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!
128x128millercarbon
@willgolf  - all this attitude and all you did is ask a simple question, right?

It makes sense, that if you already knew that it was such a chore and not a simple thing, you wouldn't have asked, and so you're discovery mode.
Sorry to be such a wet blanket, I was trying to inform you as best I could, and without much information about the particular driver you want to swap out.

It is a valid question you asked, one I have asked in the past too.

It is possible to get a positive result by swapping out drivers, that potential changes proportionally to how well the crossover is designed for the existing ones, and how common the characteristics of your driver to others out there.

Can you tell me what the driver is that you want to try and upgrade?
My test for my many mechanical grounded platforms under everything was to have a friend stop over and play some tunes.
While that was going on I had my 2 grandsons use their pogo sticks on my carpet over concrete floor and jump around..
My friend and I could nor hear nor feel the influence of the pogo stick on vibrational transfer thru any grounded device. Which is everything even the Argent Room Lenses.  Tom
Well I did allow for the use of springs in my audio room just this 1 time. On the pogo sticks but they left when the boys did.  Oh I forgot to mention  the 3 inside my Linn but it is on a grounded Sistrum rack apparently undisturbed by pogo sticks. Tom
Why not just get better speakers? For all time and labor costs, I would think it would be worth it.

I asked the question about changing drivers because I have the opportunity to upgrade the four drivers.  Let me just state that my Viking Acoustic Grande Voix dual horn speakers are phenomenal.  I really don't need to change anything.  However, David Counsell, the designer and speaker builder from Viking Acoustics told me about a German driver that would take my speakers to even another level.  Further, he would do all of the work at my house (it is a 7 hour drive).  

It would cost me over $5k to have the work completed.  My speakers already have an 18" woofer so I get plenty of bass.  The new drivers are spruce wood with ultra detail and more air.  He would use different caps.  The end result would be better detail and more output in the mid range and the highs and a 5% reduction in bass which will balance the speakers better.  

 I am not saying I am going to do it.  I am functionally blind so I can't do anything that Chuck is doing to his Moabs.   I just threw it out there because I have not seen any threads on changing drivers.  Hope that clarifies why I asked and thanks for the feedback.   
Ahh, good, thanks! I thought you were talking the usual general hypothetical sense. Instead this is one very particular case and from what you said I would have to say since you already know you love what you have, and therefore trust the guy who built them, then I have to say go for it. 

What I did was basically what little I can do knowing what little I do know. If I could instead call up Eric and he said well you know for that money I could upgrade all your drivers and part of the crossover and in a way that sounds better than anything you could ever do yourself, well then I would have to believe him and go for it. Replace Eric with David, and there you go.

Either of these guys, since they work daily with their stuff they know it inside out. Some guy like me, I don't have time or money to figure out which cap or whatever in the crossover is so essential it is worth the very best, and which it is almost unnoticeable to sacrifice a little. So in my case it makes total sense to just overkill the whole thing, as that is cheaper than doing it five times trying to find the most cost-effective solution! In your case though you have the designer saying it is totally better. I would trust him a lot more than I would trust me. 😂😉