[m-fine]

I have been working major overtime since my kit arrived, but I finally got a day off to put these babes together.  I routed out the tweeter hole, which went fairly well.  There is one small veneer chip, but these are D- stock with cracking veneer all over the place.  I have the crossovers together, just need to cut the wires and solder then on and I will be ready for a test.  The XO boards are scraps of pegboard painted "gloss grape" at the request of my build team members. 

[m-fine]

Listening to some great tones now! 

When I went to assemble them last night I ran into a minor issue.  I failed to notice that the rectangular frame of the Neo tweeter is off-center so the tweeters would not sit flat.  I fixed that with a Dremel this morning, soldered the drivers in and hooked them up for a test listen.  Everything is functioning great, the highs are fantastic, the difference on cymbals really jumps out at you.  The bass response in these ported cabinets is quite good despite being in a large room and they are also 5 feet from the front wall (and further from the sides).  Bass quality is good as well, but I will eventually go to a servo sub with these.  After a few test songs and the obligatory run through Chesky, they are breaking in now to some Derek and the Dominoes jams.

I did not put all thr screws in for the test, ao at some point I need to power them down and finish, but they sound so good I lack the motivation! 

[shadowlight]

Congratulation Matt.  One of this days I need to do something about my sls which I purchase just to convert them to neo2x.

[HAL]

Still love my N2X's in the sealed PE boxes!  The old ELT PBS woofers add alot as you have with the X-SLS rework for ported N2X's.

Have fun listening to music with them!   

[chip]

Let us know how you like them after you break them in - How about some pics of the bad boys as well?

[HT cOz]

Pics. Pics. Pics

[m-fine]

I'll take a pic later, but it will be a crappy iPhone pic since my wife is out of town with the real camera.  These really are not pretty since the donor X-SLS were a bad veneer job pair I got super cheap.   I suspect I will eventually build some sealed cabinets for these or if I totally lose my mind I might try to re-veneer them.

[m-fine]

[flapjack]

What the cuss? Is that your dog? 

[m-fine]

No, that is an AT-AT ground assault vehicle that belongs to my build team member Darth Junior.  It also explains why I am not overly concerned with flawless piano gloss finishes at the moment!

[persisting1]

The new GR Research AT-AT speaker stand looks nice

I'm surprised more people don't do this conversion. 

Nice work.

[m-fine]

I'm surprised more people don't do this conversion.

I am not sure how many pairs of X-SLS were produced during their relatively short time in production, and due to the price level, I bet many of them are in the hands of people who are not likely to spend $400+ on an upgrade to them.  Plus I think modifying the tweeter opening is actually more challenging than making a new baffle since you need  to create a pivot point and move the center of the opening.   

The kit does sound very good in these cabinets.  I am quite pleased with the bass on these, even in a fairly large room (24 wide by 17 deep by 8ft tall with an addition 100 sqft bumpout) and with them far away from any boundary reinforcement.  You definitely can get away without a sub for these with most music.  Not quite the output of the SubMersive that is holding up my demo CD's but good enough to keep most people smiling.     

[m-fine]

This evening's night cap was a heavy dose of the JB's.  These are some seriously complex and even congested recordings with all sorts of things going on (intentional and otherwise) so I figured they would be a good test.  WOW!  The N2x really shined at separating out each instrument and voice.  A couple tracks like "giving up food for funk" and "I'm paying taxes but what am I buying" were quite impressive.  The imaging and separation on the voices in the acapella sections of the later was downright eerie at times.  It is hard to believe these things are far from broken in, don't have no-rez or platinum bypass caps yet, they are still in my theater and are currently powered by my HT receiver fed by an oppo 980, and they are sitting in the middle of the room with no attention to setup and positioning.  These are going to get BETTER?  WHOOHOOO!