Titan 39 Build

[Michael Murphy]

JA, you really have done a good job on those cabs, hope you can get in all the driver mounting screws, as with my first build I was not able too. But I wont get get fooled again, no,no, bump, bump boom.

[Jason_A]

The cabs are looking great! Nice pics of the spraybooth. It's always cool to see how others "set up the mess" in their own space...I get tired of seeing my own mess, so it makes me feel better to see your mess too. LOL! I like how you suspended the cabs with a plank of wood through the cab. I may borrow that idea if I decide to spray. Though setting up a spray booth is a bit more difficult for me as my garage is semi-finished. The whole thing is sheetrocked. No exposed beams at the ceiling to hang stuff from. I wish it wasn't semi-finished.

What kind of tops are those? Looks like a 12" woofer with two round ports at the bottom and big old horn up top. Details? And of course, rationale for not going with OTops or DRs?

Glad to share my mess with y'all. To hang the speakers, I just screwed some of those plastic coated hooks into the ceiling joists (my garage is sheetrocked, too, but not painted, so it's easy to see where the joists are). Then I used some steel wire to suspend everything.

The speakers were started before the subs. I knew about BFM at the time, but wasn't planning on going that route (I wasn't planning on going horn with the subs originally, but convinced myself to try it out). Right now there are a ton of "high efficiency" designs going around in the hi-fi DIY circles. I think the "movement" started a couple years ago with the Econowave designs. Eventually a group of guys got sick of the honky sound of compression drivers/horns and decided to design their own CD and waveguide. The CD is called the Denovo DNA-360, and the waveguide is called the SEOS (Super Elliptical Oblate Spheroid). The CD is based on the B&C DE-250, but a little smoother and more extended on the top end. Point being, there are some good designs out there using that CD/waveguide combo, and they don't suffer from a lot of the problems of typical CD/horn combos. They sound good and have very controlled and uniform off axis dispersion. This one is called the Fusion Tempest, and uses an Eminence Delta Pro 12A for the woofer. The design was done by Jeff Bagby, who has done some great DIY and commercial designs. I modified the cabinet design to be a little more "traditional" looking trap box. While this was originally intended as a hi-fi design, all of the components are pro sound, so they should be up for the abuse of PA use.

[Jason_A]

So this is the second time I've seen something in a T39 build that makes access to the driver so much easier, but the plans didn't show it this way. The access for his drivers is in the front, and the driver is recessed into the panel rather than mounted from behind and accessed from the top. I had the impression that the space in front of the driver must be braced immediately on each side of the rectangular hole and that the driver was constricted through that hole.

The way these subs are built, there is no rectangle hole, no spacer between the driver and the mount, and no rectangle hole smaller than the face of the driver. Are the characteristics of the sub altered by this approach?

Is there a plan update or some comment in the design that I have not seen?

I know the plans change from time to time. I just bought mine a month or two ago, so it's entirely possible things have changed since then. I know for sure that the older plans had driver access from the top, and it was rear mounted to the baffle. Everything I did was per the plans (with the exception of using a solid piece for the front baffle/flange instead of piecing together smaller parts). There's also no board with the small rectangle cut out of it that the driver fires through.

[Jason_A]

JA, you really have done a good job on those cabs, hope you can get in all the driver mounting screws, as with my first build I was not able too. But I wont get get fooled again, no,no, bump, bump boom.

Yikes, I hadn't even thought about that Hopefully I can get them all in. Looking at it, the bottom two might be a little tricky. I have a stubby little screwdriver, so I *think* I should be able to do it.

[Michael Murphy]

Good luck with it. Positive vibes. Yeah I know what to look out for now.

[Bruce Weldy]

Is there a plan update or some comment in the design that I have not seen?

Yes....you are a couple of years out of date.

[Jason_A]

Last night I finally got started spraying the cabs. I learned quite a lot...

1. The texture spray gun works great... some of the time. Once I figured out how to identify when a clog was starting, that helped a lot. Cleaning those out is kind of a pain. Someone had mentioned putting plastic over the top of the paint in the hopper, which I'm going to try for the 2nd coat to prevent it from skinning over.

2. I'm glad I made a spray booth. While the stuff doesn't atomize like regular paint, it still flies everywhere. The mess is pretty much contained.

3. Priming is good. I primed my main PA boxes with black latex, and that worked out great. I didn't have to spray nearly as much Duratex on those, and I feel like I got more even coverage on them. I used a LOT of Duratex on the subs - so much that I'm a little afraid I'll have enough for a good 2nd coat on everything. Hopefully the 2nd coat can go on a little lighter than the first.

4. I need better lighting. For a first coat, it came out "OK". For the final texture coat, I am going to set up some extra lights so I can see what I'm doing better. I feel like I have a good feel for the gun and getting a nice texture, now I just need to be able to see where I'm spraying it.

No pics this time - they're just black boxes at this point My phone camera doesn't handle black objects in lowish light - they just kind of look like black blobs. This afternoon I'll spray the 2nd coat, and then late tonight and tomorrow everything will get assembled. Their first gig is tomorrow night - nothing like pushing a build to the 11th hour!

[hifibob]

Nice job on the cabs Jason, they look great! I'm curious to hear your impressions after your first gig w them.

[miked]

Thank you for the additional info on those tops; they do sound interesting. I'll do some reading up on them; it never hurts to learn more/expand your horizons. In my last post I meant to comment on your one-piece Panel 7; it looks great and that's what I'll be trying to do w/my T48 build which should start next week.

The tribulations you're going through w/the hopper gun are exactly why I'm afraid to spray. Clogged gun, Duratex everywhere but on the cabs, wasted Duratex, etc. I'm sure it's much faster than doing it by hand, though.

As for lighting, I'm a big believer in proper task-lighting. I bought two, 2-lamp 48" flourescent fixtures. The kind that have a normal plug already attached. IIRC, they were $30 each. I plug them into the celing-mounted outlet next to the garage door opener. In the fixtures I mounted "Daylight" color temperature bulbs. I beleive their color temp is 6500K, which is "sunlight." They are very bright and while they do give a sort of "sterile, cold-looking" light, I can see everything I'm working on crystal clear. A far cry from the single 100-watt bulb I had hanging in there before. If hanging new fixtures isn't your thing, you could always buy one of those portable construction site, dual-head worklamps. They typically have a 300-watt halogen bulb in each side. That will give you plenty of light to work by, but they do give off a lot of heat.

Looking forward to seeing pics of the finished product and hearing your thoughts on your new subs. Good luck with their first gig!

[Jason_A]

I made a couple of adjustments today. First, I took down the subs and just sprayed the tops. That gave me a lot more space to work. I also added a few more lights, which helped a lot. The tops look great after a second coat - exactly what I was going for.

I let the tops hang and dry for a few hours while I hit the subs with some Duratex on the roller. The first coat didn't cover well enough, so this is just a thin "coverage" coat to make sure everything is black. I used way less material when rolling, so that's definitely a more efficient method. I just used a foam roller, so it went on very thin with pretty much no texture. It will work well as a base coat. I'm letting that dry now and then I'll shoot it with the final texture coat. I feel like I'm in the final stretch now.

[Jason_A]

Finished spraying last night. Turned out pretty well. The trap boxes turned out a little better, as I did a lot more prep work to those boxes. Still, the Titans turned out nice. My main goal was to have them not look like "speakers some guy built in his garage", and I think I succeeded. Everything will get wired up this afternoon and then off to the gig. Would have liked more test time, but it is what it is. Fortunately tonight isn't a "taxing" gig, so nothing will be pushed hard. I'll have some time to mess with crossover settings, get the limiters set, etc.

Here's how the Duratex ended up:


I'll have them outdoors, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few decent pics of the system.

[Bruce Weldy]

My main goal was to have them not look like "speakers some guy built in his garage"

Somewhere in the design office at a large speaker company, a young, out-of-the-box thinker mutters to himself, "I don't want these speakers to look like they were made at some kinda' cookie-cutter manufacturing plant..."

[miked]

The DTex texture on the subs turned out perfect. Doesn't get much better than that, IMO. Looking forward to the gig report.

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

Everything will get wired up this afternoon and then off to the gig. Would have liked more test time, but it is what it is.

A certain Mr. Murphy would like to discuss his law with you.

[Grant Bunter]

Everything will get wired up this afternoon and then off to the gig. Would have liked more test time, but it is what it is.

A certain Mr. Murphy would like to discuss his law with you.

Mr Sod says Mr Murphy is an optimist...