"Limes" started like
a joke, just to spend the time during one of those misty and grey weekend.
The need was to
have a nice-lookin' and enoughly small cabinet for the living
room, to listen to television with your family without renouncing
to a good overall quality.
Of course
low cost was a must.
We started the serach
of a project last october in our collection of speaker-buildn' rewiews
and in the web.
After a few day
a lot of projects were eligible but.... none passed the ultimate test:
our viwes. ;)
We've to wait till
december when finally in the italian rewiew "SUONO" was published what
we were looking for:
a very cool looking
cabinet with a thin profile to save space, using the very cheap Fostex
FE83 speaker.
For the complete article plese refer to the original issue:
Article Title:
"Limes"
Author: Giuliano
Nicoletti ( gnicoletti@tiscalinet.it )
Published in
november 1999 issue of the Italian HI-FI review "SUONO".
In the review there
is also a facility for people who are far from big hi-fi shops: for 384.000
lire (about 190USD). are
available: the detailed plan of costruction, the two FE83 all the material
for costruction (helmothz resonators etc.) wood not included.
Abstract of the
article are available in a couple of place in the web: you can click here
while holding the shift key pressed to retreive the diagram of the cabinet,
with the main dimensions.
Photo
Gallery & Tips of Costruction :
From our experience
costruction is not so easy, but still at hand of a medium skilled DIYer.
The main problems
we found was in the triangular shape and in the uncommon tallness
that obliged us:
Great care must be taken with :
Here is a photo of the internal helmothz resonators. The tubes can be found in every supplier of parts for building houses (bricks, tubes etc..). They were supplied me for free by a bricklayer who lives in my neighbourhood. The tubes must be filled with loose fluff accordin to best bass response.
Note that to strenghten
the joint with the openable wall of the cabinet a special slot with eliptichal
wood joints is used. This slot permits correct positioning of the
removable wall.
To avoid air loss,
the removable wall is sealed using silicon rubber for motor gasket. the
silicon rubber is the thin black line.
A close shot of Fostex's
FE83.
Note the spacers below the pipe. The thickness of the spacers have been choosen after several attempt for best bass response according to the positioning of the speaker in the room.
We've choosen 2cm
thickness, after experimenting with different wooden blocks heights starting
from 1cm to 4cm step of 1cm.
Lower distances
give more basses but also cause the sound to be a little "slow" and compressed,
with more evidence of "holes" in the spectrum.
Higher distances
reduces the bass reinforncements.
In Place and
ready to fire!!!!
In the backgroundour reference amplifiers: "Il triodino III" using 2a3 & 6sn7GT tubes, built in one separate chassis for each channel.
In the foreground,
on the white table the Triodino III first version, using 300B instead of
2a3 build on a single chassis.
Listening
Impressions
What we asked to
this speaker was good reproduction of voices and -if possibly- a good overall
sound.
We thought of course
that using the FE83 meant clearly to renounce to almost completely to Bass
and to high power level.
We were wrong, at
least in the first guess.
When we first connected
the Limes to our reference amplifier (our modified version of "il
Triodino III") we were all surprised: we heard one of the best highs and
- surprise - also a nice bass extension was present.
All this only with
3W power!!! and 89db efficiency.
Of course there
wasn't the impact and dinamics of bigger cabinets, but the voice was very
trustful and present, bass was a little "behind" but with surprising extension.
Infact reading the article we discoverd that this little monster can reach
48Hz (-3db).
In a few world a
very good result for the FE83: a 6cm speaker (!).
We suffered the appreciation of our viwes: the "limes" in the living-room has become "a must" so we all had to own a couple (8 spekers in total!). :))))))
We've Just
enjoyed "SANREMO" with this nice speaker.