Jasmine speaker in Pioneer BS21 cabinet - Finally done!

[jsr]

Re: Jasmine speaker in Pioneer BS21 cabinet - Finally done!

Thanks Chris. Doesn't seem to be much interest from the community though.

[Chris Roemer]

Re: Jasmine speaker in Pioneer BS21 cabinet - Finally done!

I like 'em.

[jsr]

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a great holidays and are doing well.

I finally had a chance to finish up a project that was in the same build state of virtually done since last Christmas. I had the crossovers voiced and built, but never had time to do the final touches to fit the drivers into the cabs permanently. This Christmas break gave me just enough time to squeeze in completing this project.

I call it the Jasmine, a 2-way TM using the Fountek FW146 mid/woofer and Fountek Neo CD3.0 tweeter. I don't have any woodworking equipment (if Hong reads this, I'm sure he'll make fun of my dremel work and lack of a router), so I didn't want to have a cabinet from scratch made. Instead, I used the cabs from a pair of Pioneer BS21 speakers that I had originally purchased with plans to repurpose the cabs anyways. I like the size of the BS21 cabs (I'm a fan of small to medium standmount speakers) and I'm a sucker for curved sides.
So I took the stock drivers out and tried fitting the Jasmine drivers in. A year ago, I quickly discovered the FW146s are just a bit too large in OD than the BS21 woofers (about 3mm). Plus the odd cutout shape of the BS21 woofer also prevented the FW146 from dropping in. So out came my hack saw to make the cutout work. With no real wood working tools, I used sand paper and good old fashion elbow grease and hand sanded the OD enough for the FW146 to fit. For anyone else thinking about doing this by hand, it takes an amazing amount of time to hand sand 3mm of MDF, especially when it's just the OD for the driver flange (a cutout would've been much easier). This sanding is one of the two reasons it took over a year to complete the Jasmines. The other reason was the tweeter cutout being too large for the Neo CD3.0. The OD is also a bit larger, but that didn't pose a fitment problem, just an aesthetic issue. First I tried gluing small pieces of MDF behind the cutout for the screws that would mount the CD3.0 to bite into and had to be careful where I placed them as the large magnet/motor of the CD3.0 took a lot of space and is pretty close to the mounting hole location. The small glued MDF pieces worked on 1 cab, but not on the other where they just fell off. So I took larger pieces and screwed them into the cutout, recessing the screws into the driver cutout recess.
Anyways, after all that was said and done, I finally got the Jasmines fully assembled. This is my first design attempt with a metal cone mid/woofer. The sound is different from what I'm used to. On some material it sounds great, while on others I prefer the sound of my paper or poly designs. The upper bass and lower mids (basically the FW146's contribution) sound similar to other metal woofer designs I've heard, so I guess it's a sound that many like. I just may take some time getting used to it. It's great with female vocals, but I prefer the sound of paper or poly with male vocals. The Neo CD3.0s have their characteristic airiness and sound similar to the smaller CD1.0 that others are used to in Paul's Speedster design. Overall a very pleasing speaker to listen to, but for me, a bit different from my comfort zone.
Here's some pics of the finished speakers. I used some speaker gasketing tape to fill in the gap between the Neo CD3.0 face plate and the tweeter OD. Overall I think it looks quite nice and again, I love the size and curved sides. I think I'll paint them a different color though.




Crossover Schematic
Woofer is BW3 at 2.3kHz. Tweeter is BW3 at 3kHz. Slopes are acoustic. Both drivers are connected positive terminal to positive power. Sorry, I forgot to put that in the pic.


Frequency Response - on my home computer, I can't get phase or power response to show up (not sure why). Phase alignment is almost on top of one another at the crossover point and stays close to one another on both sides of the XO point. The slight rise in the tweeter response was done via my voicing. It sounds more balanced to me with that slight rise. I've noticed I do the same thing with the CD1.0 when voicing with it. I don't normally like doing that with domes, but with the Fountek ribbons, I prefer to voice them that way.


Overall System Phase