Speakerlab S7s Rebuild and Modding (Ribbon Tweeter Model)

[Bratwurst7s]

So now I got to get serious and do some listening. Steely Dan again to compare, and there was no comparison. I keep using the word amazing, and it was/is. I am very very glad that I splurged and bought those Visatons also. The harshness that I thought was room acoustics is gone. I no longer notice where the mids stop and where the tweeters start like before. The speakers are transformed, I just don't have the words for it. Just WOW, over and over again.

I don't remember ever noticing a guitar walk over to the left of the left speaker before but it did tonight when I played the Greatfull Dead's Working Man's Dead. Followed that with Chicago’s first album, mostly to hear that amazing bass line on I'm A Man. But the horns!! Lastly I listened to Golden Earring's Moontan, again because I listened to it earlier in the week. It just took me away into speakerland. I was gone. I'm sooo happy.

And the coolest thing is that there is so much more to be had. I have so much to learn. I have to learn to measure the drivers, and to learn more about crossovers because I believe there's much more quality hiding in there waiting to be released. I have to buy a mic and learn about room acoustics and what to improve. I have to pull the 10" again and get the chassis numbers and find out what it is and weather to keep it or not.

And I'm starting to dream about a new/old amp. I'd like to save my pennies and think about finding an old Yamaha C-85 and M-85. That'll have to be next year. I mean 2015.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

I remember the Super 7 and liked it. Years ago, I sold Speakerlab.

Hi Valveglow. Cool. Where did you work? Which SL store?

James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Oh. I guess that it goes without saying that I now consider the WF160WA01 and MHT-12 to be viable substitutes for the M654P and LT215S, but there, I just said it.

James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

I'd use them at the original crossover point first. They are specified at rated power with a 4kHz @ 12dB high pass. A lower crossover frequency would put much more excursion on the ribbon and might increase distortion quite a lot.

John

Remembering your advice I wrote Visaton and asked. They wrote back and recommended against lowering the crossover point. But after listening today the point is moot. Sounds so good as is that I'm no longer thinking of changing the crossover points, just replacing the caps with polyp, the coils with larger awg air cores, and the resistors with MOX.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

One big plus with the new ribbons is that the sweet spot is much enlarged. They are not so beamy as the old ones.

I'm going over to the hardware store in a little while and see what I can find for material to make some speaker stands. I'd like to get them up off of the floor at least a couple of inches. I'm kinda leaning towards some simple hardwood countertop material cut a little wider and deeper than the speakers to protect them from feet and vacuum cleaners. I'll find some kind of feet to screw under them. It'd be nice to find some adjustable feet but if not I can always use some thin plywood as shims to get a little tilt. And some kind if sheet rubber to place under the cabs as damping material.

The unfortunate layout of my apt is that there is a high traffic area right past my stereo and I cringe every time someone walks by.

I'm concerned that the extended platform edges will create a sound reflecting edge but am hoping that that can be minimized by rounding off the edges with the router that I haven't bought yet. But I'm willing to compromise a little bit if it means protecting the speakers from damage.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Yesterday I made some very rudimentary stands, just a crude start till I can make something better. Just 2 pieces of 18mm beach boards made up of blocks glued together, 400x430mm, they were only cost €7 each. Then I screwed 2 60mm wide x 360mm long strips of pine lengthwise inder each board as stiffeners/standoffs, and then nailed 8 thick round felt pads (the kind used for chair legs) under them for feet, 4 per pine strip. Later I'll round off the corners and find some better feet that lets me get another inch or 2 in height, that should center the tweeters perfectly at my ear height when listening.

I laid a small rug on each board and set the speakers on them. Now the speakers are almost 2" up off of the floor. The benefits are not enormous but still noticeable. A bit less boomyness and a little more definition to the bass. And using felt pads on my laminate flooring lets me easily slide the speakers around, so I can bring them a bit farther out from the back wall when listening and slide them out of the traffic path when not. Getting them 8" away from the walls helped a bit more.

I have a good 10 hours on the speakers since changing the drivers over on Friday. I set a little stuffed Pluto dog on top of one speaker but my wife said I should have found a Goofy, because that's how I look now when listening. This was well worth every single penny that I spent. The improvement is insane.

With the old tweeters the sweet spot was fairly small, about a yard. Sit outside of that spot and the high end dropped off rather quickly. My speakers are almost exactly 6 feet apart, center to center, and about 8-1/2 to 9 feet distant from my couch depending on how far I slide them from the wall. I can now sit anywhere in the 6 feet between the speakers without a noticable loss of high end. Only when I start to go outside the width of the speakers does anything diminish, and then much less dramaticly than before. A major improvement.

bowtie427ss, 1tumbleweed, sm19422 and mech986 have been helping me get my 10" woofers ID'd, so there's some progress in that direction also. Add in getting about half the lights in my apt changed over to LED and I have to say it's been a pretty darn good weekend.

Cheers,
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Speakerlab surprised me and sent an answer:

"Sorry that you haven't received a reply up until now. We receive several
hundred emails weekly and some end up in spam. As far as getting you
parameters on the W1058P, that will take some research. Being that it was a
short lived woofer, someone will need to dig thru the archives to find info
filed away from the R&D guys.
Hopefully we will have something to you within the next couple of weeks.
Happy Holidays!"

So that's good if it pans out. I have roughly 70 hours on the speakers since recapping, and about 25 hours on the new mids & tweets. Either I'm having a fantasy or hallucinating, or the mids and tweets keep getting louder in relation to the woofers. Is this normal? Is that the result of burn in? or am I just having a flashback? I figured that while removing those padding resistors would get me a little more volume from the old mids I might need to re-balance things with the new ones. This appears to be the case. The mids are a little too much now and I think that they will have to be toned down a bit.

Progress over the coming months will most likely be measured in answering questions, identifying new 10" woofers, saving my pennies and slowly buying, woofers and test equipment. I'll probably order a selection of different mox resistors for padding, and the caps and resistors for a zobel network for the mids.

I assume that adding a zobel to an existing crossover would have an effect on the crossover point? I don't really know, but it seems logical. One more thing to learn, but I'm so far out in "I don't know" land now I figure that I might as well experiment a bit. The moment that I threw out those original woofers and mids I started down a path that the designers had not envisioned. Seems like most of the things that I've learned in this life have been from screwing something up. Why should I mess up and change a well functioning learning system?

2 points of progress have been finding a room measuring software and somewhat IDing my 10"ers. It took a while for me to catch on to the fact that for specific single questions it's better to post them as a new thread. But that also will tend to fragment this thread so I'll link to them here rather than repeat things.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=560066
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=562036

I got so disgusted with my Sony DVD player not playing at least half of my CDs that I hooked up an old Philips CD-781 cd player that a pall at work gave me. On paper it has worse specs than the Sony, but in fact sounds just fine, and 100% of just fine seems much better than +/-50% of theoreticly better. Funny thing is that the Sony plays DVDs without problems. It only pukes with cds.

Merry Christmas!
James

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Life has it's workings and some dentist bills and car repairs have gotten between me and any investments in my speakers except for finding some suitable feet for my stands and some 7mm thick closed cell foam rubber sheet to lay in top of the stands. They are simple and won't be winning any beauty contests, but have the singular advantage of doing just what I want them to.

The speakers now stand about 105mm off of the floor (so about 4"), and the feet are threaded, so I've given the speakers a slight tilt. The tweeters are now pointing directly at my ears for my normal listening position.



Cheers,
James

 

[markdi]

Kool this thread is still alive and kicking ?

Nice lookin stands

I like em

 

[Valveglow]

I am loving your project!

 

[markdi]

Where did you get the feet ?

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Where did you get the feet ?

I ordered them from Amazon, they were only €1.95 each. The beach boards are shelving material from the local hardware store and were only about €8.00 each, so the 2 stands were only roughly €32.

Cheers,
James

 

[markdi]

Nice
So i would look for adjustable feet on amazon.

I will start my speakerlab das 7 recap soon now that i have a pair of
Klipsch kg 5.2s to listen to while recapping my sevens

 

[Bratwurst7s]

I am loving your project!

Thanks Valveglow. I've narrowed my search for a 10" replacement down to a short list of about 5 chassis but have pretty much settled on a pair of Scan Speak 26w-8534B00. On paper anyway they look like a fairly good match for the W1008R in terms of Qts, Fs, and SPL. And I can get them for a pretty reasonable price (ca €77 each).

The only downside that I see is a somewhat reduced power handling capability (80w compared to 100w) and the mounting flange is 272mm in dia, meaning that I will need to file a flat at the point where the 12" is nearest.

Every other woofer that I've looked at has some sort of compromise with Fs (too high), Qts (more suitable for a ported box) or SPL (too low).

I'm saving my pennies and hope to buy them by June.

Cheers,
James

 

[Valveglow]

Thanks Valveglow. I've narrowed my search for a 10" replacement down to a short list of about 5 chassis but have pretty much settled on a pair of Scan Speak 26w-8534B00. On paper anyway they look like a fairly good match for the W1008R in terms of Qts, Fs, and SPL. And I can get them for a pretty reasonable price (ca €77 each).

The only downside that I see is a somewhat reduced power handling capability (80w compared to 100w) and the mounting flange is 272mm in dia, meaning that I will need to file a flat at the point where the 12" is nearest.

Every other woofer that I've looked at has some sort of compromise with Fs (too high), Qts (more suitable for a ported box) or SPL (too low).

I'm saving my pennies and hope to buy them by June.

Cheers,
James

Have you looked at any of the drivers from Parts Express?

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Have you looked at any of the drivers from Parts Express?

Yes. The few that are interesting are far too expensive for me, and shipping to Munich would make that even worse.

I think that I'll be happy with the Scan Speak. There's also one from Beyma that looks interesting other than a high Fs (10BR60V2E), and a couple from Seas (H1305 & L26RFX-P) but their Qts looks like they are more for ported boxes, Same for the Visaton W250S.

Whatever I choose I'm guessing that the Zobel circuit is no longer valid. I was going to buy a signal generator to test with but found out today that we have a very nice one at work, and my boss said that I can borrow it when I need it.

Cheers,
James

 

[wynbos]

Have you thought about having your current woofers rebuilt? Paul the owner the Loud Speaker Store used to work for Speakerlab and does good work. Paul's contact info is below, he can advise you on the best replacement or rebuild.

http://www.theloudspeakerstore.com/

The reason I bring this up is that the drivers to the Super 7 as well as many other Speakerlab models are very specific to the particular model. I've seen people buy high end drivers from Parts Express only to sorely disappointed with the out come. This happened to a friend who was rebuild a pair of Super 7s.

 

[Bratwurst7s]

Have you thought about having your current woofers rebuilt? Paul the owner the Loud Speaker Store used to work for Speakerlab and does good work. Paul's contact info is below, he can advise you on the best replacement or rebuild.

http://www.theloudspeakerstore.com/

The reason I bring this up is that the drivers to the Super 7 as well as many other Speakerlab models are very specific to the particular model. I've seen people buy high end drivers from Parts Express only to sorely disappointed with the out come. This happened to a friend who was rebuild a pair of Super 7s.

Hi wynbos (and thanks), I agree with you completely, but I don't have the W1008's anymore. I've been in contact with Paul and he told me that he will be bringing out some new replacements for the W1008s in the near future, 2 models, with foam and rubber surrounds, for $130 and $145 respectively. But by the time I got them shipped to Munich and pay customs duty on them I just can't afford them right now. So for now I'll probably go with the Scan Speaks. They won't break my budget, and if nothing else I can report to others how well they turn out.

I may be traveling back to the PNW next year and if so will most likely stop by Paul's store and take a look at what he has. He's a pretty nice guy and has been very helpful with info so I'd like to meet him someday.

Cheers,
James

 

[sc427]

Paul is a great guy. I bought my Infinity IRS Betas from him and he has one of my sets of Speakerlab S50's in his shop getting some love right now. The bonus is that he is less than 15 minutes from my house. He is the anti-audiophile and tells it like it is..... no magic fairy dust. Speakerlab and Nestorovic are his passion and he has so many contacts in the industry that he is the go to guy. Nice set of super sevens ya got there. :thmbsp:

 

[c-atle-79bay]

Paul is a great guy. I bought my Infinity IRS Betas from him and he has one of my sets of Speakerlab S50's in his shop getting some love right now. The bonus is that he is less than 15 minutes from my house. He is the anti-audiophile and tells it like it is..... no magic fairy dust. Speakerlab and Nestorovic are his passion and he has so many contacts in the industry that he is the go to guy. Nice set of super sevens ya got there. :thmbsp:

One of my sets of s50's? haha. I do love his facebook feed and seeing all the nesties that end up there.