old speakers, new lease of life
Discussion
Ever since my dad was 17/18 or so he has been pretty big into his hifi. The good news for me is that any nice bits and bobs left over after an upgrade are passed to me.
About 8 years ago he gave me a pair of castle bookshelf speakers. These were old, but sounded utterly wonderful. The foams on the bass driver started to degrade and we replaced them with new units sourced from Wilmslow audio (circa £90 per speaker iirc). The tweeters and crossovers were still knob on. The cases were pretty tired and the veneer had started to peel away, so when I moved out, he told me to leave them as he wanted to make new cabinets for them.
Fast forward to this year and the long awaited full overhaul started. It was a project long in the running and has been planned for a few years. With my dad temporarily out of employment, he has just got round to doing them.
First off was the sound. In order to keep them as true as possible to the original sound, the internal volume was kept identical. We agreed that some small neat floorstanders would look much better, and that front porting was best, so they could be put closer to a wall.
Here are a few pictures.
The cabinets are made in exterior ply with the internal layers in 18mm, 10 layers thick. The bases are solid beech (left over from the kitchen worktop). The front and back pieces are 18mm birch ply (for the uniformity). Internally they are sealed with a black plasticised coating.
All assembled with new lambswool wadding, new ports and spikes. I think they look brilliant, and they sound great too. Not quite as good as the PMCs shown in some of the pictures, but not a million miles away either. They are certainly equal in terms of voice reproduction, but not as crisp on the lower end, thuds and bass, as to be expected.
That said the PMCs are ~£1300 speakers....
About 8 years ago he gave me a pair of castle bookshelf speakers. These were old, but sounded utterly wonderful. The foams on the bass driver started to degrade and we replaced them with new units sourced from Wilmslow audio (circa £90 per speaker iirc). The tweeters and crossovers were still knob on. The cases were pretty tired and the veneer had started to peel away, so when I moved out, he told me to leave them as he wanted to make new cabinets for them.
Fast forward to this year and the long awaited full overhaul started. It was a project long in the running and has been planned for a few years. With my dad temporarily out of employment, he has just got round to doing them.
First off was the sound. In order to keep them as true as possible to the original sound, the internal volume was kept identical. We agreed that some small neat floorstanders would look much better, and that front porting was best, so they could be put closer to a wall.
Here are a few pictures.
The cabinets are made in exterior ply with the internal layers in 18mm, 10 layers thick. The bases are solid beech (left over from the kitchen worktop). The front and back pieces are 18mm birch ply (for the uniformity). Internally they are sealed with a black plasticised coating.
All assembled with new lambswool wadding, new ports and spikes. I think they look brilliant, and they sound great too. Not quite as good as the PMCs shown in some of the pictures, but not a million miles away either. They are certainly equal in terms of voice reproduction, but not as crisp on the lower end, thuds and bass, as to be expected.
That said the PMCs are ~£1300 speakers....
Crackie said:
Good work Slomax.......can you remember what model of Castle bookshelf speaker it was ? The volume and port lengths are the same as before 
; are the relative spacings, between woofer to tweeter and woofer to port, the same as the original Castle ?
Not 100% on the model I'm afraid, but they might have been Clydes, in fact, I'm relatively confident they were. The tweeters were the same as found in the Conway IIs, another cracking speaker. ; are the relative spacings, between woofer to tweeter and woofer to port, the same as the original Castle ? Distance of woofer to tweeter remains the same. Woofer to port has changed. Port has got further away by probably around 20mm at a guess without measuring. Port size has increased ever so slightly (a few mm) but has a larger lead in on the outer rad.
slomax said:
Crackie said:
Good work Slomax.......can you remember what model of Castle bookshelf speaker it was ? The volume and port lengths are the same as before ; are the relative spacings, between woofer to tweeter and woofer to port, the same as the original Castle ?
Not 100% on the model I'm afraid, but they might have been Clydes, in fact, I'm relatively confident they were. The tweeters were the same as found in the Conway IIs, another cracking speaker. ; are the relative spacings, between woofer to tweeter and woofer to port, the same as the original Castle ? Distance of woofer to tweeter remains the same. Woofer to port has changed. Port has got further away by probably around 20mm at a guess without measuring. Port size has increased ever so slightly (a few mm) but has a larger lead in on the outer rad.
. Distance to baffle edges and the shape of the baffle edges will influence things slightly too but there is one factor that might be worth checking carefully. The port position in a floorstander is important; if its in a poor position, relative to standing waves in the enclosure, midrange harmonics can leak out of the port and have a big impact. Your ports are already in the cabs and hopefully everything should be just fine. The graphs in this link explain in more detail; as you can see, the mid harmonics from the port can have a big influence on the overall sound. http://averagejoeaudiophile.blogspot.co.uk/2014_10...Edited by Crackie on Saturday 5th March 22:42
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