Rock the Garage!

So I was at a local skating rink and the owner was clearing out his storage closet.... He had 2 Altec 816A enclosures that he was going to dispose of, so I gladly took them off his hands!! Brought them home, and decided this could be a nice Saturday project to get some good sounds going in my garage.

Here's a look at the first one:
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9979/nt2403.th.jpg

Crack open the back, and very pleased to find a big honkin' JBL E145-8 in great condition:
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8720/nt2401.th.jpg

The JBL gets stashed in a box for safe keeping. The other 816 had a P.O.S. 15" woofer, so that one goes into the "get rid of" pile.
Now I have a good reason to break out some nice woofers and put 'em in. I pulled out the Altec 416A's and install those:
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/2667/nt2398.th.jpg

Oh yeah, those things look nice in there, and no WAF to deal with in the garage!
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1032/nt2396.th.jpg

Next up, I pulled out some 511 horns, installed those 802-8g's I found in the closet, and hung them up baseball stadium style about 10' up in the corners of the garage:

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/9219/nt2395.th.jpg

Wired everything up with a couple of spare N1209 networks and WOW....the garage is ROCKIN'!!! :D

does it get any better? Good for you.

I wish I could find stuff like that........ in pairs! I do find good stuff once in a blue moon, but always singles........Grrrr.

Now you will never get around to painting the walls. :Beer mug:

I admit I'm jealous--I've been looking for a nice pair of Altecs for my garage workshop--great that you found those cabs for free! I'm curious what other Altec gear you have at home if you "found" a pair of 802-8G's in your closet and had a "spare" pair of 1209 crossovers at home too? ;) Not sure if I understand your setup--are you saying that you have your 811 horns 10 feet above your 816 cabs or are you hanging the 816's too?

I was pretty blown away when he said he was going to just trash the 816s. He said they were very old and heavy and not to hurt myself loading them on my truck. I've picked up a few Altec pieces just like that - poking around at churches, or garage sales, or auditoriums. Most of the good things I got off ebay about 10 years ago...I got very interested in Altec gear back then and just snatched up a few auctions. Really wish I had purchased more then, since the prices have shot up so much!!

Anyway, the garage setup is pretty crappy right now. I hung the horns up in the corners, but the bass horns are sitting on the floor, stacked on each other. I need to find a way to separate the 816s and get them close to the corners, but it will be very hard to do since they're so large. Those 416s are some really wide-range speakers! So the sound is pretty mushed up right now. Plus those dividing networks need to be re-capped at a minimum, and I'm not too sure about running the 16 ohm loads in combination with the 8 ohm loads; it's probably not a good idea, especially as old as the XO networks are...

-Mike

Good score, and no signs of mouse poop, to boot.



...clearly I need to do more ice skating during mass

OK - been working on the XO for this setup.
Up until now, we've been using the 1209-8A networks. Those are pretty dang good, but I wanted something more specifically matched to these drivers and horns. So the exercise has been to play with variations of the 1209-8A, and then I just went to the drawing board and started from scratch. I played with several custom XO designs and still wasn't quite happy with the sound. Finally broke down and drug the active XO out there and tweaked with that until I found something that sounded as good as I could get it (used the wife as the choosy listener since her ears are still like a cat!). That exercise wound up giving the the ground work of a 900Hz XO point, with 12dB Butterworth on both HF and LF.

Then it was over to PCD and model the thing in there, then build some prototypes, etc.

Finally landed on a solid XO that is performing like the active:
http://imageshack.us/a/img404/8593/new900hzxo.png

For those interested, here's the schematic of the XO:

http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/3861/garage900xo.png

PCD Is the Bomb!! I'm running the crossovers I did in it. Nice work Buddy. :) Do they sound good? Or have you not built them yet?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by cradeldorf

PCD Is the Bomb!! I'm running the crossovers I did in it. Nice work Buddy. :) Do they sound good? Or have you not built them yet?

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Thanks CD. Yeah, I have one channel built, still tweaking and deciding how I want the "finished model" to look. It sounds very good. The last change I will make tonight is to put in a variable resistor for R1 in the notch filter to be able to dial in the upper mids. And yes, I've very glad you put me onto PCD!! I'm very pleased with this software!! :Nerd:

If you don't mind me asking, what is PCD? I'm assuming it's a schematic software... Where do I get it? Thanks!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alien_Shore

Thanks CD. Yeah, I have one channel built, still tweaking and deciding how I want the "finished model" to look. It sounds very good. The last change I will make tonight is to put in a variable resistor for R1 in the notch filter to be able to dial in the upper mids. And yes, I've very glad you put me onto PCD!! I'm very pleased with this software!! :Nerd:

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by hemicuda

If you don't mind me asking, what is PCD? I'm assuming it's a schematic software... Where do I get it? Thanks!

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It's Jeff Bagby's software "Passive Crossover Designer"

jbagby

Makes me want to set up my last pair of 817's loaded with 921-8a's and the sapre 811's, all I need are some drivers!

Nice work....

OK, I've gotten my "production" parts assembled in the final XO design.

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/128/img0446ko.jpg

This thing sounds great! I did an A/B compare today with the new passive XO on the right channel and the active XO on the left channel. Surprisingly, on the best mono recording I have (Nat King Cole After Midnight), the passive actually sounds just a tad bit better than the active. Woot. I consider that to be a smashing sonic success. The big 14 gauge perfect lay inductors in the HF section sound clearly better than the prototype inductors, and I replaced the 12 ohm resistor in the RLC notch filter with a pot so I can adjust the attenuation.

Love the novel use of perf board! ;^)

That's awesome Mike!!! Glad to hear it worked for you. :)

Just wanted to post a quick update on this.
As some of you may have noticed, I upgraded the garage woofers with new GPA 416s. I also modified the crossovers to accommodate the differences in the woofers electrical behavior. After a few months of break-in, I have to say that the GPA 416s are phenomenal. Their sound is so full, so musical (its that lovely mid-bass sound), and clean. I may try to get a quick video with my HD camera and see if it can come close to conveying the awesomeness of the sound I enjoy in my garage...

http://imageshack.com/a/img34/1365/pe8.png

I'm thinking of building the same crossover as I have some 802-8g's and a 416b. I've done the Z19's but want something simply for this project as they are out in the garage.

Question, my LF is 8 ohm - your LF design is 16 ohm. What would I need to change on the LF circuit for this design to work on a 8 ohm LF 416?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mattvandyke

I'm thinking of building the same crossover as I have some 802-8g's and a 416b. I've done the Z19's but want something simply for this project as they are out in the garage.

Question, my LF is 8 ohm - your LF design is 16 ohm. What would I need to change on the LF circuit for this design to work on a 8 ohm LF 416?

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Here's the revised schematic for the 416:
Attachment 2292

Thanks much for the drawing, I really appreciate it. However, the drawing is so small, I'm unable to see the values in the HF section. When I try to increase the size the resolution decreases. I've tried to print it out and that doesn't work either. Can you forward the values for the LF circuit?

Thanks for your efforts in assisting me on my project.

Matt

When I added the GPA 416s to the garage setup, I remeasured everything and then updated the circuit simulation, so basically started from scratch.
After playing around with it and conducting a lot of listening tests, I raised the crossover point to 1 KHz.

http://www.hostboard.com/forums/hbmc.../2014/03/6.jpg

The values are:
L1 1.02 mH
L2 0.5 mH
L3 3.0 mH
R1 potentiometer
C1 4 uF
C2 6 uF
C3 30 uF

Thank you much, I can clearly see the values now. I will let you know how the project turns out.