My daughter is 16 and loves music just like I do. I've slowly built out a nice desktop system for her bedroom, consisting now of Schiit Modi+, Schiit Magni+, an APPJ 2013 6P1 Tube Amp and Gallo Acoustic Micro speakers. It's a nice little system but it was clear that the speakers were a weak point. Time to build something better!
And because I'm a crazy, crazy audiophile, I didn't want build out the stock configuration, I wanted to max these bad boys out. So a couple weeks ago I ordered the kit from Hobbs at GR Research, along with the flatpacks for an extra $100. Super smooth transaction and all my questions were answered promptly.
OK, fun begins, flatpacks, drivers and all parts are here. Parts used are Clarity Cap MR with Miflex copper bypass, Sonicap bypassed with Jupiter copper bypass, Mundorf film/foil inductor, Erse air core inductor, Duelund CAST resistrors, Nimak polished silver hookup wire and Tube Connector speaker posts, along with some NoRez for the speaker cabinet.
And here we have everything soldered up. I left all the leads long because I knew I'd have to assemble this crossover in 3 dimensions in order to get it to fit inside the speaker. I used electrical tape to ensure no exposed wires or connection points:
The original holes were slightly too small to fit the connectors, so I drilled them out with a half inch bit and then the tube connectors fit right in, with the help of some hot glue.
Comedy:
All glued up:
Initial listening and testing. There was a problem. I was getting a pretty strong peak at 125hz and a pretty sharp drop off after that. I pulled my hair out on this for a while because I could not figure out what the hell was causing it. Then it hit me. My ridiculously oversized crossover parts were eating up too much airspace inside the speakers.
I realized I needed to stuff the speaker to get the driver to 'see' a larger interior space. Luckily I had some spare insulation laying around, so a few minutes later, each speaker looked like this:
That mostly fixed it, but not completely. I really should move the crossover in to an external box, perhaps as a future project.
Just to see how small these speakers are, here's a Kleenex box next to it for perspective:
And, in use by Kira:
Duratex will be here on Monday so we'll paint them this week and I'll post some pictures.
