greenmark59
Can ya' hear that?
Well here's the finished project that I started Friday 8/27/10 and I completed on Saturday 8/28/10 (fairly simple; the way I like them). I bought these working Realistic T-100 speakers from a thrift store about 2 weeks ago for $30 and they sounded all right especially after I replaced the Radio Shack tweeter with a AR18 tweeter, but I just knew the cabinets were destined for something better. So once I heard that Parts Express had the infamous Pioneer B20FU20 full range driver on sale for ONLY $19, I took the plunge and took off a long lunch and drove to Parts Express (25 miles away) and bought the needed items.
Used the B20FU20-51FW and the Goldwood GT-1005 wide dispersion piezo tweeter with a 20 ohm resistor across it's terminals and a 1 uF capacitor before the L-pad. The big blond 10" wood circle covering the 2nd woofer hole is a 99 cent piece from Hobby Lobby. The (2) port tubes are 2 1/16" x 5". The internal dimensions of the Realistic T-100 cabinet is 34.25" x 10.25" x 11.5" for 2.34 cubic ft or 66 liters. The configuration I'm using will give me 34 Hz according to WinISD.
Modifications still to do are: reduce the size of the the BIG blond circles and then stain them, simple stands at bottom of speaker to raise B20 height about 7" (closer to ear height when listening). Try to restore cabinet wood. Put felt around the B20 speaker frame legs. Look into installing phase plugs. Install different terminal plates on the rear of cabinet (Radio Shack has their terminal at the BOTTOM of the speaker - yuck!!!).
I have been playing them for over 48 hours and will continue to do so for about 72 total hours to break-in the speakers.
First impressions are that they sound Sweeeeeetttttt!!!!! :thmbsp:
I am already a full ranger speaker lover (RS 40-1354 drivers in Bob Brines designed TL cabinets) and I got to tell you these 8" drivers for $19 really have a lot more bass than other smaller full range speakers. Just as a sound test for deep bass, I play the first song of the Titanic soundtrack and there is a deep kettle drum sound played numerous times and if I can "feel" this bass (which I did with the B20's) I am fairly satisfied with the bass that I will get out of these speakers. I also played Pat Metheny & Charlie Haden's "Beyond The Missouri Sky" album and this album has plenty of bass notes and as I listened I could to easily hear them and they seemed to not be muffled (like they were previously with the T-100 woofers).
I gotta say that with the right cabinet these B20's can really "sing" and everyone is right, you just want to keep listening and listening and bringing out old CDs and records to listen to them over again and it's like rediscovering the music on them. The sound stage both horizontally and vertically is pretty good. I have tried running them with my 8 watt T-amp and my Dayton APA150 150W Power Amplifier with the more powerful Dayton amp giving the speakers more relaxed headroom to play. The T amp sounds very nice at lower volumes, but is strained at larger volumes. I am going to purchase a more powerful T amp and I think it will be more synergistic with the B20. I typically am not too optimistic about most reviews of speakers until I hear them myself, but in all honesty for less then $100-$150/pair TOTAL these have got to be ONE of the best speaker bargains around. I spent $30 for cabinets, $52 for drivers, caps, resistors,tubes and another $5-10 on miscellaneous stuff.
All in all a VERY SATISFYING project and some very, very good sounding speakers.
Used the B20FU20-51FW and the Goldwood GT-1005 wide dispersion piezo tweeter with a 20 ohm resistor across it's terminals and a 1 uF capacitor before the L-pad. The big blond 10" wood circle covering the 2nd woofer hole is a 99 cent piece from Hobby Lobby. The (2) port tubes are 2 1/16" x 5". The internal dimensions of the Realistic T-100 cabinet is 34.25" x 10.25" x 11.5" for 2.34 cubic ft or 66 liters. The configuration I'm using will give me 34 Hz according to WinISD.
Modifications still to do are: reduce the size of the the BIG blond circles and then stain them, simple stands at bottom of speaker to raise B20 height about 7" (closer to ear height when listening). Try to restore cabinet wood. Put felt around the B20 speaker frame legs. Look into installing phase plugs. Install different terminal plates on the rear of cabinet (Radio Shack has their terminal at the BOTTOM of the speaker - yuck!!!).
I have been playing them for over 48 hours and will continue to do so for about 72 total hours to break-in the speakers.
First impressions are that they sound Sweeeeeetttttt!!!!! :thmbsp:
I am already a full ranger speaker lover (RS 40-1354 drivers in Bob Brines designed TL cabinets) and I got to tell you these 8" drivers for $19 really have a lot more bass than other smaller full range speakers. Just as a sound test for deep bass, I play the first song of the Titanic soundtrack and there is a deep kettle drum sound played numerous times and if I can "feel" this bass (which I did with the B20's) I am fairly satisfied with the bass that I will get out of these speakers. I also played Pat Metheny & Charlie Haden's "Beyond The Missouri Sky" album and this album has plenty of bass notes and as I listened I could to easily hear them and they seemed to not be muffled (like they were previously with the T-100 woofers).
I gotta say that with the right cabinet these B20's can really "sing" and everyone is right, you just want to keep listening and listening and bringing out old CDs and records to listen to them over again and it's like rediscovering the music on them. The sound stage both horizontally and vertically is pretty good. I have tried running them with my 8 watt T-amp and my Dayton APA150 150W Power Amplifier with the more powerful Dayton amp giving the speakers more relaxed headroom to play. The T amp sounds very nice at lower volumes, but is strained at larger volumes. I am going to purchase a more powerful T amp and I think it will be more synergistic with the B20. I typically am not too optimistic about most reviews of speakers until I hear them myself, but in all honesty for less then $100-$150/pair TOTAL these have got to be ONE of the best speaker bargains around. I spent $30 for cabinets, $52 for drivers, caps, resistors,tubes and another $5-10 on miscellaneous stuff.
All in all a VERY SATISFYING project and some very, very good sounding speakers.
