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Kraut's New Listening Space

Making some progress on the Yamaha YP-D6 and CA-600 combo. They were both veneered from the same sheet of cherry, the same sheet I did the NS-200Ms in. It's a really nice, rich amber color with lots of figuring from certain viewing angles, will mesh well with the silver faceplate and turntable controls. My YP-D6 had damaged front corners, the plastic silver stuff was chipped, that's why I decided to just strip it off and veneer the entire plinth. I haven't been able to find any pics of that done, so we'll see how it turns out...

Before any oil:



After first coat of oil:







 
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Got myself a new project: Yamaha NX-E800
A compact bookshelf speaker with 6" woofer and 1" soft dome tweeter, from the PianoCraft executive desktop series.
I've been listening to them for a few days now, powered by my trusty Topping TP20 mk2 mini amp playing Spotify from the macbook, and they sound really good. I can see how the tweeter could benefit from better caps though, but overall they're really enjoyable with open sounding mids and precise bass. Yamaha Natural Sound all day long.
...And so I ordered Jantzen Z-Cap Standard caps and Jantzen Superes resistors for the tweeter crossover for starters. I might upgrade the rest of the crossover later, but since the tweeter caps and resistors will make the biggest difference I started there.
The NX-E800 has flat sides rather than the chamfered edges that some of the other NX-E series speakers have, so they will be straight forward to veneer. I really like the piano gloss black front baffles, but I'm going zebrano on the sides, tops and bottoms, and might reupholster the grilles.
Sure, I could just leave them the way they are, but where's the fun in that?





 
The Yamaha CA-600 and YP-D6 are finally done... it was a ton of work, because both units also needed some service. The amp actually has AK history, fellow AKer @MCS Guy did a full recap and even upgraded some caps, including beefing up the big filter caps to 8200uf.
The turntable got a new low-capacitance Mogami rca cable with silver Rean connectors. The dust cover was wet sanded, polished and waxed.
The amp needed a thorough DeoxIT bath, so I did every single switch and knob, all the rcas, all fuses, the output relay (with printer paper) and even cleaned the power plug. It actually sounds so much better after the cleaning... couldn't believe the difference. I also washed all the knobs and washed and waxed the face plate. It's not quite perfect, but really nice. The screens on top were grimy, so they got sanded and resprayed.
I really like the way this CA-600 sounds, it's sweet and has plenty of juice. This YP-D6 I think is the only fully veneered one. Like i said previously, the silver plastic front corners were a little cracked, so I just went all in.



























 
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Drugolf said:
Looks great KNR! What did you use for the finish on the Cherry?
Click to expand...

Thanks!
At first I did one coat of Watco Danish Oil. Then several months passed, and when I got back to this project, I had found my old favorite cherry finish back in stock: Minwax Tung Oil Finish. For some reason I couldn't find that exact product for a long time, it was gone from the shelves of the 4 or 5 different stores I frequent.
So I applied 5 coats of Minwax Tung Oil Finish, rubbing in each coat with 0000 steel wool. This built up a nice, smooth film with plenty of depth and shimmer. It came out so smooth, I didn't even wax it. The deep amber color came from this particular sheet of cherry veneer, the same sheet I did the NS-200Ms with last year.
 
KrautNotRice said:
Thanks!
At first I did one coat of Watco Danish Oil. Then several months passed, and when I got back to this project, I had found my old favorite cherry finish back in stock: Minwax Tung Oil Finish. For some reason I couldn't find that exact product for a long time, it was gone from the shelves of the 4 or 5 different stores I frequent.
So I applied 5 coats of Minwax Tung Oil Finish, rubbing in each coat with 0000 steel wool. This built up a nice, smooth film with plenty of depth and shimmer. It came out so smooth, I didn't even wax it. The deep amber color came from this particular sheet of cherry veneer, the same sheet I did the NS-200Ms with last year.
Click to expand...

I would imagine the amber glow of the Tung oil would be a good pairing with the Cherry. Plus it really creates a nice final finish that you can wet sand to your hearts content if you want it glossy. It is getting harder and harder to find all the options with the finishing options for sure. I have a nice Ace here in my suburb that has for years done a great job of carrying a good stock of a lot of different options, but they recently were bought out and I think the new ownership is planning on going more mainstream consumer and will be narrowing their product lines. Including the great nut's and bolts etc section where I am usually able to get all the odd-ball things they don't carry at places like home depot.

I recently used the Watco finishing wax over the finish and I really liked it too.
 
Drugolf said:
I would imagine the amber glow of the Tung oil would be a good pairing with the Cherry. Plus it really creates a nice final finish that you can wet sand to your hearts content if you want it glossy. It is getting harder and harder to find all the options with the finishing options for sure. I have a nice Ace here in my suburb that has for years done a great job of carrying a good stock of a lot of different options, but they recently were bought out and I think the new ownership is planning on going more mainstream consumer and will be narrowing their product lines. Including the great nut's and bolts etc section where I am usually able to get all the odd-ball things they don't carry at places like home depot.

I recently used the Watco finishing wax over the finish and I really liked it too.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's gotta be great to have a good resource close by, sorry to hear your local Ace is changing. I live in the middle of nowhere, so even a Home Depot / Lowes is an hour one way (and they tend to be lousy), but the nearest actual wood working store is 3+ hours one way. When I need something even a tiny bit oddball (like de-waxed shellac) I have to order it. There's an Ace 1.5 hours away from me that will order stuff like that and have it within a day. The struggle is real LOL

Wax is a nice last step. I've use furniture paste wax sometimes (it's very hard), and Feed-N-Wax bees wax sometimes for an easier application, I use 0000 steel wool to apply the bees wax.
 
KrautNotRice said:
There's an Ace 1.5 hours away from me that will order stuff like that and have it within a day.
Click to expand...
An hour and a half in any direction from where I live puts me in another state. Ace's are much, much closer.
Your abilities, however, are light years ahead of what I'm capable of.
Beautiful work!
 
Thanks all for the kind words!
The caps and resistors arrived today for the little Yamaha NX-E800 speakers. I went with Jantzen Z-Standard caps and Jantzen Superes resistors, both for the tweeters only for now.
I'm excited to find out what the upgraded parts will do for the treble, since the stock caps are just cheap electrolytics.

 
KrautNotRice said:
The Yamaha CA-600 and YP-D6 are finally done... it was a ton of work, because both units also needed some service. The amp actually has AK history, fellow AKer @MCS Guy did a full recap and even upgraded some caps, including beefing up the big filter caps to 8200uf.
The turntable got a new low-capacitance Mogami rca cable with silver Rean connectors. The dust cover was wet sanded, polished and waxed.
The amp needed a thorough DeoxIT bath, so I did every single switch and knob, all the rcas, all fuses, the output relay (with printer paper) and even cleaned the power plug. It actually sounds so much better after the cleaning... couldn't believe the difference. I also washed all the knobs and washed and waxed the face plate. It's not quite perfect, but really nice. The screens on top were grimy, so they got sanded and resprayed.
I really like the way this CA-600 sounds, it's sweet and has plenty of juice. This YP-D6 I think is the only fully veneered one. Like i said previously, the silver plastic front corners were a little cracked, so I just went all in.



























Click to expand...

Looks fantastic.
 
dpdatl said:
Looks fantastic.
Click to expand...

Thank you!

The little Yamahas are sounding great with the new caps and resistors. The tweeters are more smooth than before.

So the last few weeks I've been working on a new project, Tannoy CMS 1201 DCT 12" dual concentric drivers.
I scored these raw drivers with crossovers NOS (new old stock). But they're ceiling speakers, so the crossovers didn't have any baffle step correction, and thus they needed some work to sound good mounted in cabinets.
I mounted them in some test cabs, calculated some basic porting, and have been working on the crossovers.
I found specs for the woofer online. Using alligator leads and various caps, resistors and inductors for tweaking by ear. I don't have any measuring equipment.
So far it sounds pretty good, with tons of potential, but it's not 100% yet.
The plan is as soon as the crossovers are dialed in, to build them with high quality components, then mount the drivers in freshly veneered cabs that I'm building.
If anyone reading this has any input on these drivers, or woofers, feel free to chime in. I believe the woofers are the same as the i12 / v12 PA cabs, while the tweeters are unique and feature bullet phase plugs rather than tulips.
The woofers have a really high fs of around 60 to 70 hz, so they're not bass monsters, but are incredibly dynamic and fast, and of course efficient. The suspension is very stiff, the power handling something insane.











 
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