Jim Kyle's 1961 "Sweet Sixteen" speaker system

Lare

New Member
Brand new Member here! Old too.. Like 81, so my questions will be for the older folk here.. Or, some experts that are knowledgeable on the subject.

Back in 1961, Jim Kyle designed and built a speaker system called the "Sweet Sixteen." He used 16 cheap Quam 5A07 drivers (now obsolete) stuffed into a box made from 5/16" plywood; 2" x 6"s; 2" x 8"s and some fiberglass stuffing. He wired it using a Series/parallel/ wiring to suit the Quam drivers.

I would like to build one. Probem is, almost no one makes drivers that emulate his original Quam A507s.

I did find some decent looking 5" Full-Range drivers from MCM Electronics. Their Part Number or them is 55-4638. Ten bucks plus change each. Here's the questions..

Is this a good choice of drivers? (Thiele Small Parameters listed.)
Are there better ones out thers? Where?
Would the same wiring scheme work with these?
Do you agree with the concept of great sound?
Should I even do it? Why?

Any other constructive comments most welcome!

Lare
 
I can't help you with your specific question, but welcome aboard! Glad you joined! :wave:
 
There have been a couple of Sweet Sixteen threads over the last couple of months, both involving GW or CL finds.

This was an old thread resurrected in Dec. 2013. Sorry, no constructive criticism but a nice photo of the set-up:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=460403&highlight=sweet+sixteen

This has some nice photos of a very well-built set:

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=508603&highlight=sweet+sixteen

I sure would be curious to hear what a pair of these sounded like. And while everyone in those threads are bashing Quam 8" speakers, my first set of speakers were homebuilt using 2 8" Quams and a Philips tweeter. The cabinet was probably about 12" X 12" X 36" high. There was a Quam pointing straight down out of the bottom, and the other Quam was mounted on top pointing into the box which was stuffed with a tunnel in the middle. The 2 8" speakers were connected out of phase, and the Philips tweeter sat on the top magnet pointing straight up. With a Dynaco 120 and a Dual 1229 this little system could hold its own against the rest of my high school peer groups' set-ups.
 
My old buddy, Harry D made a pair of the sweet 16's. He told me my Altec's were better sounding. If I was going to build a multiple driver speaker, I think I'd be inclined to building a line array. I think there's better presentation with the line array then with the Sweet 16 alignment.

BTW, welcome to AK!
 
Somewhere on the web is some info on the Sweet 16. I've ran across it. Also there was a follow up upgraded version with I believe an added tweeter. Might have been called a Super Sweet 16???

I think many drivers could work fine, much the same as the originals.

I'm also in agreement that the same drivers in a vertical line has advantages.

EV3
 
I suspect that this DIY Sweet Sixteen article may well have been the inspiration for the Bose 901 small array of ordinary drivers designed by Dr. Amar Bose.
 
I suspect that this DIY Sweet Sixteen article may well have been the inspiration for the Bose 901 small array of ordinary drivers designed by Dr. Amar Bose.
Doubtful. Dr Bose had been working on a multiple small driver speaker system for some time. His prototype that led to the development of the 901 consisted of 25 five inch full range speakers arranged on an octant (1/8 sphere) shaped baffle.

Boseproto_zpsee7e7de1.jpg
 
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I think one thing some people did is not worry about using full range speakers.. They used ones with good low end midrange then added a tweeter. I have bought small drivers that cost $5 and used them for center channel with a tweeter and they worked very good. That is the way I would build one
 
I certainly heard of it in the 1960s but things had moved forward by the time I was interested. The Bose 901 could have easily been inspired by it but it uses equalization to get (probably much) better frequency response.

Do you have any parameters for the Quams?
 
There are some interesting options today for drivers but most will not get you deep bass. Do you have sub woofers or are you willing to use them?

I'd use this, with subs, and probably scale down the box for them, it won't be much
like the original but with a good subwoofer it would probably be much better:
http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/approx-3-fullrange/fountek-fe85-3-aluminum-cone-full-range/

This might be closer to the original but it is 4 ohm:
http://www.parts-express.com/celestion-neodymium-5-full-range-woofer-4-ohm--299-414

What kind of amp do you have?
 
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Thanks Pete..

I'm looking ar MCM Electronics 55-4638 5" Full range drivers. Comments about these?

Also. see my recent post about X Max numbers.

Lare
 
Do you agree with the concept of great sound?
Should I even do it? Why?

Any other constructive comments most welcome!

Lare

"Do you agree with the concept of great sound?"

I'd guess that those original speakers cost less than $2 a piece and what was "great" about the sound was to get so much for so little - overall it was probably not great sound. That was probably a table radio speaker and it was probably shocking to hear what they could do 16 at a time, still probably not real Hi Fi.

There is one reason why they might sound good or different, the large radiating area makes the array VERY directional and it will sound much closer to headphone listening with much less sound clutter from the room.

With a quality driver and a subwoofer they might make for a very interesting listening experience.

You should build them? Obviously you want to since you are asking, so you should do it if you will enjoy the process.

There are many nice used speakers that you could buy or do you currently have a system?
 
I have a 70s Scott Stereo receiver that I built from a Scott Kit. I think it's a 40 watt per channel. I am a Woodworker with all the great tools.

Your statement about MCM quality is a little broad. Did you actually look at the specs of the one I described? They are on back order till April.

The Bose drivers are only 1 Ohm and proably way too expensive for what I have in mind.

A little trivia..

I used to own a pair of AR3a drivers. The oldest Son has them now. They were "the ones" back in the day. Henry L Kloss designed them. Then he started the KLH line, (Henry L Kloss, backward initials.)

Lare
 
There are a few guys on the parts express forum that test various MCM speakers, many are not even close to their specs. There is no frequency response graph for that speaker, and if there was they might not even match.
There is not much point in looking at the specs.
Zaph has found a few gems from MCM, not full range, but who knows if they are consistent:
http://www.zaphaudio.com/5.5test/

The Celestions and Founteks have a very good reputation. The Fountek has been independently tested and it might give you a shockingly good sounding speaker but not with deep bass.

I'm the author of this page where you can see Kloss' Large Advent:
http://baselaudiolab.com/ADVENT_LA_XO.html
 
The Bose drivers go in series, 8 for 8 ohms, 16 can be wired for 16 ohms or 4 ohms. Eight or Nine per side would work well, but then you don't have a sweet 16.

Speakers pump air in the bass, after they reach their limit they overload.
Xmax (used correctly) is the distance the cone will move one way with reasonably low distortion, multiply this by the surface area of the cone and you get the volume displaced (VD). Also multiply by how many speakers are working together.

The AR-3 has .25" Xmax, multiply it by the surface area and that will give you a benchmark for how much VD you need.
 
I’m no expert. To me it sounds like you are looking for something a bit unusual. Maybe? If so; how about a “Mixed Twelve?” Like the “Sweet Sixteen,” it uses an array of drivers but with an advanced and logical design. It sounds surprisingly good. It has an array of low cost speakers; 3 different sizes in 4 rows.

From my article:
“For the money, performance is excellent, and the ability of the system to reproduce “big” source sounds and handle orchestral transients without “going to pieces” is remarkable.”

Let me hit on a couple of things it does.

It can be driven by a low powered amplifier.

It uses oval speakers for smoother response. As a rule, a speaker with a large cone area usually has a better low-frequency response than a speaker with a small-cone area. On the other hand, a smaller speaker usually has better high-frequency characteristics. Better horizontal midrange sound dispersion is obtained from an oval speaker that has its long axis vertically oriented. And the staggered array keeps confusing sound/phase interaction at a minimum.

Low frequency response (mainly because of the stiffness of the cone) in small speakers is limited. When several of them are connected together, however, they help each other boost the low frequency response.

Probably the most unusual trait it the circuit design. With proper wiring, resonance spikes are reduced greatly.

334jc6h.jpg

“If all the speakers had the same resonance characteristics, there would be some unwanted side effects in the midrange. Fortunately, speakers of different sizes and shapes do have different resonant frequencies, and they do bypass many of these side effects when properly hooked up.”

“Consider two speakers, each having different resonant frequencies with relative curves (A) and (B) respectively. As shown in Fig. 1. When they are connected in series, a sharply spiked curve (C) will be obtained. Total impedance for the two speaker s will be approximately double that of either speaker. The curve for the same two speakers connected in parallel (D) is more uniform and virtually flat over a wide range of frequencies. Also, their combined impedance is reduced drastically.”

302xn3o.jpg

“To design a multiple speaker system completely free of peaks and dips is almost impossible, but fortunately it is possible to minimize these effects by following a simple rule-of-thumb – stagger the positions of the speakers in the cabinet so that center-to-center distances are not the same for immediately adjacent speakers. The characteristics obtained with different speakers arrangements can be used for comparison.”

ddmdqx.jpg

It is a parallel circuit design. Its greatest worth is in greatly smoothing natural impedance spikes. It’s simple and has minimal interference. You can certainly see there is no crossover so it headaches, losses, phase interaction/cancellations, and large cost is eliminated.

I dug into my archives, pulled the article, then Zipped it. The article has an example of its cabinet dimension and information on why it works. It is certainly more than I can put in a post. If you are interested then shoot me your email and the interesting article is yours.

Your post has inspired me to build another one. I imagine the design could be advanced another step: imagine time-aligning them! It would look like a piece of art!
 
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