ESS amt 1 tower drag home

[Porkloin]

That enclosure is getting better by the minute. I would've never thought to use a roller. As you well know, prep work is everything.
ESS probably used 51.5 back in the day because they got a sweet deal on a truck load of them. If it bothers you, you can always combine it with a .5.

 

[scoloheros]

I just ordered 6 totl caps, $96.21 hahaha, haha, ha .....ha, ..boohoohoo boohoo. Oh well, dust to dust, I feel like pulling through with these. I noticed with the rollers it's a good idea to go over the paint rollers with a lint roller or boxing tape, something like that. If you don't you will probably get fibers in the paint, sticking up with it dries. I just put the last coat on the front after blading off those fibers. I'll start on the other one soon, kinda cool seeing them being reborn again. I don't think I would have tried without the internet and help here.

 

[Porkloin]

On the bright side , even if you don't hear the benefits of poly-caps in your application, they will last much longer than the electrolytics did. Your decendents will sing your name to the heavens, if you leave them to one of them in your will.
I, on the other hand, will be buried with my AMT's.

 

[Porkloin]

If you'd allow me to indulge the audiophile tendency to bloviate yet again, I offer up another none-OEM improvment: Aluminum crossover board support, as opposed to a couple of #8 wood screws through one piece of particle board into another (although I think your crossover boards are plastic), Think of the valve cover hold-down tabs in cars from the bad old days when life was a constant battle against oil leaks. They distributed the load across a broader area than just the head of the bolt would. I updrilled the existing holes to 1/4" and passed a bolt all the way through. I also did a little stepped arrangement with aluminum slugs on the inside, but that was unnecessary overkill and countersunk the aluminum slug on the back/outside of the speaker, but that was for aesthetics. I sleep better at night knowing that the thing won't come apart until I take it apart, and even THEN, it may hold firm.

 

[Porkloin]

I suppose a more asthecially pleasing alternative to the above-mentioned overengineering would be threaded inserts set into the back panel with the correct length screw through the crossover board. Fender washers and lock washers would be much easier to come by as well. This will require a patient hand and/or drill-stops so as to not drill all of the way through and put a blemish on the nice finish you've given them.

 

[crispycircuit]

Nice paint job, cab looks good! Question? What's inside the cab? Any baffles or braces? Also I would try the Rat Shack woofer. These are great speakers and deserve the time & effort. I'll be watching your progress... Cheers!

 

[FONSguy]

These were one of my favorite speakers in the 1970's. I used to play Joni Mitchell's "Help Me" really loud for the drums at the beginning. Heard them at AtlantisSound in Springfield.

 

[Porkloin]

The bad: Three sides covered with grill cloth. If you want to maintain that classic amplifier look, it's going to cost more than a package of poly-caps. I've never seen a direct replacement for the ESS cloth, but Mojotone comes close.
I will probably weep if you cover three sides with some plain black stuff from Joanne's. Black looks fine on the truncated pyramids, but to have a whole tower enveloped in it would blow the mood.

 

[onwardjames]

I'm late to this thread, but I have surely enjoyed it. Keep rocking scoloheros!!

And shout out to Porkloin, for being such a sideline enthusiast on this restoration.

 

[scoloheros]

I'm late to this thread, but I have surely enjoyed it. Keep rocking scoloheros!!

And shout out to Porkloin, for being such a sideline enthusiast on this restoration.

Yeah if I hadn't gotten much help with these, it's possible I might have trashed them after I saw the replacement woofers. I don't know that but when you're thinking about moving, you do stupid things with "stuff". I like Porkloin's avatar too but I don't remember the scene of her holding a speaker ..."Bloviate", ...I'm increasing my vocabulary also haha. I noticed that, the plate holding the circuit board is only held on by two screws centered along the longest sides. There ought to be six, imo, one at each corner and one in the middle of each longest side. Also, the circuit board was hanging off the plastic plate when I first looked inside, easy fix there though. The design is appreciated and I don't blame them much for the expedient looking type of construction here and there, I guess they just didn't have a lot of time to spend on details in the factory and it all was to be covered anyway. I will probably do the covers later, will put that off, I have too much going on right now. Putting Velcro on to hold up the covers makes me cringe a little, what's the thing people do with them now to hang the covers on, just nail them back again? I like the idea of magnets but that's a lot of work and seems like there would need to be many of them since it's kind of heavy, yeah that's a little much there. I have each cover marked to go with their associate speaker as well as the tweeters. I like them going where they used to be. Can't forget the other speaker, I started on it. It's going much faster since I got a method down with the other. I was going to wait for my finger prints to grow back after working with the wood filler on the other one but I used gloves this time, I'll roll paint the other tomorrow. I feel like T-nuts for mounting the woofers is a good idea, I think pulling up some particle board weakened it around the hole and I can see how a screw bulged out some PB toward the center of the speaker hole when it was screwed in. Any reason why T-nuts would be a bad idea? I read problems on another forum but I would set them in first without the speaker to make sure they were set right, might even use an adhesive on the wood side of the T-nut(?) The only significant things I haven't ordered are the woofers. I'll call the co sooner or later. Yeah I have two trucks, how'd that happen. Those are nice looking ESS speakers btw.

 

[Porkloin]

T-Nuts into particle board is butchery in the face of an internet full of relatively inexpensive, NON-butchery alternatives. They take valuable material away at a point where you really need it and are held in place by four crude steel wedges driven into what amounts to a flat Prest-O-Log.
Welcome to the 21st century:



Actually, nutplates probably came about back in WW2 in aircraft production, but they make T-Nuts/Hurricane nuts look like something from a cave-man's Kornerhorns. Installation of nutplates requires minimal cutting away of wood, their floating nature is forgiving of measurement inaccuracies and they're self locking. Fortunately, aircraft builders are no longer the sole consumers of nutplates - auto racing has adopted them, and thus, drove down the pricing.
A little more difficult to install on an already assembled enclosure, but well worth the extra effort. Once they're in, you've got a great fastener for life.

 

[Porkloin]

RE: Grill magnets
Well worth the cost and effort. They're just more civilized than the alternatives.

 

[scoloheros]

Oh yeah, I'm getting those nutplates for sure! This is like speaker boot camp. Hey, waaaait a minute, do these sound pretty good when working or are y'all just playing a joke on me The first fuse holders I ordered didn't fit, I ordered others after a guy at Fry's told me they would fit, received in the mail, ...they don't fit. There are other places around here, I'll find some sooner or later. I really don't want to drill to accommodate. So yeah, I'm just waiting on parts now but still haven't ordered woofers, still thinking about that. Everybody that has something to sell has a bias about it, hard to decide.

 

[Porkloin]

Those keep getting prettier by the minute. One would almost hate to cover up them up with the grill. Better than new.
I've raved enough about the AMT on top, but a transmission line with a 10" woofer should dig pretty deep. Usually, one uses a T-line to extract more out of a 4 - 6" full range driver, so I imagine the effect would be pretty cool with a large old-school woofer. I wish a T-line guru would chime in here and provide an easy answer with regard to the driver, but the only easy answer is to attempt to find an original ESS 10" driver and have it refurbished. Which wouldn't be easy.
If it's any help, I found Eminence 1040SF drivers here. They were the Go-To as direct replacements for the old ESS 10" woofers of yesteryear. They may be your safer choice without originals or a piece of software to analyze other drivers for their suitability for your T-Line.
AK resident ESS guru, @automojo , has pointed out in the past that the 1040SF was in need of a Zobel impedence equalizing network, which your crossover has. I punched the values from the 1040SF into an online Zobel calculator, and the values of the existing parts are not quite the same, so if you decide to go with the 1040SF or any other driver than original , you may want to keep yourself open to testing with the correct calculated value of cap and resistor in the Zobel part of the crossover.

 

[jcidave]

My ESS guru has been a guy who sells alot of ESS parts on ebay. He has a number of auctions going on right now with seller ID 83fj. My suggestion is to tag onto one of his auctions and send him a message about sourcing original AMT 1Tower woofers. His inventory changes constantly and he may or may not have what you want at any given moment. I have purchased a number of parts from him with confidence that the product is well described and will arrive safely. Good luck. PS. Keep up the great work on the tower refurbs. All looks great!

 

[essNeff]

Good advice!
You can stick the RS woofer's in until you find the "Real McCoy".
By the way they look Outstanding!

 

[scoloheros]

One of the RS woofers was trashed trying to get it out, that's OK, I'm have plenty to listen with in the mean time. I have the new caps in, they're huge! One of 33uf caps had a value of 29.6 written on it, sup with that? Do you think it just tested out at 29.6 but was "close enough"? Porkloin, do you remember what size nutplates/screws fit the hole size on the woofer basket? It bothers me too much, I'm going to order new totl resistors, I hope I can get them in around the barrels I put in.

 

[Porkloin]

8-32 was the size of the nutplates and allen screws. The bad: the screws used to hold down the nutplates were #3, which is not commonly available at the local hardware store. #4 is the smallest available, and they were too big to pass through the hold-down holes in the nutplates. The double whammy is that they're such specialty items, that you won't find them both at the same location to help cut down on shipping costs.
A 10-32 nutplate will accomodate a #4 hold down screw, but at the cost of the room for error you'd have with a smaller 8-32 setup. Either way, make sure to pre-drill the holes for the hold down screws (3/32 for #3, 7/64 for #4). Those recommended bit sizes are a hair large so as to not put undue stress that close to the edge of your woofer hole, so make sure to dip the screw tips in some wood glue before driving them. You may want to do a few test drill/drives on a piece of scrap to make sure that the holes aren't too loose.
That cap was probably mesaured and "certified close enough" by the monkeys that assembled ESS speakers back in the day. Modern manufacturing has resulted in much more accuracy and your poly caps are probably within 1% of the printed spec.Your crossover point on the Heil will lower a bit with the proper value, but I doubt that the difference is audible, considering conventional wisdom says that the Heil is a bit anemic when getting that low anyway.

 

[scoloheros]

My ESS guru has been a guy who sells alot of ESS parts on ebay. He has a number of auctions going on right now with seller ID 83fj. My suggestion is to tag onto one of his auctions and send him a message about sourcing original AMT 1Tower woofers. His inventory changes constantly and he may or may not have what you want at any given moment. I have purchased a number of parts from him with confidence that the product is well described and will arrive safely. Good luck. PS. Keep up the great work on the tower refurbs. All looks great!

He's helped a lot thanks. I now have some double voice coil woofers cleaned up and ready for new surrounds. He knew from the serial# that they were experimenting with ferrite mags at the time mine were made so I paid up and bought the dv woofers(GEFCO). It's a tight fit for the voice coils but I'm going to put the surrounds on myself.

 

[jcidave]

Good deal. I'm glad he was able to help you. I've refoamed a number of these drivers myself and its not too difficult. Did you get the surrounds from Jon also? Sometimes he has them and sometimes not.