[Davey]

There's always a better mousetrap to be discovered.

You bet.

My main objective in building those frames was to try and ignite the DIY spirit in some users.  I purposely made the joinery easy and utilized standard wood dimensions that could be very easily obtained.  No router is required....no dado's....no 45 degree cuts....etc, etc.  You just need to make some easy crosscuts and rips.  A cheapo table saw or even a portable circular saw with clamped straight-edge will work fine.

Some folks appear to put greater weight on the aesthetics of a project....and that's just fine.  However, the concept here was simplicity, value and performance.

But what do I know. 

Dave.

[jk@home]

It must have been an old tube frame model; I test rode a buddy's Cyclone one cold day in 2002 and couldn't wait to get back on my Guzzi.  I hated it.
I thought about it for a few days and it reminded me of a Norton so I test rode an X1W a few weeks later and the rest is history.
They smooth out around 75 MPH so aren't the best city traffic motorcycles.
They do handle better than anything else I've ever ridden which has proven to be a good thing when I enter a corner going a little too fast.  Uh oh...
So as to not totally derail this thread:
http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=103786.0

What would the drawbacks be to a carbon fiber frame for the Magnepans (other than cost)?

That's what I'm talkin about, new innovative thinking!

As for bikes, many moons ago I had a 78' Triumph Bonneville. Modded it to look like a cafe racer. Vibrated my butt off, but was a blast to drive. Now you can get a new Thruxton, already cafe styled for you.

[jk@home]

You bet.

My main objective in building those frames was to try and ignite the DIY spirit in some users.  I purposely made the joinery easy and utilized standard wood dimensions that could be very easily obtained.  No router is required....no dado's....no 45 degree cuts....etc, etc.  You just need to make some easy crosscuts and rips.  A cheapo table saw or even a portable circular saw with clamped straight-edge will work fine.

Some folks appear to put greater weight on the aesthetics of a project....and that's just fine.  However, the concept here was simplicity, value and performance.

But what do I know. 

Dave.

LOL. I should of done it your way then cause I probably bought a couple $$$ worth of router bits alone, when building mine. 

[josh358]

My thought would be it would complement or replace that purpose of the wood frames, but then I'm no engineer. The wood frame mod is very popular, but as is, cannot be the SATA of frame construction. There's always a better mousetrap to be discovered.

Machined aluminum? These things can rapidly get pretty elaborate. Someone made an interesting airfoil design on DIY audio, said it cut down on baffle glare, which makes sense to me. And rectangular isn't really great for dipole baffles. I'm actually surprised we don't see anyone experimenting with different shapes. The idea is to smooth amplitude response by distributing the path length.

[MGbert]

The wife is on the warpath so it's just as well I'm far away from the old sweet heart and the blizzard of dog hair which passes for the family dog.

Sorry to hear that.  Hope it wasn't something I said/did?

MGbert

[SteveFord]

No, it was nothing you did.
The dog would be shedding hair no matter what.

Oh, you meant the wife?  Eh, just one of those days, I guess.

[Davey]

And rectangular isn't really great for dipole baffles. I'm actually surprised we don't see anyone experimenting with different shapes. The idea is to smooth amplitude response by distributing the path length.

That doesn't seem correct to me.

Unlike the Apogee's, which are tensioned quite differently from top to bottom, the Maggie transducers are tensioned quite evenly.  The bass resonance "peak" is narrower (and less in amplitude) in Magnepans...relatively speaking...such that a more defined front/back cancellation distance (path length) should/would be required.
The trapezoidal shape of some other planar speakers would be appropriate for them....depending upon how the transducer is constructed....but not necessarily for Magnepan's.

But what do I know. 

Dave.

[Rclark]

But what do I know. 

quite a lot!

Speaking of motorcycles I'm on track to have another bike by May. This time I'm intrgued by the 250 - 300 class of sportbike. Specifically the new CBR-250r and especially the new Ninja 300. Especially the Ninja if I can get a good price.

With full mods, about 40 hp at the tire, but the cool part is you're 380lbs curb weight with gas  . The handling of these bikes is supposed to be off the charts and you can hypermile at up to 100MPG. Thinking a lot of long distance and guilt free road trips.

Then I either want to keep that or trade up for a used Triumph Thunderbird. It is my absolute DREAM bike, a power cruiser designed with GSXR-1000 inspired handling.

They have a new version with dual headlights but I want this version with an aftermarket headlight cowl. It is a stunning motocycle in my estimation.

I want exactly this bike, ultimately:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV5ltuijyA4

rolling artwork.

[kevin360]

quite a lot!

A grand kydos to you for that first comment! Dave is a source of immense technical knowledge and experience. There needn't be any silly line drawn in the sand across which no communication may pass. This is the attitude that invites respectful discussions and the proper, broadly applied appreciation for the many different flavors of planar speakers – in the Planar Circle. I kid you not, as I typed that sentence (and this really made me laugh), the last song of Puscifer's 'Conditions of My Parole' was beginning. As soon as my finger hit the period, I heard, “Home...” in the most welcoming of all possible voices. If I'm lying, I'm dying and all of those corny expressions.

To all of you cycle riders, be careful out there! In my younger days, I was insane on a dirt bike (before it got popular and truly insane(ly amazing)). However, I promised a good friend on his death bed that I would never street a motorcycle. After nearly getting killed while riding a bicycle (the motorist claimed not to have seen me – broad daylight and I was wearing a brightly colored shirt), I decided it was a good thing to make good on that covenant. All of life entails danger and one misses much by shying away from it and some of us are 'luckier' than others. Some say that we make our own luck – be (not un)lucky; stay safe.

I get my jollies in a convertible. It's not the same, but it's fun. I understand the fun of leaning through corners. I understand the intoxicating freedom that is offered by the motorcycle – and appreciate the many incarnations of the beast. Each has its special appeal – kind of like speakers. An open top sports car is pretty intoxicating too. Yeah, I know – people get killed in them too. All of life entails danger and one must pick his poison.

This, I think, is the lesson. The take home message is that diversity is a necessary and beautiful thing. If I had somewhere to put (and the cash for) a pair of those monstrous Spectra 8800's, I'd love to take them for a spin. They remind me of a Bugatti Veyron – a monster (it's over 4,000lbs empty) that goes like stink. Heck, there are lots of other planars that intrigue me – my experience is fairly limited. I love what I have, though, and that's fine. Those Gunned speakers are works of art and I have first hand experience which supports the thesis that the wood frames benefit the speaker, which isn't to say that the same benefits aren't obtainable by other means.

This is where the danger lies in forums – one idea to the exclusion of all others. I think this thread (at least, in this forum) demonstrates that principle quite nicely by avoiding it – the rose grows on a thorn-free vine. The two parties involved in the origination of this thread each spoke very positively of each others speakers. Much has been said in the interim, but that key element of the OP never left the scene.

That's really cool! Home is a great place – you'll never believe it (I've been drifting back and forth between attending to the writing of this post and being lost in the music and it has cycled), but there's that voice again; it's calling, “Home...” (my pants aren't aflame ).

[Davey]

We seem to be in an I'll-show-you-mine if you show-me-yours motorcycle back/forth.  I will divulge too. 

Many years ago I owned five motorcycles at once, and I've gone through many, mostly dirt bikes in the last forty years.  I used to ride hare-scrambles and enduro's (never motocross,) but my only dirt bike now is a CRF250X Honda.

I still enjoy road riding as well.  A couple of Kawasaki's, a older Yamaha 650 twin, an '86 Harley Superglide, and a few others.  My current road bike is a 2004 Honda Superhawk that's loads of fun.  I purchased it brand new in late 2005 for cheap. 

Cheers,

Dave.

[medium jim]

IMHO, where thread start to deteriorate is when the ugly head of mine is better than yours comments raise their ugly heads.  As Kevin properly notes, this thread for the most part has not taken that path.  Yes, Davey knows an awful lot about the science and application, some day I might actually heed his advice

Jim

[medium jim]

I'm old, I had a Hodaka Super Bee 125.  It was a ported 100 Super Rat... Damn fun bike!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efdKD8bA35k

Jim

[SteveFord]

True, this place has that I'm home smell. 
I've been meaning to talk to you guys about that, by the way.

The old Hodakas - who could forget the Dirt Squirt, Combat Wombat and the Road Toad? 
RClark, you're lucky, when I started off back in the 70s the bikes I could afford were real piles of crap by today's standards. 
The SuperHawk has a bit of a cult following, I understand.  A buddy of mine bought one of those and parked his 76 Guzzi Le Mans.  Time marches on with bikes moreso than it does with stereo gear.

Maybe Davey will finally inspire me to try and hone my laughably inept woodworking skills. 
I can still hear my old shop teacher, Mr. Mayron: "Ford, what happened to you?  You used to be such a nice kid?!".
Puberty?  I dunno, something went haywire...

[kevin360]

Gee, there was a Hodaka that was almost identical to my first - a Steen 100. As a kid, I had a blast with that thing (oh, what my parents never knew...).

I think it's Jim's turn to clean up, isn't it?

[josh358]

That doesn't seem correct to me.

Unlike the Apogee's, which are tensioned quite differently from top to bottom, the Maggie transducers are tensioned quite evenly.  The bass resonance "peak" is narrower (and less in amplitude) in Magnepans...relatively speaking...such that a more defined front/back cancellation distance (path length) should/would be required.
The trapezoidal shape of some other planar speakers would be appropriate for them....depending upon how the transducer is constructed....but not necessarily for Magnepan's.

But what do I know. 

Dave.

No, I quite agree and really knew I should go into more detail but have been a bit beleaguered lately and sent my post off without doing so. The Maggie woofer resonance is already spread with the resonant sections created by the tuning dots and tuned to compensate for the 6 dB/octave dipole rolloff below Fequal. Apogee appears to use some combination of trapezoidal diaphragm and frame, and perhaps variable tension -- I don't know -- to similar ends. (Some Maggies did use variable tension, it's in the original patent.)

However, there are also issues above the 1/f region, in the comb filtering region. The comb filtering can as I recall also be minimized by using a non-rectangular shape to spread the path length in the appropriate frequency range. A slanted edge would presumably do this, and I've seen other patterns as well, such as scalloped edges and curves. I wish I had more time to look into it now -- the new Linkwitz speaker has an interesting baffle shape -- but other events are sapping my time.

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/LX521/Description.htm

[Davey]

I actually learned to ride on a Yamaguchi 50.  It was my dad's bike and I wasn't too big, but damn it was fun.    We used it to pull my soap-box derby racer back up the practice hill. 

Dave.

[medium jim]

Gee, there was a Hodaka that was almost identical to my first - a Steen 100. As a kid, I had a blast with that thing (oh, what my parents never knew...).

I think it's Jim's turn to clean up, isn't it?

I cleaned up last time

Jim

[Davey]

The (amount of) tensioning needs to be thought of in relative terms I guess.

A speaker like the Apogee's tension the woofer membrane only in the horizontal and with a fairly large amount relative to Maggie's.  The transducer being trapezoidal (and in conjunction with the tensioning) creates resonances that are spread over a wider frequency range relative to the Maggie xducer.

The Maggie dots split the membrane up into "zones" with "tightly" spaced resonance peaks, but if you were to magically remove those dots you'd see the overall resonance frequency go down considerably since the basic transducer is not tensioned with as large an amount as something like Apogee's....relatively speaking.

Regardless, the fairly close (relative) spacing of the resonance "zones" in the Maggie woofers create a condition where a constant width baffle is fairly effective at suppressing the peak(s).....IF the baffle width is the correct dimension.

One of my projects this summer will be to replace the woofers in my Apogee Duetta's with something......a bit different.    I may post some photo's.

Cheers,

Dave.

[SteveFord]

Josh,
Come clean - you're actually building a triple engined Norton dragster but are using 850 motors, aren't you? 
I still don't think the DMV is going to give you a tag for it no matter how many lights and mirrors you stick on there.

(Josh seen making a hasty exit upon receiving notifcation that his Tympanis are undergoing testing at the Magnepan repair center)

[rw@cn]

Does anyone recommend getting 3.7s Magnestanded (or whatever the term is)?