The definitive dahlquist buyout / vinyl laminate thread

[patrickm]

ok, perhaps not... but i promised johnny i'd post some photos of the beech vinyl (buyout) laminate i used for the dahlquist buyout speakers loaded with buyout crossover parts for a theater room in a house we're getting ready to rent out. I was up in the northeast this weekend and took a few photos. these replaced a similarly colored set of infinitely more expensive Dali Euphonia MS-4 / CS-4, which i have for sale now.

The MTM is superior sounding compared to the MT's, and the quad of dahlquist subwoofers are in separate vented enclosures, and can be run with plate amps or with a ~180hz lowpass passive crossover (again, thanks buyout mercato's). To be honest, a better option is one sub in each powered in parallel by a single external/plate amp, but these were already cut. perhaps next trip i'll make that change, since the baffles screw on so they can be easily repainted. four subs is a bit of overkill, and they're currently unconnected in favor of the (you guessed it) buyout eminence 10" sealed sub, which fills in the low end pretty nicely. at least the quad-banana plug bi-wire terminal cups came in useful for this kind of selective hookup, for once. i've never really bi-wired or bi-amped, except when i power an integrated sub with an external amp.

designs and some preliminary measurements will be posted shortly on the other board.

(oops... looks like nemo from the fish tank slipped in there... doh)

[johnnyrichards]

Beautiful. Those Dahlquist blaks are a bass handfull..?

I can't wait to get mine going. Great work, my friend!

[arlis_1957@yahoo.com]

yeah! johnny needed a little encouragement
nice work.

[patrickm]

yeah! johnny needed a little encouragement
nice work.

yeah, i'm sure he needed tons of encouragement to keep pace with me buying one buyout after another around christmas time too...

i think i wound up with 16-20 dahlquists, some eminence subs, those passive sub crossovers, and a bunch of budget tweeters. at least he took the lead and got some measurement gear too -- although now i'm tempted to try some of the really cheap jamo's and see what i can come up with from a $7 woofer and a $6 tweeter and some vinyl laminate... i probably shouldn't mention that to him...

[patrickm]

Beautiful. Those Dahlquist blaks are a bass handfull..?

I can't wait to get mine going. Great work, my friend!

not entirely, as my design had them rolling off around 35hz ish, but the 80-180 hz region was overpowering with 4 plus the blue mid's. and there's no way i wasn't putting at least one real ($15 + $60 amp from mcm) subwoofer in that room. i should've put a grill on the sub at least, but time constraints prevented that this trip.

[johnnyrichards]

Grills are over-rated lol. I am still sitting on ten of the black beauties along with a pretty solid (on paper at least) 2-way design using a Vifa tweeter...

For some reason, I keep building everything but that design.

I am almost out of stuff that has been on my shelf for awhile, so hopefully by mid-june I will start on my Dahlquist project

[patrickm]

Grills are over-rated lol. I am still sitting on ten of the black beauties along with a pretty solid (on paper at least) 2-way design using a Vifa tweeter...

true, but that sub is pretty ugly in comparison to most everything else i've built.

also, here are a few build shots i had on the other computer, and some from testing in my basement where the lighting is a little better. the raw MDF cabinet is upside-down, the MT has its own sealed enclosure, the subs get about the bottom 36"

[patrickm]

MTM and TMWW crossover specs

[patrickm]

per a couple requests in the last month, here are full cabinet specs, even though the black woofers are NLA:

MTM: 24"w 8.5"h x 12"d, using 3/4" stock. For the in-stock 12ohm blue woofes, tuning should be approximately 52-54 Hz, which models an F3 of 55Hz, F10 of 38Hz. This was designed as a front/center speaker to be used with a sub and the powered subs in the towers and crossed at 50-80 hz, so low bass was not its intent.

Towers: The ones pictured are 48"h x 8.5"w x 12"d, with a divider between the sealed MT compartment (~12" high, the actual height may have varied 1/2" or so after i cut the baffle -- the divider had to be between the top two woofers). That leaves a lower compartment of about 1.3 cu ft., which was tuned to around 46 Hz in an EBS alignment to get the black 6.5" 'subs' down to F3 ~ 40 hz.

I used the Dayton bi-amp binding posts for the tower, because i wasn't sure how i wanted the black subs powered. ultimately, i left this to the customer, and built the sub crossover on the bottom terminals and the MT on the top. with everything hooked up as a passive speaker, this definitely becomes a 4-ohm load. we were powering it with a pioneer elite receiver that had no trouble, but we wanted to be prepared if it started to get too hot, and could always add another amp or plate amps instead without opening up the towers.

the crossovers for the towers are probably not as optimized as they should be, because it was built in about 9 days, start to finish, to meet a hard deadline. for any new builders who like the look of those speakers, my signature also has a sub-$100 per pair MT tower / bookshelf using the blue bravox woofers.