theatre use. I like the sound of all that so I bought all the components for the crossover (this one was much more complex that the other one I had made).

The Components for the crossover came to about $100 for the pair.

The first crossover finished. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the configuration for this one. Also spent a lot more time securing everything down so nothing would come loose. I drilled holes through the plank and zip-tied the bigger/heavier components. The Air Core Inductor in the bottom left of the picture is pretty big and heavy so i wanted to make sure it stayed put. I Also used little connector pieces for the main input signal and all the out put signals, just to make it look a little nicer.

Here is one of my crossovers on the right compared to one I got from a set of speakers I took apart. The picture doesn't do the comparison justice.

Here is a picture of the front piece (the Baffle). It is two layers of 3/4" MDF, the outer piece is oversized to that when I finally mount it to the rest of the cabinet I can run a "flush mount" router bit all the way around and make it look perfect. Also the inner side of the baffle driver cut-outs for the woofers have been cut at 45 degrees to allow the speaker to "breath", apparently it makes a difference. The circle at the upper left of the photo is where the port tube will go. It is a 4" port so its large. I had to recess some holes for the t-nuts to go in for the driver mounting hardware. This all took a lot longer than you would think.

The rest of the cabinet went together pretty nicely, i just tried to take my time and make every cut as accurate as possible. I added some internal braces because this thing was going to be pounding pretty good and i wanted the cabinet to be solid.

This picture has the cab sitting on one of its sides. The other side and front arent on yet.

Sound testing it with the front baffle just clamped on and no port tube. Sounds pretty good as is but I am expecting it to sound much better once its ported, insulated, and glued and screwed. Nate has a really good Jimi Hendrix Blues record that we have been using to test the speakers with and it just sounds awesome. I cant wait to get these done and let them lose, but now that Dad is home I dont have the luxury of using his workshop till 2 am every weekend. They are pretty close to being done though so I should have them completed (not painted) in the next few weeks, unless school finals/presentations have anything to do with it.

The New Build

So my sights were newly set on making the TriTrix Towers for left and right mains, but then the customer (Becky's Dad) went out and bought a fancy pants pair of Kef towers speakers. So now I am still building the TriTrix speakers but am going to make a pair of center channels, one for him and one for me. Are some Progress Pics:

All the pieces cut and ready for assembly:

The front Baffles with the cutouts and recesses for the drivers:

One cabinet almost assembled with the crossover mounted:

Fully Assembled and a coat of sealer:

Drivers temporarily Mounted and Sound tested (Sounds Good!)

So the details of this speaker build can be found at the designers website (Here). I am not too crazy about his other projects but they all have a good reputation of being high quality. You can buy a kit to make this setup, you can make them into towers, sealed smaller mains, vented smaller mains or center channels. I have already ordered another kit to make some towers to go with my center.

Reality Check

As I stayed up late one night learning all about off axis frequency response, crossover points and how they relate to the center to center distance between drivers, and all sorts of other technical soundwave physics stuff I realized my design had some pretty serious flaws in it and was destined to not be as good sounding as I wanted them to be. Also the use of premade "generic" crossovers is not the way to get some really great sounding speakers, you might get some ok sounding ones, but I would be disappointed with that. So I decided to build someone elses design that has been built a thousand times and has gotten some really great attention as some excellent sounding speakers. They are the "TriTrix" speakers designed by Curt C. You can buy a whole kit with all the parts needed for them from parts express (including the cabinets if you want) for $120 (not including cabinets). It's a relatively easy build with a simple crossover so my soldering skills won't be stretched too far. This is a great beginner project that I am sure to learn a lot from and then I can move on to bigger more complicated things. Pictures and results to follow.