just for a test you can pull the wires off your existing tweets and run them to the Heil that is sitting on top of your speakers. I run the Heils in my rig and they sound best with open space behind them as they are dipole.
My Great Great Heil DIY Speakers
- Thread starter Markus111
- Start date
just for a test you can pull the wires off your existing tweets and run them to the Heil that is sitting on top of your speakers. I run the Heils in my rig and they sound best with open space behind them as they are dipole.
westend
Audiopile
Great timing, I'm glad this build got brought up again, I'm planning on using the Heils as tweeter with Altec 802g's as midrange and Altec 416b for the low end. I've been storing advise like a squirrel stores nuts for a couple of years. The consensus I'm hearing is that the Heil is at it's best in the upper ranges.
My current design idea is to position the Heil above the 811 mid horn, both for the dispersion and to garner the Heils dipole attributes. Anyone have any ideas about placement?
My current design idea is to position the Heil above the 811 mid horn, both for the dispersion and to garner the Heils dipole attributes. Anyone have any ideas about placement?
Wow - I popped into DIY after a lengthy absence, and my thread from 2007 is up. How cool is that? I would be happy to publish the crossover schematic. Give me a day or two to find it and draw it. The final one has hand-written last-minute changes scrawled on it.
For what it's worth, these are my wife's all time favorite speakers. We spent two 12 hour days at that 2007 AK Fest listening to these, and not a hint of listener fatigue for either of us. Those big Heils are great.
Of course, three years later, and all I can think about is what I would do differently if I were to start from scratch. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to re-working things.
Markus
For what it's worth, these are my wife's all time favorite speakers. We spent two 12 hour days at that 2007 AK Fest listening to these, and not a hint of listener fatigue for either of us. Those big Heils are great.
Of course, three years later, and all I can think about is what I would do differently if I were to start from scratch. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to re-working things.
Markus
33&athird
Turn on & Tune in
Man, what an awesome topic...now I really want to do some diy speakers...wether or not that's a good thing has yet to be seen
By the way, I love the guitar-type volume knob on the crossover board, cool stuff:thmbsp:
And the cabniets look great, really classy stuff:drool:.
By the way, I love the guitar-type volume knob on the crossover board, cool stuff:thmbsp:
And the cabniets look great, really classy stuff:drool:.
Those defiantly were quite nice Markus, got to hear them on a few different amps..
They sounded mighty fine with your Frankenamp, Paul. I actually bought a bunch of 6BG6 in Lansing, forgetting that I also bought a ton a couple of years ago. I'm going to have build a couple of monoblocs just so I have somewhere to put all of those tubes
Ok, so here is the crossover as promised. I have learned a TON about these Heils in the last few years. I'll try to summarize in a few bullet points.
1.) They spray as much sound out the back as the front. This is obvious, but it makes room placement a bit challenging. I can get them to sound great in my living room, but I can't get the sound right in my basement. If I pull them out far enough from the walls, they block the door to the laundry room, and this impacts my wife in a very negative way......
2.) Distortion climbs dramitically as frequency goes down below 1500 Hz. I can't believe ESS originally crossed these over at 700 Hz. That probably wouldn't fly in today's world - the stereo mags would rip them to shreds.
3.) The other interesting thing that happens below1500 Hz is that they start behaving like a dipole. In other words, they fall off at 6db / octave as the rear wave is cancelling the front wave.
4.) They are very difficult to measure and design for if you're used to designing for ordinary front mounted tweeters. With sound coming out front and back, the power response is difficult to get a handle on.
If I were going to start these from scratch, the thing I would do is to get the midrange as close to the Heil as possible in order to minimize the center-to-center distance. They were easiest to cross when I basically just sat the midrange right next to the Heil. Unfortunately, my cabinets would not support this.
A couple of notes on the crossover. R1, R2 are an L-pad and are NOT representative of what is currently in the speaker. What I ended up doing, is taking a stereo 8 ohm L-pad and putting both pots in parallel to end up with a 4 ohm mono L-pad. If you don't want to do that, then the resistor method as shown in the schematic is fine, but you'll have calculate the resistors to suit your taste.
R3 is a pad for the midrange. This I did with 1/2 an 8 ohm L-pad. You will have find the resistor that suits your application.
Good Luck!
Markus
1.) They spray as much sound out the back as the front. This is obvious, but it makes room placement a bit challenging. I can get them to sound great in my living room, but I can't get the sound right in my basement. If I pull them out far enough from the walls, they block the door to the laundry room, and this impacts my wife in a very negative way......
2.) Distortion climbs dramitically as frequency goes down below 1500 Hz. I can't believe ESS originally crossed these over at 700 Hz. That probably wouldn't fly in today's world - the stereo mags would rip them to shreds.
3.) The other interesting thing that happens below1500 Hz is that they start behaving like a dipole. In other words, they fall off at 6db / octave as the rear wave is cancelling the front wave.
4.) They are very difficult to measure and design for if you're used to designing for ordinary front mounted tweeters. With sound coming out front and back, the power response is difficult to get a handle on.
If I were going to start these from scratch, the thing I would do is to get the midrange as close to the Heil as possible in order to minimize the center-to-center distance. They were easiest to cross when I basically just sat the midrange right next to the Heil. Unfortunately, my cabinets would not support this.
A couple of notes on the crossover. R1, R2 are an L-pad and are NOT representative of what is currently in the speaker. What I ended up doing, is taking a stereo 8 ohm L-pad and putting both pots in parallel to end up with a 4 ohm mono L-pad. If you don't want to do that, then the resistor method as shown in the schematic is fine, but you'll have calculate the resistors to suit your taste.
R3 is a pad for the midrange. This I did with 1/2 an 8 ohm L-pad. You will have find the resistor that suits your application.
Good Luck!
Markus
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Finally got a chance to read this thread, great looking speakers-what a project to be proud of!:thmbsp:
My experience with the AMT3's, and perhaps part of the problem matching your mid drivers is that the AMT3's mid driver isn't really a midrange, but a transitional driver, more like a small woofer, and a cone too boot. Perhaps this is why OCS, and other recommend the Emminece Alpha 6 as a replacement, it's a mid woofer at best, not a midrange.
The PS1220's was a true midrange, and it used the smaller monopole Heil, a bit of a different animal.
The Emminece 1040SF is the speaker ESS probably would have used if they were still buildning the AMT3's, and another OCS recommended replacement. It has all the efficiency of the original woofer, with a much larger x max and much lower distortion, and reaches in the mid 30's from what I can tell to far with one speaker upgrading temporarly so far. To be fair, the old AMT3's woofers should be reconed and recharged (as RonC has mentioned) as a fair comparision, but this comes out to more than the brand new 1040SF's.
It also eliminates the stock woofers tendency to loose some output (ALnico magnets) and sound warm or muddy in some instances.
Now I'm basing this on one speaker so far, but IMHO the AMT3's with the 1040SF's and a new or rebuilt crossover are true world beaters. ESS had it right on the large scale, they just need to be 'fine tuned' a bit.
They are the most musical, and enjoyable speakers I have come across hands down.
I think a AMT3 clone, with similiar volume specs, and using the Apha 6, 1040SF, and the 8 ohm AMT3 crossover would make a great project for someone that has great cabinet working skills-I think few speakers could touch it's sound and sheer musical enjoyment.
Again-great read and excellent speaker!!
My experience with the AMT3's, and perhaps part of the problem matching your mid drivers is that the AMT3's mid driver isn't really a midrange, but a transitional driver, more like a small woofer, and a cone too boot. Perhaps this is why OCS, and other recommend the Emminece Alpha 6 as a replacement, it's a mid woofer at best, not a midrange.
The PS1220's was a true midrange, and it used the smaller monopole Heil, a bit of a different animal.
The Emminece 1040SF is the speaker ESS probably would have used if they were still buildning the AMT3's, and another OCS recommended replacement. It has all the efficiency of the original woofer, with a much larger x max and much lower distortion, and reaches in the mid 30's from what I can tell to far with one speaker upgrading temporarly so far. To be fair, the old AMT3's woofers should be reconed and recharged (as RonC has mentioned) as a fair comparision, but this comes out to more than the brand new 1040SF's.
It also eliminates the stock woofers tendency to loose some output (ALnico magnets) and sound warm or muddy in some instances.
Now I'm basing this on one speaker so far, but IMHO the AMT3's with the 1040SF's and a new or rebuilt crossover are true world beaters. ESS had it right on the large scale, they just need to be 'fine tuned' a bit.
They are the most musical, and enjoyable speakers I have come across hands down.
I think a AMT3 clone, with similiar volume specs, and using the Apha 6, 1040SF, and the 8 ohm AMT3 crossover would make a great project for someone that has great cabinet working skills-I think few speakers could touch it's sound and sheer musical enjoyment.
Again-great read and excellent speaker!!
Anyone still doing custom builds with Heils these days?
This is a great thread. Enjoyed reading it start to finish. I worked at ESS in the early 80s for a short time assembling the AMT line and others. Always wanted to do a custom speaker build to pair up the large Heil with a nice quality (fast) pair of 7" mid-woofers to go along with a good pair of 12" subwoofers.
Fast-forward, would love to hear from anyone here on AK who has been successful at building, testing, and arriving at a really good 2-way, 2.5way, or 3-way crossover design or the large Heil combined with a pair of modern quality 7/8 mid-woofers since Markus111 made his last post in August 2010?
This is a great thread. Enjoyed reading it start to finish. I worked at ESS in the early 80s for a short time assembling the AMT line and others. Always wanted to do a custom speaker build to pair up the large Heil with a nice quality (fast) pair of 7" mid-woofers to go along with a good pair of 12" subwoofers.
Fast-forward, would love to hear from anyone here on AK who has been successful at building, testing, and arriving at a really good 2-way, 2.5way, or 3-way crossover design or the large Heil combined with a pair of modern quality 7/8 mid-woofers since Markus111 made his last post in August 2010?
For what its worth, I found these reference pictures on this site and elsewhere showing what the original ESS AMT Monitor crossover design used on the AMT Monitor with 12" woofer, 12" passive radiator & Heil combo. From what I remember, these things were glued together on a board, and came to the assembly line looking just like this. Can you say HOT GLUE!
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diamondsouled
Recycle belly button lint!
Funny thing I actually paired some Great Heils with a pair of Sony APM 33ES speakers. These were the version with the dome tweeter which was prone to blowing. Just used an old AMT-1A crossover I had lying around, with new poly caps of course, it was the crossover version with the smaller value caps 10uF I think, not like the early version with the large value caps, 47uF and 75uF.
They sound amazingly good. Funny how some things will mesh and compliment each other when others definitely don't.
They sound amazingly good. Funny how some things will mesh and compliment each other when others definitely don't.
