Millercarbon's Mega Moab Mod Meander


One of the all time great automotive engineers, Norbert Singer, was a key player in every one of the 16 Porsche LeMans victories from 1970 to 1998. His dominance was such that at one point Porsche had won LeMans more than all other marques combined. This was all accomplished by building on the already solid foundation of Porsche production models. The air cooled flat 12 in the 917 was really two flat sixes combined to make 12. This car so dominated motorsport the rules had to be changed to stop it!  

So Norbert Singer modified Porsche production technology to extract the absolute most for racing. His legacy is today’s Singer Vehicle Design https://singervehicledesign.com Norbert doesn’t make for a very good car name so they called it Singer. What is a Singer? It is a modified Porsche. It is in essence a hot rod. What Norbert Singer did was make the most hot rod racing Porsche. What Singer does is take that to the next level, capturing every aspect of Porsche right down to excellence of design and aesthetics.  

I am not anywhere near the level of Singer. But that is the spirit of what we are doing: taking an already world-class design and hot-rodding it to be even better. Well, better for me anyway- or so we hope!

The early modders started with substituting off the shelf parts to get more power or less weight. That is pretty much all we are doing here. Would be cool if some day people are doing this with a lot more sophisticated approach. Maybe they will. Maybe even I will. For now though we have the current crossover project.

My approach is pretty simple: better parts sound better.  

This lesson was learned back in the late 90’s with Linaeum Model 10 speakers. The designer had a new tweeter and told me how to modify the crossover for it. Simple mod, one cap, one resistor. Bought the parts from Radio Shack, put it together, sounded like crap. Absolute horrid crap! Called him up, he said those parts are crap. Said Musicap, Vishay. But they measure the same? Just do it. I did. It worked. Even though they measure exactly the same, the sound difference is off the charts.  

Even though they measure exactly the same. There is a lesson here. For those willing to learn.

So this is the essence of it: Eric Alexander has made a speaker the equivalent of a Porsche 911. Even better: an affordable Porsche 911! But after a while with my 911, after learning what makes it drive and feel the way it does, it was only natural to change the shocks and torsion bar and other items to bring out even more of what I like so much about the 911.  

That is what we are doing here. Hot-rodding a speaker. Thank you Rick for the metaphor!  

The parts are on order. Next week the fun begins!
millercarbon
Drawn into new sounds after dinner and beer, that's a combination. After the first shower comes the rain of more musical notes.
@parker65310
I have never heard the “Apogee” sound, how would you characterise it?
What particularly stands out as what you enjoy about them the most?

Of course I've heard electrostatics, maggies for example. I imagine they don't go very low, and if that's the case, you're not likely to get the low frequency low buildup and nodes in your room.

Do you know what your crossover is doing to the signal coming from the amplifier? I am guessing here, does it high pass bass frequencies and cut frequencies off at the very top end outside of audible frequencies?

I saw your system page, thanks for sharing, looks great and I went ahead and searched some of the items online, it was a good read.
**Sigh of relief here**
@millercarbon - not surprised that the Moabs have opened up, and sound better. And yes, it’s going to take weeks for things to settle in as others have rightly mentioned. A positive result immediately is a very good sign of what will come as burn in takes place. You know this, I'm stating the obvious, however in a couple of weeks, it'll be interesting what you experience - Capt. Obvious.

When ricevs mentioned the direction of the inductors I though, oh crap did I misunderstand my mentor Mike?? I will have to ask him.

@ricevs - if you have information more on the subject of inductor signal direction, or polarity, please share it? I am open to reading more on the subject. I’m pretty sure the testing that was done at our factory on inductor direction was with items with alligator clipped together and going back and forth to determine which was better. I’ll admit there’s a 50:50 chance I heard wrong and made a mistake.

I even told MC to investigate it for himself.

Post removed 
Solenoid Boxer (E) engine (motor). Cute!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4im3M9IFcI

Enjoy.. I did..

Few parts you could use in your new crossover.. :-)

I'll tell you one thing I noticed, the larger the cap and higher the voltage rating the longer it takes to brake in. BIG teflons take WAY to long. A guy at Parts Connection 15 years ago told me.. BE PATIENT.. He built the crossovers I was breaking in..

I though I was having a stroke a couple of times the wiggy sound that would come out those speakers 24/7 for 2 whole months. I borrowed a pair of NC400 class ds for the task... It worked.. Never again for me.

Copper foils and oils took 50 hours. Night and day in break in time. I just did a set on Six Pacs coupling (CF) and decoupling caps (AF)..

Happy Happy MC..

Regards