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Get familiar with the reaction system: Introducing the Reaction System
$5 buyout tweeters
https://parts-express.com/JDT-6803-Speaker-299-4356?quantity=1
I picked up a handful to play with.
I took one that seemed to have similar impedance plot to most of the others... Chopped off some cardboard from the PE packing box and cut a tweeter size hole. Plunked the tweeter in and put some masking tape around the edges as a halfass attempt to smooth the bezel edges.
0°, ~15°, ~30° rough estimates.
For $5 I kind of expected worse.
Comments
Do you have the days reading on those. For $5 that's pretty impressive.
Guessing that is what you meant?
In pass band it only gets down to 5.82ohm. I suppose that "little" 2k blip is what makes it $5.
I ended up getting 6. 3 were like this one. 2 were a little different on the impedance plot with a somewhat higher Fs but were somewhat matching to each other. And one was a dud.. the sweep sounded awful and I think I could hear some VC rub. Might return 2 and keep the rest. Probably measure response on the oddballs to make sure noting is wrong and decide from there.
Might be able to afford making gift speakers this way.
That 2k anomaly really sucks if you intended to use the "low fs". From 3k on up it looks pretty good. Match these with that gold buyout woofer and you could have a pretty good speaker for very cheap. My only real concern is the gold woofer any better than the grs 6 1/2.
Either way, have fun.
Thanks Andrew for taking the time to post your measurements. I think a pretty decent speaker could be built for < $50. I'm a sucker for buyouts and might throw a few in my cart to play with.
Ken, what gold buyout woofers are you referring to?
Gotta be: https://www.parts-express.com/DW6.5G-Speaker-299-4348?quantity=1
Yeah, I would take the GRS poly over that all day.
If you are looking to build inexpensive gift speakers, the Cabrini Redux can be built very cheaply if using that Menards PB shelving material.
https://midwestaudio.club/spotlight/project/cabriniredux/
You can still build a pair for less than $100 (including all materials if using the Menards PB), substitute the Dayton Audio 2.5mH laminate core for the spec'd Jantzen 2.2mH and off to the races.
I am all in favor of buyout builds - but that gold cone woofer just throws a few red flags for me. The GRS models pretty much the same - with more Xmax and I would bet dollars to donuts there is a breakup to deal with on the gold cone driver.
Anyways, I don't normally advertise my own designs but if you are looking for something inexpensive to build it is hard to beat this design.
That being said - buy and build, the best way to learn.
I saw that gold buyout woofer too. It has one big advantage to me... Its GOLD! The reason it appealed to me was because it would be such a unique build, but I hadn't even had time to see if it was good since I know I don't have time to do stuff with it.
Yeah that woofer is not too exciting.
I know it's not on sale, but did anyone look at the Ciare stuff? Heads up about them, USpeaker prices on Ciare are lower. It depends on whether shipping from them is free or not whether it matters I suppose.
Anyway, I wanna look harder at these:
https://www.usspeaker.com/ciare hwg130-4ohm-1.htm
https://www.parts-express.com/Ciare-HWG130-4-5-Woofer-4-Ohm-293-136?quantity=1
InDIYana Event Website
I took a quick look at them. They seem to be pretty good but their prices seemed high to me.
For the prices, they better have close to world class motors and soft parts. $150 is quite a bit of money for a 5" driver.
I would agree to cost:performance ratio. The Le is super low, so to not have a shorting ring would be a surprise.
InDIYana Event Website
Yeah that 3k upper range estimate is a little telling. The xmax sucks for a pretty decent size spider and surround.
Here were the other two that were different. When I first measured them there was more of a wiggly flat spot in the dip. This time it seems smoother. IDK
I compared the response of one of these to the first one I measured. Turns out they are probably all reasonably matched, all things considered, besides the dud.
I also measured too close the first time (Probably about 21") and the mic was a little below the center line. This time I pulled it back to 37" and added another box under the mic tripod to be better on-center.
Since I'm within driving distance of PE I went ahead and returned a pair. I picked up some of the Goldmembers to check out
They look somewhat nice and spartan. The color is not spot on real gold, but they made an attempt and it really depends on the lighting. The dust caps aren't well centered but if oriented vertically it is typically much less noticeable.
They seem to have a good amount of xlim. I bet they would be protesting long before any real damage.
I think I used up all my available living room time today getting the tweeter response measurements. Maybe I could finagle a near field measurement somehow. That ~1.3k hump is not looking too promising though.
Just your typical surround resonance frequency of the average 6.5" woofer. Might just be a dip in response that isn't noticeable.
InDIYana Event Website
How reliable are nearfield measurements above 1k? How abut distortion?
Seems dominated by 3rd order (Orange) and 5th order (Green) harmonics
Nearfield will display a significant roll off on the top end, which makes that breakup even more prominent. Probably not a driver I would personally pursue - but might work as the bottom of a neat small 3-way.
I was thinking use the woofers in a car door and crossover to a mid-tweet in the pillars.
Seems like it is a turd. I figured as much, but it was cheap enough to check out and I was already there. Hopefully saves someone else wasting money on em.
For the record I did not break these in besides some manual cone movement to near xlim to stretch and relax things. Also after some more "massaging" they seemed to settle in more. Qts gap shrank to .82 and .85 when tested again.
Don't worry. Build a pair and see how they sound. For the cost it would be hard to call it a failure even if it sounded bad.
I think the woofers were $4.88 but now PE bumped up the price to $6.88.
Went ahead and ordered a few of these buyout tweeters. I still have a bunch of the Peerless 835004 buyout woofers from ~ 12 years ago just sitting on the shelf and those can easily play to 3kHz. So two $5 buyout tweeters and two $10 buyout woofers... like Ken said, it can't be a failure at that cost, right?
A DIY project like this screams (to me) to use cheap Menards PB shelving boards, some scrap 2" pvc pipe, some remaining Madisound 10 uF mylar $0.60 caps, NPE caps if bigger values are needed, and some buyout 20 ga steel laminate coils unwound to the correct value.
This is what got me excited about DIY speaker design and building in the first place
I remember getting another pair of SDS-160F25PR01-08 a while ago when they went on sale.. But I can't seem to find em. Grr
Are those paper or ceramic cones? PE says paper. Spec sheet says ceramic.
Spec sheet says doped cellulose fibre, aka treated paper.
Yeah, I got it. At the top of the spec sheet it says 5" ceramic woofer then later doped cellulose fiber. Yeah. No. Got it. Huh?
Took apart the $5 tweeter. Used a cell phone case separating tool & kept going around the seem until all the glue beads were broke free. Be careful & take your time.
Take your time removing the tweeter from the face plate.
The glued on foam pad is medium firm with nothing under it. Maybe some cotton under it will help.
Maybe a hole could be drilled through the pole piece and felt in the chamber to make it useful.
I figured the diaphragm was glued on. Nice to know it isn't. Sweet! Any ferrofluid in there? I'm not seeing the typical residue.
Wonder if that screw pattern would match the visaton waveguides. I'm sure it woudn't be worth it but curious.