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!
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Showing 6 responses by petg60

MC i always liked the idea of upgrading some of the crossover parts in my Dunlavys. I know they can sound even better. It was after reading of all the difficulties a member here in Agon faced till making them sound right again with a good number of changes, especially with absolute coil values, the idea has stalled for now. Looks like the easiest part to do is to upgrade all the wirewound resistors first and pray for some rain. Some of the capacitors later. One step at a time.
Really interested to hear how your project turns out.


Even just a little bit of the Herbie’s material killed a lot of the Alumen Z ringing, and by the time I was done with fO.q tape the Jantzen are now pretty thoroughly damped. The Herbie’s material is thicker and so will double as additional isolation, suspending the caps about 1/8" above the mounting board and apart from each other.
MC a comment about the Herbie's material, my guess is that you tried the fat dots, if so, then both the fat or thin will absorb any ringing but after trying both i found the thin ones to behave a little better in not absorbing too much life. But as i said is my guess.

This little exercise is about just one thing: if you want to avoid an accident, look where you want to go! Don't look at the accident or you will be the accident! This isn't just about avoiding accidents, either. Looking ahead to where you want to go helps you be smooth and fast on the track or auto-cross and safer in everyday driving.
I liked that part.
@rixthetrick, thanks, very nice work you have done. Oh those chocolate looking Duelunds.
Drawn into new sounds after dinner and beer, that's a combination. After the first shower comes the rain of more musical notes.
Just changing drivers does not work completely, and most likely some values in the crossover have to be changed and that would require the help of the manufacturer. In speakers with multiple drivers it is a task.