I got home from work today to find a long-awaited package on my door step. Woohoo!!! ;D With great excitement I opened the package to find 2 V-10 speaker kits carefully packaged, one of Erich's trademarks! This is one of the first kits offered by DIY Sound Group with a printed circuit board ("PCB") for the crossover. The board is well designed with large traces and generous solder pads. The traces are protected to prevent corrosion like all high quality PCBs. The solder pads are tinned to make soldering quick and easy. The reverse side is silk screened with component locations for easy assembly. Other nice touches include mounting holes in the four corners as well as mounting holes for the iron-core inductor with the option of using either 4 screws or a large tie wrap to secure the heavy coil (well, it turns out that only 2 of the 4 holes line up... :-[ ) At first, I could not tell where to connect the inductor. On closer inspection, I noticed two unlabeled solder pads near the inductor position. Reverse engineering a schematic from the board layout confirmed that these pads were, indeed, for the inductor. I marked these two holes with yellow squares on the attached image. The compression driver appears to be connected with reverse phase, ie. the "HI+" connection for the compression driver connects to the "INP-" side. The "HI-" connection connects to the "INP+" side via a series capacitor , "HI CAP", and resistor, "10W RES" (2.2 Ohm). There is a 2nd resistor (7 Ohm) that connects between "HI-" and "INP-" as well. Unfortunately, without a schematic, it is unclear where to connect the 7 ohm and the 2.2 ohm resistors. Matt or Erich, can you provide a schematic or a description of the resistor connections for this crossover? I received a quick response from both Matt and Erich after I sent a PM. The inner resistor next to the "LO CAP" is 7 Ohm and the outer resistor next to the edge of the board is 2.2 Ohm. See the photo in my post below. Thanks in advance! Mike 8) Edit - updated resistor information Edit - Image below sanitized per request
I also received the same kit. This is my first time using these PCB's, usually just a piece of 1/4" plywood! So do I solder the terminals of the components just to the spots on the board and not to each other?
Yes. Just solder the back side where the shiny round circles are. Be sure to make a good solder connection to both the shiny pad and the wire that protrudes through the board. When you have made all your solder joints, trim the excess wire flush with the board and you are good to go!! Well, after you connect the wires to the drivers and your terminal cup, that is... NB: Don't push the inductor wires beyond the silver portion of the wire. The colored portion is coated and will prevent the solder from making an electrical connection. Edit - Added pics of assembled crossover (resistor values not yet confirmed). Edit 2 - Layout is correct in the pic! Edit 3 - Image sanitized per request Mike
Thank you! Wow, this is getting professional feeling now! Thanks Erich for exceeding my expectations on this one! Can't wait to hear them! They will end up as height and surround speakers eventually, but first they will be demo'd to a friend of mine that I am trying to convince to go the DIY route.
I'm building enclosures right now. I have wood cut for 2 surround enclosures. I plan to mount the enclosures at the wall-ceiling junction. I am using ~0.5ft^3 sealed enclosure with a 20 degree down angle for the baffles. The baffle measures 12" x 18". I just ordered another pair of these kits today to use as rear surrounds. I plan to use a different down angle, but I haven't determined what that will be. I'll update this post w/ pictures once the enclosures are complete.
Erich is putting the finishing touches on some flat packs with an angled baffle of similar design. Stay Tuned!!
I've been really pleased so far. They blend well with my Cheap Thrills. I used a 20 degree baffle angle for side surrounds and a 30 degree angle for rear surrounds. I was hoping to minimize localization effects for the side surrounds by using the shallower angle since I nearly sit beneath them. I'm not sure if I accomplished that or not, but I am very pleased with the build. There seems to be a lot of variability in the surround mixes for movies, so it is difficult to assess timbre matching. Plus there is a huge difference in what we hear coming from surround angles vs what we hear in front of us... I think coax speakers solve a number of issues unique to surround speakers, but no speaker is perfect. Bottom line, I'm glad I went with coax speakers, and I'm glad I chose the V-10's with their better low end capability vs the V8. Mike
Why has the V-10 been out of stock for so long? Any timeframe for getting them back in stock? Or is the secret to buy them and get on the waiting list?