[Pez]

After many months of building, tweaking, reconfiguring, and retweaking Tyson and I finally finished his speakers. Yes they were originally the Elsinores, but the Elsinore has an MTMWW where the two midrange drivers are actually run fullrange using a peerless HDS 810921 tweeter and peer HDS 830875 midwoofers 4 per side. Look here to see the start of the build.

The Ellas have a different configuration several fronts. The latest iteration Tyson has changed it to a MTWWW where the 3 woofers are the bass units and the midrange is just that. The newest iteration uses the SB Acoustics SB29RDC-C000-4 tweeter which has a smoother sound and is a much better fit for the midrange.

About a month or so ago Tyson and I went out on a mission to find some leather for the face plate, after quite a while we settled on a wife approved maroon color. We finally got to starting the completed speakers friday and finished saturday, two full days of work.  Here are some pics! Sorry for the lousy iPhone photos of the project.
 
Speakers after the filler putty has been added by Tyson pre-sanding


Tyson sanding


on to painting. Me adding an invisible layer of pixie dust. 


Primer


Drivers out of the box


Because the MDF was literally 1" thick we had to recess the inner section where the binding posts were going to be placed.


Cutting the leather for the baffles.


My work weakening the uber-thick leather so we can actully recess the tweeter in it.


Painting


waiting to dry....


And here they are, luckily I remembered to bring my Nikon with me!
the finished product!!!!


The leather and speaker color matched perfectly! Also the tweeter recessing working very effectively.


Some major binding post p0rn! One for each driver.  The process of putting all of these posts on, tightening them down and connecting the drivers to them took 3-4 hours of nonstop work from both of us.


post connection looks kinda scary, but trust me it's safe. 


In system!










They sounded very smooth. Unfortunately we got done around midnight so I only had a chance to listen to them very shortly. Tyson will add comments as to how they sound.  Overall it was a lot of fun to work with Tyson on this and we both learned a lot by doing it both from each other and from those who helped us. Great experience and a lot of fun too.

Hope you enjoyed!

[Tyson]

Thanks for the excellent write up.  These guys were a lot of work, and I took a really long time to get them fully finished for one reason and only one reason - I wanted to get them sounding great before I did the painting and other finishing work.  Honestly, back when they were still the MTM-WW Elsinores, I never got them to sound the way I wanted them.  Bass was boomy and weak at the same time.  And I had huge problems with lobing because the mids were fairly large and spaced pretty far apart.  Plus, I really disliked the original Peerless HDS tweeter - too bright!

So, the HDS tweeter got boxed and put in storage, and the drivers got reconfigured to a MT-WWW setup.  Tweeter crossed in at 2khz, and the top midrange driver covering only 200hz to 2khz.  Bottom 3 bass drivers do 200hz and below, with the port tuned to 30hz.  Bass was much stronger and less boomy, and the mid-tweeter integration was much, much better.  The new SB Acoustics inverted Ring Radiator tweeter is just in a different class than the HDS tweeter - super smooth while still being incredibly detailed.

One more thing - I am actively triamping these speakers, using a mgalusha modded DCX2496 as my active crossover, with driver correction, phase correction, and room correction all-in-one.  I have a ST70 Dynakit with KT66's and Telefunken and Amperex 12at7's driving the tweeters, an ST70 Dynakit with KT88's and ECC99's and 12bh7's driving the mids, and an Audio-GD fully differential balanced SS amp (which puts out 1000 watts into the 2 ohm woofer load) driving the bass section.  Removing the passive crossover gives any speaker a big improvement in dynamics, bass control, and clarity.

We finished up way late on Saturday, so initial listening was promising, but we had zero opportunity to fine tune the crossover settings on my DCX2496.  After doing a bit of measuring and adjusting today, they are sounding pretty amazing.  I am constantly caught off guard by how black the background is that the music emerges from.  Using the rawhide leather to line the tweeter recess with felt around the very outer edge really quiets down the upper mids and highs.  Plus the mids and highs have lost all glare and any type of analytical "edge".  It's just very natural and very smooth, with excellent detail and intelligibility. 

I want to give a huge THANK YOU to Jason (Pez), I could not have done this without you, brother!

[TomS]

Great job guys!  Don't you love it when a plan finally comes together?

[satfrat]

Thanks for all those good pictures guys,,, they're worth a thousand words ya'know.
 
Will you be doing anything for a base (cones, platforms, footers, etc) or just set them flat on the floor? Thanks.
 
Cheers,
Robin

[Tyson]

I had some OK spikes from Parts Express, but I lost them!  Otherwise they'd be on there now.  I don't want to do a platform because the speakers are close to those columns you see on each side, but I would like to get some new spikes to put on the bottom.  Suggestions for something better than the crappy looking Parts Express spikes are welcome!!

[mgalusha]

Very cool. Great to see that they are finally done and you're happy with the results. I know the feeling well and it's a good one.

[satfrat]

I'm partial to Audiopoints myself, I use them under all my audio gear & subwoofer. I also had them under my Odyssey Lorelei's but on the advise of DoubleUgly, I tried Sistrum Platforms (SP-004) and instantly fell in love with them. It's double the Audiopoints and they were a perfect fit for the Lorelei's.     
 
 

[Tyson]

I'm partial to Audiopoints myself, I use them under all my audio gear & subwoofer. I also had them under my Odyssey Lorelei's but on the advise of DoubleUgly, I tried Sistrum Platforms (SP-004) and instantly fell in love with them. It's double the Audiopoints and they were a perfect fit for the Lorelei's.     
 
 

No can do w/a 3 point system.  Got a 2 and a half year old running around, so max stability against tipping is highest priority.  But I did head over to Parts Express again and noticed they had a nicer looking set of black chrome spikes that I'd not seen before.  Order placed, should have them installed in a few days.

[satfrat]

Yeah I hear ya. I have an Australian Shepard that can run around my 4 Lorelei's in a crowded 11 x 17 foot room while doing 360's and not touch a 1 in the 7 years I've had him now. Wish I could say the same thing,,,,     aa
 
Cheers,
Robin

[Pez]

This is one of my favorite hifi experiences. Watching these speakers go from planks of wood to a finished product was pretty incredible. I hope my amp project turns out to be as good. It was really cool discussing how we would go about doing this or that.

[Tyson]

One thing that both Pez and I agree on after this - building speakers is a heck of a lot of work, and maybe manufacturers aren't so crazy to mark them up as much as they do.  Looking at the total cost of my speakers, it was around $1k all told.  But the labor to make them (even with the right tools) was very high.  Getting them to an even higher level of fit & finish would be even more labor intensive.  If I were to put the Ella's into production, I'd have to price them in the 5-10k range to make it worth the time/effort.

[satfrat]

One thing that both Pez and I agree on after this - building speakers is a heck of a lot of work, and maybe manufacturers aren't so crazy to mark them up as much as they do.  Looking at the total cost of my speakers, it was around $1k all told.  But the labor to make them (even with the right tools) was very high.  Getting them to an even higher level of fit & finish would be even more labor intensive.  If I were to put the Ella's into production, I'd have to price them in the 5-10k range to make it worth the time/effort.

I'd throw a few more K's into that range Tyson,,,, I'm sure Pez doesn't come cheap. 

[Pez]

I've sent Tyson my bill. aa I agree the cost of speakers is not coming from materials plain and simple. The labor is emmense on something like this. Of course there aren't a lot of manufacturers that are using 3 and 1/2" thick MDF for the tweeter plate and 1" MDF for the rest of the speaker. To say these are overbuilt is an understatement. I have never seen anything as thick ever. Obviously exotic materials aside.

[Tyson]

Yep, they are crazy over-built.  Here's the front baffle:



And the rear panel, with 2" thick bracing:



And a look at them semi-assembled, with the middle brace installed, and some stuffing:



They are stout!

[grubyhalo]

Fantastic build!  Goes really well with the room's color! Congrats! 

[JoshK]

Congrats.  I bet you will love these speakers more than any other due to the fact you built them.  You are also much more likely to tinker with getting them to sound just right.

[Tyson]

Yep, I tinker with them quite a bit.  In fact I just picked up a calibrated mic and a USB driven mic-preamp.  Now I just gotta figure out how the software works and I can do some gated measurements.

[Tyson]

UPDATE - I tried out a LOT of software for measurements on these speakers, and finally found one that works better than all the rest, plus has the GREAT advantage of being FREE - HOLM Impulse - you can download it at http://www.holmacoustics.com and you can find support threads at diy audio - http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/145662-holmimpulse-measurements-practice.html

I am still working out some of the wrinkles, but so far I've found that this software combined with my USB mic-preamp and calibrated microphone have allowed me to see errors in the response curve that I heard, but could not isolate (let alone fix) by ear.  Now that I've done some measuring, it's clear there was a suckout in the 2khz range and I was able to fix it with some trial and error.  The sound is a lot smoother and more pleasing than it was this morning (before I started measuring).  I am still tuning and tweaking, but the results so far have absolutely been worth the effort.

[poseidonsvoice]

UPDATE - I tried out a LOT of software for measurements on these speakers, and finally found one that works better than all the rest, plus has the GREAT advantage of being FREE - HOLM Impulse - you can download it at http://www.holmacoustics.com and you can find support threads at diy audio - http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/145662-holmimpulse-measurements-practice.html

I am still working out some of the wrinkles, but so far I've found that this software combined with my USB mic-preamp and calibrated microphone have allowed me to see errors in the response curve that I heard, but could not isolate (let alone fix) by ear.  Now that I've done some measuring, it's clear there was a suckout in the 2khz range and I was able to fix it with some trial and error.  The sound is a lot smoother and more pleasing than it was this morning (before I started measuring).  I am still tuning and tweaking, but the results so far have absolutely been worth the effort.

You are not alone in this discovery. Earl Geddes recently e-mailed me to this effect as well. He thinks HOLMimpulse is very powerful too. Thanks for the update.

Anand.

[nunhgrader]

Reading your article in the new HiFi Zine - very cool!

Build quality looks fantastic! Congrats