Zilch's AK Design Collaborative - Econowave Speaker

I finished my OLA utility over the weekend. The're finished except for the grilles and a possible veneer job on the cabinets in oiled teak I'm thinking.

I used the Selenium 220 driver with the 33800 JBL wave guide. The crossovers are wired point to point on RS 3X6 project boards. The only deviation from the standard e'wave network component parts is I used 100W 8 ohm L-pads instead of the 50w.
The first sound check was a bit disappointing because the source was a 1961 recording of Schumann's symphony #4 in D minor, older technology, and the crossovers and Selenium driver had not broken in. But after 20 hrs of running:
something I discovered, this system is so good that the production values of the recordings from ALL sources is readily apparent. These speakers allow you to differentiate equipment too, preamps, power amps ect.
The sound is the best I've heard for the money, I've got about $200 in the project total including the donor Advent large utilities with refoamed woofers.
I haven't sold off the original tweets yet, so cheaper yet!
These things soundstage and image better than anything I've heard.
I cannot describe the sound quality except in terms of clarity and texture.
The Advent woofer balances well with the e'wave but the horn/driver are very effecient and in my small room needed to be cut back to achieve good tone balance.
I want to thank everyone who contributed to the E'wave knowledge base.
I have my Dad's old D123's in DYI JBL 5cu.ft. cabinets, built in the 50's. They have N-2400(?) crossovers and 075's. It might be fun to E'wave those.
It seems that some other guys have done some.
Note: the first picture is a Polk 7b with the tweeter fuse pulled and the E'wave alligator clipped to the terminals, sounds really good too!
 

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I'm stumped hopefully you can tell me whats going on here. Thanks.
That has happened to me on occasion, when I enter T/S parameters into WinISD. Use 127A if it's in the database. :dunno:

I see the new version of the board includes zip tie holes for the small choke and through holes for soldering in input leads as an option.
We DO pay attention. ;)

I finished my OLA utility over the weekend. The're finished except for the grilles and a possible veneer job on the cabinets in oiled teak I'm thinking.
Executed in the finest tradition, giving new life to your Advents garners "Official E'Waver" appellation #49:

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=2260584#post2260584

:thmbsp:
 
... this system is so good that the production values of the recordings from ALL sources is readily apparent. These speakers allow you to differentiate equipment too, preamps, power amps ect.
...
These things soundstage and image better than anything I've heard. ...

Isn't it great when something like that happens? Seems to happen pretty regularly over here!

Nice build, geiman! And thanks for the pictures.
 
Well done, Geiman. I see you repurposed the original Advent woofer inductor in the new crossover.
What do you think about the bass loading? I had to mess with the amounts of fiberglass to get rid of boominess but I was using the later metal basket round magnet woofer.
The pair of ULAs that I converted are in the hands of a musician who uses them as monitors in a home studio. He claims they stomp any commercial monitors available anywhere near the price.
 
Well done, Geiman. I see you repurposed the original Advent woofer inductor in the new crossover.
What do you think about the bass loading? I had to mess with the amounts of fiberglass to get rid of boominess but I was using the later metal basket round magnet woofer.
The pair of ULAs that I converted are in the hands of a musician who uses them as monitors in a home studio. He claims they stomp any commercial monitors available anywhere near the price.
That's right, I used the original inductors. It looked like everyone was using the iron core ones from PE. I ordered 18ga air core ones kinda by mistake.
So I decided to go ahead and use what I had, I seem to remember seeing others use it with ok results.
As far as bass loading goes, I reused the "pink stuff" that was already there.
These speakers were already about as full as you could make them without packing them tight! Boominess is a problem I really had not noticed. I'm using the original woofer w. square magnet.
My brother is an independent producer of audio and video. He was impressed enough to ask if he might try them out in his studio.
 
Isn't it great when something like that happens? Seems to happen pretty regularly over here!

Nice build, geiman! And thanks for the pictures.

Thanks Jack. I need to get the cosmetics done but I don't want to take them out of service to do it.
 
Thanks for the recognition,Zilch!

I might need your help updating my Dad's JBL D-123 home builts to E-wave.
Doing the Advents was so much fun! I don't think I can stop at just those.

Zman is very good at getting people into this kinda thing. He's been doing it since at least 2004 over on LHF as far as I can remember!!:thmbsp::banana:

Thanks for all of your generosity Zilch!!
 
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OK, someone step up with pair number 50. Still rolling along and still picking up new e'wavers. A very impressive project, still looking forward to more work with the B&C DE 250 compresson drivers. While the 220 ti is seemingly taylor made for this project, and performance has shocked many, the DE 250 is quite a bit more clear. Once I've been listening to it and go back, I find a little residual fuzziness that isnt present on the DE 250 driver.

Also, in the begining the DE 250 seemed to to go right through my head, something very sharp. I had to turn down the attenuation WAY down to avoid this. Some say that there is a peak that needs to be tamed. I have tried the suggested cap and coil on the high pass and it seemed to help this a little. What has helped more is just play time. It now seems fine about in the middle of the attenuators range and sounds great. Right now I'm using the standard < 95 db HP, and the low pass from JBL 4430. Maybe the 2235H has a similar hump to the LE14A driver, as the components in the JBL crossover's LP seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of around 900 hz (electrically) as well, it uses the same cap 12 uf as the standard E'wave LP, but a much larger 2.6 coil. Of course this is strickly subjective opinion of yours truely, havent yet attained measurement ability yet.

Anyone else having fun with DE 250?

Russellc
 
Zman is very good at getting people into this kinda thing. He's been doing it since at least 2004 over on LHF as far as I can remember!!:thmbsp::banana:

Thanks for all of your generosity Zilch!!

That's the understatement of the century! I was a perfectly happy Altec lover and then all this E'wave ugliness.....music room has never sounded better, that's for sure!:yes:

russellc
 
Thanks for the recognition,Zilch!

I might need your help updating my Dad's JBL D-123 home builts to E-wave.
Doing the Advents was so much fun! I don't think I can stop at just those.

Nice project there, nice to see you are nicely hooked. Good luck with the D-123 project, sounds like lots of potential there.:music: Remember, lots of pictures, OK?

Russellc
 
OK, someone step up with pair number 50. Still rolling along and still picking up new e'wavers. A very impressive project, still looking forward to more work with the B&C DE 250 compresson drivers. While the 220 ti is seemingly taylor made for this project, and performance has shocked many, the DE 250 is quite a bit more clear. Once I've been listening to it and go back, I find a little residual fuzziness that isnt present on the DE 250 driver.

Also, in the begining the DE 250 seemed to to go right through my head, something very sharp. I had to turn down the attenuation WAY down to avoid this. Some say that there is a peak that needs to be tamed. I have tried the suggested cap and coil on the high pass and it seemed to help this a little. What has helped more is just play time. It now seems fine about in the middle of the attenuators range and sounds great. Right now I'm using the standard < 95 db HP, and the low pass from JBL 4430. Maybe the 2235H has a similar hump to the LE14A driver, as the components in the JBL crossover's LP seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of around 900 hz (electrically) as well, it uses the same cap 12 uf as the standard E'wave LP, but a much larger 2.6 coil. Of course this is strickly subjective opinion of yours truely, havent yet attained measurement ability yet.

Anyone else having fun with DE 250?

Russellc

Thank you, I have been waiting for someone to post opinion on the 250.

Have you also listened to the BMS 4552?

btw, the cheapers DE250 I have found online is here....heck its the cheapest site for lots of pro audio stuff!!
http://www.prosoundservice.com/m9_view_item.html?m9:item=B&C-DE250

$120 isnt bad at all!!!
 
OK, someone step up with pair number 50. Still rolling along and still picking up new e'wavers. A very impressive project, still looking forward to more work with the B&C DE 250 compresson drivers. While the 220 ti is seemingly taylor made for this project, and performance has shocked many, the DE 250 is quite a bit more clear. Once I've been listening to it and go back, I find a little residual fuzziness that isnt present on the DE 250 driver.

Also, in the begining the DE 250 seemed to to go right through my head, something very sharp. I had to turn down the attenuation WAY down to avoid this. Some say that there is a peak that needs to be tamed. I have tried the suggested cap and coil on the high pass and it seemed to help this a little. What has helped more is just play time. It now seems fine about in the middle of the attenuators range and sounds great. Right now I'm using the standard < 95 db HP, and the low pass from JBL 4430. Maybe the 2235H has a similar hump to the LE14A driver, as the components in the JBL crossover's LP seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of around 900 hz (electrically) as well, it uses the same cap 12 uf as the standard E'wave LP, but a much larger 2.6 coil. Of course this is strickly subjective opinion of yours truely, havent yet attained measurement ability yet.

Anyone else having fun with DE 250?

Russellc

Your experience with the B&C break in parallels mine with the 220ti. I always thought breaking in speakers was BS until now. But I wonder how much getting energy into the new crossovers affects the sound. All I know for sure is the more they play the better they sound.
 
That's right, I used the original inductors. It looked like everyone was using the iron core ones from PE. I ordered 18ga air core ones kinda by mistake.
So I decided to go ahead and use what I had, I seem to remember seeing others use it with ok results.
As far as bass loading goes, I reused the "pink stuff" that was already there.
These speakers were already about as full as you could make them without packing them tight! Boominess is a problem I really had not noticed. I'm using the original woofer w. square magnet.
My brother is an independent producer of audio and video. He was impressed enough to ask if he might try them out in his studio.

I ended up with mine packed pretty tight. Originally they were loosely packed. The bass was somewhat bloaty and uncontrolled untill I filled the cabinets.

I love the bass quality from the Advent woofer and cabinet. There's little compromise there in terms of extension and tonality and at the price it's hard to go wrong. I've used Large Advents with a little EQ and a 100 hz line level crossover as a subwoofer. If you're careful not to go crazy and overdrive them they'll give you a lot of bottom octave.
 
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OK, someone step up with pair number 50. Still rolling along and still picking up new e'wavers. A very impressive project, still looking forward to more work with the B&C DE 250 compresson drivers. While the 220 ti is seemingly taylor made for this project, and performance has shocked many, the DE 250 is quite a bit more clear. Once I've been listening to it and go back, I find a little residual fuzziness that isnt present on the DE 250 driver.

Also, in the begining the DE 250 seemed to to go right through my head, something very sharp. I had to turn down the attenuation WAY down to avoid this. Some say that there is a peak that needs to be tamed. I have tried the suggested cap and coil on the high pass and it seemed to help this a little. What has helped more is just play time. It now seems fine about in the middle of the attenuators range and sounds great. Right now I'm using the standard < 95 db HP, and the low pass from JBL 4430. Maybe the 2235H has a similar hump to the LE14A driver, as the components in the JBL crossover's LP seems to be somewhere in the neighborhood of around 900 hz (electrically) as well, it uses the same cap 12 uf as the standard E'wave LP, but a much larger 2.6 coil. Of course this is strickly subjective opinion of yours truely, havent yet attained measurement ability yet.

Anyone else having fun with DE 250?

Russellc
Yeah i know what you mean by sharp, I ordered the updates but before they could get here I pulled the ewave CO for another project for a friend and his advents. I tried the Pie 4 for the sake of experimentation and the 2225H and DE 250 sound dynamic with that crossover. I have another set of 2225h and DE 250s that as soon as I get around to building some more cabinets for Im going to ewave and leave the two sets alone for a couple months till I figure out which I like better then Ill match them up. I also have a set of 2425h Id like to get in there somehow but thats on hold for the near future.
 
hello, I am new to this project, Im interested in building one these 2 way econowave box, but something that puzzles me is the crossover for the LF woofer 1.2 khz. What happen to the frequencies between 1.2khz to 3Khz , wouldnt there be a drop out between those frequencies?
 
I ended up with mine packed pretty tight. Originally they were loosely packed. The bass was somewhat bloaty and uncontrolled untill I filled the cabinets.

I love the bass quality from the Advent woofer and cabinet. There's little compromise there in terms of extension and tonality and at the price it's hard to go wrong. I've used Large Advents with a little EQ and a 100 hz line level crossover as a subwoofer. If you're careful not to go crazy and overdrive them they'll give you a lot of bottom octave.
I was just over at Classic Speaker pages and one formula is to use the pink stuff, 3.5 in thick std 14 in wide and 10 linear feet of it with the paper backing removed. That's to get a weight of about 2lbs+. They are using a formula based upon the 1.6 cuft cabinet volume.
That would pack it very tight imho. I'm going to try it.
 
OK, someone step up with pair number 50.
Russellc


OK. Submitted for # 50. Pair number one of the three pair of e-waves I currently have in the works. Also, have a pair of e-wave LE-14A Santana's, 123A-1 fitted Altec 891's and the thing that started the whole e-wave thing for me, a pair of Santana II's with 811B's, BMS drivers and LE-120H bottom.

Altec E-waved 872B's.jpg
 
hello, I am new to this project, Im interested in building one these 2 way econowave box, but something that puzzles me is the crossover for the LF woofer 1.2 khz. What happen to the frequencies between 1.2khz to 3Khz , wouldnt there be a drop out between those frequencies?

The higher hi pass was chosen to smooth out a big bump in the response of the D220Ti. The effective crossover frequency is something like 1.6 KHz. There is no dropout, or we wouldn't have 50 different guys saying nice things about the EconoWave after building one of them.
 
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