Dallas DIY meeting? Updated info adding list of attendees and speakers

[Txgrizzly]

James,
you might want to bring your sub box to the meet to see if you can sell it...

Curly,
are you bringing any speakers with you or just coming to listen and get ideas?

[Curly Woods]

Not bringing anything other than me....

just want to meet some folks and see what's happening.

I am trying to motivate myself to start building a pair of mono block KT88 triode amps with tube regulated input and driver stages. These will have separate boxes for each power supply w/mercury vapor rectifiers (pair of 866's per channel). So it will be a total of 4 chassis, 6 transformers and a total of 11 tubes per channel.

I have most everything short of output transformers now, but still need to breadboard it before I splurge on 1/4" aluminum plate for the top plates.

[bemis23]

I believe my weekend is still open so I will be joining the party as well, plus a buddy of mine. I don't have any speakers to bring, though I do have tons of plenty of source material I can bring (basically any genre except opera).

[Txgrizzly]

whoever made this a "sticky"... thanks...

[Txgrizzly]

Guys,
there are some people who have said they might attend but havent responded with what they are bringing, if i havent added your name and speakers to the 1st post please send me an email or reply to this thread so i can add you to the list...

Thanks guys...

[savage25xtreme]

I am hoping the host has a receiver or amp that can A/B... TX do you know what equipment to expect? I can bring my Denon DRA-395 if they don't have one.

[Txgrizzly]

Savage,
I will ask him but I can almost guarantee that he does...

[smallchange]

You can put me down as attending, not bringing anything. I look forward to meeting some people from the Dallas area and checking out some builds.

Terry

[Txgrizzly]

all, i need to verify who else is coming, if you dont see your name on the 1st post please let me know so i can add you...thanks

[NateTTU]

I'm planning on coming and my brother-in-law who also visits this forum thinks he will join.

I would like to bring my Statements to the party, but its still in the air. Would there also be any interest if I found a way to bring my sealed Mal-X?

[Txgrizzly]

Cool Nate i have really been wanting to hear the statements... i would say bring your Mal-x as well, i was thinking of bringing my SONOSUB but its just to darn big...

[Txgrizzly]

Talked to Paul yesterday and stopped by his house. should be a fun event with lots of different speakers and some amps to listen too. i am going to go over early and help him get a room ready for listening to the speakers. he is looking for his A - B switch so we can do some comparison listening. if he cant find his i am going to look for one locally thats not too expensive. if anyone has one that they can bring that would be great. i look forward to seeing everyone this weekend...

[savage25xtreme]

I dont have a switch, but I can bring my lowly DRA-395

Let me know, it does a pretty good job and stable into 4 ohms. :T

[Txgrizzly]

Savage,
he has a very nice Adcom amp that we can drive our speakers with we were looking for something to allow us to do some A - B sampling...

[bemis23]

This might be too late but if anyone has gear they are planning on getting rid of at the meet I'm particularly interested in the following:

ECM8000 Mic
3x RS180-8
2x RS52
2x ND20FB
2x RSS390

PM me with pricing and we'll see if we can work out any deals!

[savage25xtreme]

Savage,
he has a very nice Adcom amp that we can drive our speakers with we were looking for something to allow us to do some A - B sampling...

OK understood :T

[atm98]

I have one of these I will bring

http://cgi.ebay.com.sg/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360162791099

[JonP]

Man... getting jealous! Take lots of pic's guys... this is really growing into an event! Lots of speakers and amps too! :M

I'm way off in CA, a buddy of mine is near there, but he's out of state this weekend too... I'll be visiting him Labor day, couldn't move it earlier w/o costing mas $$$ on the plane fare. Ah well...

Like I said, lots of pic's, OK?? :B

[Txgrizzly]

great deal ATM, that will keep me from having to buy one for this event.

Jon P,
I am cleaning out my camera now. i am listening to my TriTrix's that i just completed assembling and will be taking them to Pauls tomorrow as well. they will not be finished but i have started the sanding so they dont look to bad... trying to get some time on the drivers to break them in a little.

[NateTTU]

Nate, where do you live? i live in the Colony and i have a truck with a topper on it. i might be able to come get you. i would really like to hear either the statements or the mini's...

Hey man did you get my previous pm? I have a couple more options I will try, but I'm not having any luck on getting my speakers to the meet. Would your offer still be open? I live about 50 mins. east of the schedule meeting spot and about 1 hr and 15 mins from the colony according to google maps.

[Txgrizzly]

Nate, i dont think i am going to have time now, i have to go over and help Paul get his house ready... sorry, i thought you were squared away...

[JonMarsh]

whoever made this a "sticky"... thanks...

That was me.... :W

You're welcome.

[NateTTU]

Nate, i dont think i am going to have time now, i have to go over and help Paul get his house ready... sorry, i thought you were squared away...

Things didn't shape out the way I had planned, but I was able to round up my father-in-laws SUV earlier this morning so I should be there along with the Statements. I just may be a few minutes late.

[Curly Woods]

Thanks to Paul for hosting today!

I had a great time, even though I only stayed a couple of hours. Those 211 amps of Lee's were the bomb :-) He also had a really nice tubed pre-amp to pair with it. A lot of folks showed up with speakers, more than I could count. It's very hard to be objective with so many people and equipment of all types. Everything gave a good account from what I heard today. Great meeting a few of you guys also! Hope to do this again soon.

[savage25xtreme]

I also had one hell of a time. really enjoyed everyones hard work, glad you enjoyed Zaph's BAMTMs I brought... see you guys next time :T

time for me to go watch the dirt track races in sherman :B

[Txgrizzly]

yea, it was great and i will be loading photos tomorrow. i went to the event with lots of questions that i got answered by some great minds and got to hear alot of different speakers and amps and now i have a whole new set of questions and thoughts... I am going to say again that this is another hobby that is going to cost me some money...

I would really like to thank Paul for letting some HTGUIDE DIY'rs to crash his event... it was great...
I think we need to find a bigger house though, i thought we were going to have around a dozen people and there were atleast 25 to 30 there at one time...

[bemis23]

Event was a blast! It's nice to put some faces to the names online. Thanks to Paul for hosting the event. There was definitely some very neat stuff for everyone to check out!

[savage25xtreme]

did you guys ever fire Nate's statements back up after I left with the 200 wpc tube amp? I got to thinking about that on the way home. we had those set up all wrong. they are made to be listen to about 15 degrees off axis and we had them like 12 feet part and sitting like 6 feet away LOL. on track 3 of that tool CD I brought they should have sounded much better. I think that 80 wpc tube amp ran out of nutz at the levels we were driving too. if we do that again we need to set up a reference pair and do A/B switching from the test pair to the references... my sound memory sucks

I think the statements were the best speakers there but they sure didnt show it the way we had them set up. That 2 way usher/peerless HDS was very nice too.

I am amazed at what some of those guys on the PE forum can do with ..... not so good drivers.... truely artists. I need to frequent that forum more often.

I had a blast, we need to set another one up in a year or so, so I have a date to shoot for in getting another build done

I am drooling over Jon's Ardents :drool:

EDIT: as lame as it may sound... name tags would be good too with that many folks....

[Txgrizzly]

we fired them up using a chip amp later in the night and they did sound alot better. i thought they sounded as good as Paul's WWWWTM that he had just finished and fired up. Paul's were a little more efficient but i really did like the sound of the statements. i will be adding pics shortly...
Savage,
did you get some pics of Jon's Ardents? add them to the post if you did...

I agree with the name tags idea, i was thinking about stopping at a office depot and getting some but i forgot.

[Txgrizzly]

More pics

added pics to 1st post as well as this one... i am hoping more people will upload pics as alot of people were taking pics... :T

[savage25xtreme]

Savage,
did you get some pics of Jon's Ardents? add them to the post if you did...

Jon's Ardents are still in the construction/measuring phase of his Design shown here

good job on the pics!

[Txgrizzly]

oh, i thought you were talking about a set of speakers at the event...

[PanTerra]

I think the statements were the best speakers there but they sure didnt show it the way we had them set up. That 2 way usher/peerless HDS was very nice too.

Thanks for the shout-out. Dave is always looking for other people to buy the expensive drivers so he can play with them.

EDIT: as lame as it may sound... name tags would be good too with that many folks....

I was thinking the same thing. And not only for your name, but your forum "user name."

Note: the diagram does not include baffle width: 10 "

[savage25xtreme]

Thanks for the shout-out. Dave is always looking for other people to buy the expensive drivers so he can play with them.

I would just feel lucky to have someone willing to design the crossover for me... and it only has 9 crossover components :T

[Txgrizzly]

Pantera,
thanks for the PICs and specs... those sounded really nice...

[PanTerra]

I would just feel lucky to have someone willing to design the crossover for me... and it only has 9 crossover components :T

I do feel very fortunate in that he steered me away from a PE MTM kit with a mediocre tweeter, that was about $400 dollars to build this 2-way for less, although I did have to build the cabints. :T

[PanTerra]

Pantera,
thanks for the PICs and specs... those sounded really nice...

Thanks. Here is the FR curve with 10-ohm padding on the rising response of the tweeter. I have since added another ohm which is how you heard it. I haven't meassured it yet so I can't really see how much difference it made.

[savage25xtreme]

Thanks. Here is the FR curve with 10-ohm padding on the rising response of the tweeter. I have since added another ohm which is how you heard it. I haven't meassured it yet so I can't really see how much difference it made.

PanTerra,
That is 1/3 octave smoothing, what is more typical I was thinking 1/12 but I'm am not sure, also do you have a plot what shows the bottom roll off?

Thomas,
Maybe we should move this to a different post? Not sure but I don't want the curmudgeon scolding us haha. And it was a really nice design that maybe PanTerra would like to display in a design thread?

[PanTerra]

PanTerra,
That is 1/3 octave smoothing, what is more typical I was thinking 1/12 but I'm am not sure, also do you have a plot what shows the bottom roll off?

Thomas,
Maybe we should move this to a different post? Not sure but I don't want the curmudgeon scolding us haha. And it was a really nice design that maybe PanTerra would like to display in a design thread?

Dave may have it on his computer, he did the measurments. Dave truncated the graph since the bottom showed so much room effect and wasn't really representative. I am sure it is a nice shallow roll-off down to 20 hz :W

I don't know if this one speaker warrants a seperate thread. Just put all discussions on this event in this thread.

[Dthomas]

I personally don't know anyone else around the DFW area.

Hopefully someone gets all the pics from Saturday posted up over here and at PE. Very impressive designs and woodworking skills. Nice we got all these guys together.

To answer a question I saw pop in here, there were no vendors that I was aware of. We have had one show up in the past but he quit coming cause everyone poked fun at his views on the benefits of red teflon wire.

It seems there were two groups lurking in the DFW area one that hangs out over here and another that hangs on PE's website. I will venture over here more often.

I was glad to hear the Statements they were impressive. I also think that Paul Stewart's build on the Dayton RS225/Seas P18RNXP/Fountek Neo1 was WWWWTM was quite impressive and it was fun A/Bing them against the Statements. Both are impressive and definitely high end builds. Steve's Usher 8945P/Peerless HDS monitor is still my favorite. There were a couple of nice buy-out builds and a lot of kit builds that were impressive. I think the Alesis Carbon Fiber with the North Creek tweeter was fabulous, lots of high resolution sound for small bucks.

Hopefully we keep this group together and next time we can do a more formal meet. I lost count but there must have been a couple of dozen different speakers plus 5 or 6 DIY amps and even some preamps. Definitely was a lot of fun.

Dave

[Dthomas]

PanTerra,
That is 1/3 octave smoothing, what is more typical I was thinking 1/12 but I'm am not sure, also do you have a plot what shows the bottom roll off?

Thomas,
Maybe we should move this to a different post? Not sure but I don't want the curmudgeon scolding us haha. And it was a really nice design that maybe PanTerra would like to display in a design thread?

I have a ton of measured data on that speaker. The graph he posted was some quick measurements I did in a less than ideal room but we were using it to verify tweeter levels to the midbass. The usher extends down to well below 30Hz in room.

It is a favorite of mine, the HDS tweeter is amazing but it lacks a little value compared to others I have worked with.

Let me know if you want more data on it I would be glad to forward it to you.

[savage25xtreme]

great job by all, :T next time we have one I will budget more time for being there... I figured 4 hours was enough time... I was WRONG! when did Paul finally kick everyone out? 2 in the morning? haha

[Txgrizzly]

i think Paul would have let us stay there as long as we wanted to but had to get home so l left around 7pm.

[NateTTU]

I thought it was closer to 8pm when we left?

I had a great time as well and I certainly learned a lot while I was there. I was still surprised about how much talent some of you guys have and what little I know.

Thanks to Paul, I definitely got a good handle on some finishing techniques I'm going to have to try. I'm tired of my mdf statements. Gavin's BAMTMs also looked great.

I can't remember his name, but apparently there was a guy there you played for the Dallas Symphony who demoed the statements with his orchestra CD. While it didn't beat out his 16k speakers he told me he was impressed with the statements, especially considering the price.

BTW, I was very impressed with the HDS/peerless combo as well. Thanks Dave and Panterra for showing us this build. I may make one for myself in the future as a strictly two channel setup.

Does anyone know the name of that first cd we used on the sticks? Blair told me, but I can't remember.

[PanTerra]

I can't remember his name, but apparently there was a guy there you played for the Dallas Symphony who demoed the statements with his orchestra CD. While it didn't beat out his 16k speakers he told me he was impressed with the statements, especially considering the price.

I have been seeing so much written up about the Statements on the PE forum, I was glad I had a chance to hear them. Thanks for bringing them, they were very impressive.

BTW, I was very impressed with the HDS/peerless combo as well. Thanks Dave and Panterra for showing us this build. I may make one for myself in the future as a strictly two channel setup.

Dave may even work up a TMM version.