[jrebman]

I just bought two pairs of the drivers and cabinet plans, which should arrive early next week.

Dave said he only has a few sets left, and there will be no more after that, and because of some other agreements with the factory that produces them, they will not sell these to anybody again in quantities of less than 1000 units.

Do be patient, he doesn't have a lot of energy for email, packing and shipping, etc. -- very nice guy though.

-- Jim

[FredT300B]

John's Zigmahornets are finally painted. In case anybody wants to use these colors, they are from Rustoleum spray cans. The colors are American Accents Satin Claret Wine (towers) and Satin Canyon Black (bases). I'm going to miss these little guys. 

http://fredt300b.smugmug.com/gallery/132721/3#213194342

[jrebman]

Fred,

Did you use miter joints on the box?  It appears that this is what the design calls for, but I'm not sure if that is strictly for aesthetics when building with birch ply, or crucial to the design.  My guess is the first, because with a lot of the glues around today, the likelihood of a seam popping or not being strong enough is pretty sli, especially in a design like this.

Although, thinking about it, if you're painting MDF, then you probably still want miter joints.

Just some curious ramblings here.

-- Jim

[FredT300B]

I cut the edges of the mdf panels with the table saw set at a 45 degree angle. Never again! The panels are so long and narrow they tend to slip under the rip fence, making it hard to get a straight cut. I had to use lots of wood filler to make them look good after they were glued up. Building these was more challenging than my last project, Jim Holtz's massive WMTMW Statements. Next time I'll make the front panel the full width with no miter and use butt joints, and as you suggested the glues are so good today that biscuits, etc. aren't really needed. One potential problem is the width of the driver cutout relative to the width of the front panel. It's almost the full width of the panel, and it's easier to cut it after the panels are glued together. Also, the cutout diameter in the plans is a bit too small - probably sized for a Fostex driver.

[KCI-JohnP]

Hi Fred,
Wow, they look great!! I can't wait until Nov 10th. Hopefully you'll have two sets in your truck! aa  Let me know if you need anything and I'll see you then.

John

[jrebman]

John,

And I thought this was going to be a first listening report .

I'll definitely be interested to hear what you think as I did manage to get a couple pairs of the Merrill drivers.  I'm helping a friend with a pair of HT speakers he's buildingm, and hoping he'll let me use his shop over the winter to build a pair for myself.

-- Jim

[KCI-JohnP]

Hi Jim,
I'll be glad to put up my thoughts on them. Fred has advised me that he will be here in Austin on Nov 10th and I'll have them up and running asap. I can't wait to hear the little fellas!

Best,
John

[jrebman]

This past weekend, myself and two friends started to build 3 pairs of Zigmahornets -- two with Merrill drivers, and one with the Fostex FE-103.  I got up Saturday morning and took a trip to our local hardwood dealer and got 2 sheets of 12mm BB ripped into thirds and then dropped them off at the shop.

We decided we'd make one pair with miter joints, and the other 2 with butt joints, and as of the end of the work day yesterday we had all the pieces cut for all 6 speakers, 6 bases, and the cap pieces and throat pieces, and two pairs glued up except for the cap pieces and baffles.  Now I have to locate my Jasper jigs and we can route out the baffles and whatever else we want to do before final assembly.

We're all looking forward to ur next session, but being weekend wood warriors, right now we're not sure when the next session is going to be, but that gives me time to order lacquer, spikes, thread inserts, etc., and I'll probably have my speaker cables by the end of the week.

Stay tuned for more as it happens...

-- Jim
>

[FredT300B]

John, now that you've had some time to listen, how do the Zigmahornets sound to you?

[TerryO]

John,

Thanks -- this helps a lot (Ed - ebag4 also sebnt me a description), about the only thing I'm not really getting clearly is the sloping front baffle -- if it's 59" tall and 3-5/8" deep, how do you get the baffle at 45 degrees?  Maybe it is something like this:  The box is rectangular in cross section up until the top maybe 5" or so when it slants backwards to meet the top of the rear panel at the 59" height?

``````````````````Portion of text snipped```````````````
Jim

Jim and All,

If the back of the Tube is 59 inches high, the angle is 45 degrees, then the front would be 55.375 inches at the edge of the slanting top. During my years as a paperboy delivering the morning newspaper, I often did these complicated math problems in my head, just to have something to think about. It's not exactly wave-vector oscillation analysis, but it serves.

Best Regards,
TerryO

[FredT300B]

John, now that you've had some time to listen, how do the Zigmahornets sound to you?

We still haven't heard from John. Maybe he's taking a long nap after eating too much turkey. 

In the meantime I'll give my impressions. Most importantly, the Zigmahornets don't do anything offensive. Single driver speakers with smaller drivers typically have a rising response curve, and these are no exception, but it's not as severe as some I've heard. That tall skinny enclosure augmented by room boost seems to reinforce the midbass enough to create the illusion of a reasonably good octave-to-octave tonal balance (many smaller standmount speakers do this successfully too). They sounded bright at first, but within a few minutes my brain had made the psychoacoustic adjustment and they began to sound "right" instead of bright. The treble resolution sounds better to me than I recall hearing from speakers with the larger Fostex drivers. The imaging is as good as it gets. I tried an inexpensive subwoofer with them, but after awhile I realized I'm willing to give up that extra octave of bass extension and midbass slam for the coherence these speakers offer when used without a subwoofer.

The bottom line to me is these can be built very inexpensively and they are cool to look at and fun to listen to, but they wouldn't cut it as my main speakers. From all I've heard the larger Merrill drivers have greater bass extension without sacrificing any other qualities. Since these are no longer available, if I wanted to build a pair of inexpensive single driver speakers to use as my main speakers, my first choice would be an MLTL design using a single 6" Fostex. This would give me most of the advantages of the Zigmahornets plus the extra octave of bass extension that's missing from them. But it would cost more and it wouldn't have the eye appeal of these speakers.

[TerryO]

I cut the edges of the mdf panels with the table saw set at a 45 degree angle. Never again! The panels are so long and narrow they tend to slip under the rip fence, making it hard to get a straight cut. I had to use lots of wood filler to make them look good after they were glued up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~big snip~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fred,

When cutting a 45 degree bevel on long panels you should have your tablesaw's fence to the left side of the blade if your saw tilts to the right (as seen facing from the feed side of the saw). My Powermatic 66 Tablesaw is a left tilting design, so it isn't necessary for me to do this.

In that manner, the "Sharp Edge" of the Bevel is on the top of the board, not at the bottom and fully engages the fence instead of getting fouled up in the gap at the bottom of the fence.

I may be wrong, but it seems that some guy, way back when, had to figure this out the hard way

Best Regards,
TerryO

[KCI-JohnP]

John, now that you've had some time to listen, how do the Zigmahornets sound to you?

Hi Fred,

Just caught your post, have been so busy with Thanksgivng etc. Anyway, they sound pretty darn good, like you said; "I won't be canceling my order for LS-9's" but for the money they sound nice. Not a whole lot of low end but I didn't expect they would. I like them and as we are getting some more hours on them they do seem to be opening up a little bit. One thing that shocked us was how big of a sound stage they can throw out there, even with them 7-8' apart they still image and toss out a big ole sound stage! Pretty neat little speaker, I think all of you guys who are building them will enjoy them. Right now I'm running mine off of a stock Sonic T/ipod but plan to convert it to DC power and see how she does.

Thank you Fred for all your efforts, very much appreciated. Hopefully you'll be here in Austin sometime soon and I can get the next set from ya!! And pay you too!!

Best,
John

[planet10]

one with the Fostex FE-103

Are the ones with 103 for Mike L?

Based on a comment from Mike that implied he was using FE127 (that he scored off you), and Puffin's experience with FE126, i am shipping a set of FE127eN to a fellow in Delta who is going to put them in Zigmahornet.

Did you do anything with your FE127eN yet?

dave

[jrebman]

Dave,

Yes, that was Mike L.  It looks like he now has a set of the Merrills he found elsewhere.  The 127s were another pair I had here, not the ones you sent me.  I haven't put the new ones in a box yet, but now that I have the speaker cables, I should probably do that -- just for test purposes -- because I'm going to want to eventually use these speaker cables in the Harveys, which I'm just not even going to attempt to build until it gets warmer.  The shop I have to work in just isn't warm enough for me to tolerate, and not great for glueing, finishing, etc.

Delta is way over on the other side of the state .

-- Jim

[planet10]

until it gets warmer.  The shop I have to work in just isn't warm enough for me to tolerate, and not great for glueing, finishing, etc.

Delta is way over on the other side of the state .

We had our 1st snow last night... so getting a bit cjilly to work in my shop.

This Delta is part of greater Vancouver.

dave

[FredT300B]

When cutting a 45 degree bevel on long panels you should have your tablesaw's fence to the left side of the blade if your saw tilts to the right (as seen facing from the feed side of the saw)... In that manner, the "Sharp Edge" of the Bevel is on the top of the board, not at the bottom and fully engages the fence instead of getting fouled up in the gap at the bottom of the fence.
TerryO

Thanks, TerryO. I inherited that shop with no instructions whatsoever and had to learn everything throught trial and error. Moving the fence to the other side makes a lot of sense. I may do John P's second set of Zigmahornets that way (if I ever get around to building them).

[powderific]

I built a pair of Zigmahornets for my first speaker project. Definitely a fun speaker for so little money, even though they didn't quite cut it for me as main speakers