[Quiet Earth]

Let's say that you are building a BSC filter for your single driver speaker and you have decided on a 1.5mH inductor for that filter. Lets also say that you never stray from using your low power amplifier, either 8 tube watts or 30 gain-clone watts.

What is the real advantage of using a heavy gauge, premium air core inductor over a nice solid core inductor such as the Erse Super Q?

Thoughts?

[neobop]

Advantage - lower DCR for Super Q (usually)
1.5mH Super Q = 0.126 ohms
1.5mH 14ga Perfect Lay = 0.28
1.5 mH 14ga C-Coil (toroidal) = 0.049

Disadvantage -
Iron core inductors are used for high values of inductance and high power handling. Super Q have 500 w rating. Sound quality is said to be worse for most iron cores, and Super Q is the exception? Electronic performance is supposed to be worse with a permeable core.

IMO less is more. With 30 w max, an 18 ga Jantzen is more appropriate. DCR is 0.67. If minimal DCR is the consideration, the Super Q is low. I've never used one. The toroidal costs $37.70 ea for that value. The Super Q is $19.13. The 18 ga is $12.83.

[Æ]

Let's say that you are building a BSC filter for your single driver speaker and you have decided on a 1.5mH inductor for that filter. Lets also say that you never stray from using your low power amplifier, either 8 tube watts or 30 gain-clone watts.

What is the real advantage of using a heavy gauge, premium air core inductor over a nice solid core inductor such as the Erse Super Q?

Thoughts?

A 1.5mH inductor is fairly small value as far as passive crossovers, passive filters are concerned. You should have no problem finding and affording a high quality low loss air core inductor. Copper foil. Insertion loss would be minimal. Now if on the other hand you were looking to use a 10mH inductor, in that circumstance I'd use a solid (iron, ferrite) cored inductor.