Do you still roundover with a grill?

[oldloder]

Some gift recipients have told me they want grills instead of the raw driver look. Would the grill frame negate the benefit of the roundover? In this particular case, the driver frame would reach the edge of the 3/4" roundover. Aesthetically, I think it would look strange to have both unless the roundover was made much smaller, but sonically?

Thanks!

[Curt C]

It depends on the implementation of your grills.
If your grill cloth will be stretched over a wooden frame that sits flush on the baffle, then the round over will be superfluous. –And the inside edge of the frame will now reflect, much like a baffle edge, unless covered in a thick layer of felt. On the other hand, if the cloth is stretched over a wire frame and positioned away from the baffle, then the round over will continue to be advantageous.

C

[oldloder]

Thanks Curt, I hadn't thought of a wire frame. I suppose I could plug some sort of magnet into the baffle ... how far away from the baffle would it need to be? Any place offhand I might be able to see an example of this?

[fjhuerta]

I use the wire frame technique. There may be some pics around of two frames I used. They were 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch away from the baffle. You don't need a magnet; just drill a hole into the baffle and insert the wire frame into it.

[twest820]

Vandersteen does something similar on the 1, 2, and 3 models. A wire frame equivalent would probably work pretty well. If you dig around you can find some papers where Richard talks about using round surfaces to support the grills to minimize reflections and keeping the frontal baffle area of the head of the speaker small for the tweeter and mid to minimize diffraction effects.

If you can get away with it I'd try to leave at least the tweeter exposed (the B&W 803 is an example), though, as all grill cloth I've come across muffles higher frequencies. The Orion is most elegant use of a standoff grill for hiding woofers I've come across. Statistically speaking, you're probably not building an H frame however.

[Dave Bullet]

Some gift recipients have told me they want grills instead of the raw driver look. Would the grill frame negate the benefit of the roundover? In this particular case, the driver frame would reach the edge of the 3/4" roundover. Aesthetically, I think it would look strange to have both unless the roundover was made much smaller, but sonically?

Thanks!

Chances are if they are more concerned about the asthetics by having grilles, they won't care or probably notice about diffraction abberations from losing the roundover.

[oldloder]

Yeah, in this case the effort to fabricate a wire frame grill may go beyond the diminishing returns. I suppose tucking some felt under the grill cloth around an MDF frame may in the end be the simplest for now. I like the idea of the wire frame, though, cuz it seems there should be a simple way to pull this off - maybe the idea of inserting the wire right into the baffle ... much as I'd like to we're not talking H frames!

Funny, I hadn't thought of this in awhile, but years ago I was asked to come up with a protective enclosures for the roses of a rather famous architect (I'm a gardener) and I heard he really liked what I came up with - to me they looked like enormous speakers! LOL, now I'm stumped!

[fjhuerta]

This is the way I did it the last time. Tweeter is outside of the grille frame, frame covers 2 8" woofers and a 4" port. Roundover is 1".

[oldloder]

I see Javier, I made it through about half your posts last night before I fell asleep looking for it, lol. That's nice, it almost looks like a frame mounted on standoffs - that could be done too, I suppose.

[fjhuerta]

It's actually a very good idea (I saw it somewhere else, and I copied it exactly)... my measurements are identical with or without grilles, something I can't say about my later efforts (using neo magnets to hold a wooden frame)...

[Hank]

I've always done grills like Javier. I've used dowels for frames and always space between frame and baffle. And, 3/4" cab roundovers.

[oldloder]

Dowels are easy enough for me.

[Doug Fraser]

Javier:

I have been looking for a baffle construction technique like you have done. What are the baffle frames made of? It sounds like dowels are attached to frame to provide the height - is that right?

Regards,
Doug