My ESS E-waves are complete. Here is the story as it unfolded. I only bought the ESS AMT 1Cs for the Heil tweets and planned on baying the rest of the bits….but then I started reading the Econowave thread and I was a goner.
Here are the ESS’ as I first saw them (paid $200.00 for the pair) notice the missing PRs and crappy grills.
I put the wave guides on top, after taking off the Heils just so see if they had promise….they did, in scads...and that was with the original ESS crossovers!!!. After ginning up the crossovers (thanks for the parts Bauhausler) and sticking them on top as well as the horns just to see how they sounded I was floored, and, that was without the replacement PRs. Urizen PMed me offering a pair of unused PR kits for a very reasonable price (thanks Urizen), so I tore the cabs apart and repainted the black parts and sanded and restrained the wood veneer, (thanks for the stain Kegger)
I also recovered the grills with a sheer black “speaker cloth” from Jo Anne Fabric (that is what they call it and that is what it is…..$20.00 for enough to do 3.5 grills). I cut holes in the back of the cabs for the double speaker post plates and mounted them. I redid the PRs and put them in, and mounted the horns and crossovers.
I started out with the lower eff version of the crossovers and because I ended up bi-amping, I did not need the reduce horn signal so I just swapped out the parts ( R1, R2, and C3) and I am now getting much more SPLs out of my horns. I then (upon Kegger's suggestion) took C2 to 6.3 vs, the 12uF it calls for on the schematic. That brought up the upper vocals in the woof and just filled in the area a bit. At first I was running the woofs with an Adcom GCF510 and the horns with my 300B. Kegger also brought over some of the foam he is using in the throat of his horns and scupled plugs for mine. Those make all the difference in the world. You can crank up the volume and the highs sound just as good but with no extra sharpness. The bass was unbelievable…way down to the lowest bass note without rolloff, the mids were as clear and dynamic as you would expect from horns with ABSOLUTLY no horn sound. The high are sweet, sweet, sweet. After a while I started feeling fatigued from the bass so I took out the Adcom and I am now running the 300B on the woofs and the Decware Zen on the horns. The bass is just wonderful so detailed and creamy to the ears and if you want to crank it, it will punch the breath right out of you. The horns with the Zen amp sound very rich, detailed, and present. Here are the finished products. Actually I still have to redo the other grill but I am waiting for a larger time window so I can make a picture tutorial to post of the web. It took me three hours to figure out how to redo them, but once I figured it out, it went smooth. The top of the grills had a piece of thick cardboard in the recessed top but I am going to replace that with glass so I can show off my crossovers.
So thanks to Keg, Urizen, Bauhausler, and all of you who took the time to perfect this project. Cheers.
