Backing out of DIY

[karatestu]

I'm pleased for you Steve. It's a turn of luck that you like them, it so easily could have gone the other way. I had a look at them on t'internet and they are highly regarded speakers. You've gone from 12" to 5" with a port. But who gives a toss as long as you enjoy them and you clearly are. I quite like my little B&W CM1 and they are 5" with a port. Lindsay described them as good for a bedroom system as they could send you to sleep I can see where he's coming from but hey, I like to relax when listening to music I have blocked the ports though as they are in the corners of my kitchen diner about a foot from the ceiling.

A bit of a result with xover or lack of. Are you going to check the cap's capacitance and esr ? Could gave drifted and changed the filter -3dB frequency. Saying that, if you have a grin factor of 10 then no point obsessing (from me the master of obsession).

Looks like you are set up now to just sit back and enjoy the tunes. I'm jealous. You need to buy the boy a pint or three.

[SteveTheShadow]

….Looks like you are set up now to just sit back and enjoy the tunes. I'm jealous. You need to buy the boy a pint or three.

Yes, I certainly need to buy him a pint or three, as you say.
Whether it’s the speakers themselves, or I’m finally hearing how good NVA actually is I don’t know. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

I won’t be messing with the tweeter caps. I prefer to just enjoy the music for now. I will however be making a pair of tall pillar stands for the speakers. I plan to make these out of 4in black plastic soil pipe, with decorative wooden bases weighted with two storage heater bricks, bolted to their undersides. They’ll be 900mm tall.

[karatestu]

….Looks like you are set up now to just sit back and enjoy the tunes. I'm jealous. You need to buy the boy a pint or three.

Yes, I certainly need to buy him a pint or three, as you say.
Whether it’s the speakers themselves, or I’m finally hearing how good NVA actually is I don’t know. I suspect it’s a bit of both.

I won’t be messing with the tweeter caps. I prefer to just enjoy the music for now. I will however be making a pair of tall pillar stands for the speakers. I plan to make these out of 4in black plastic soil pipe, with decorative wooden bases weighted with two storage heater bricks, bolted to their undersides. They’ll be 900mm tall.

Oh yeah, 110mm black pvc pipes come in really useful It won't ring like a metal pipe would and it's nice and cheap. Perfect

[slinger]

PVC pipes you say? Donkeys' years ago, when they still only had the one shop, on London Bridge Walk, I bought a pair of Richer Sounds' own-brand speakers. The foam "grilles" were Velcro'd on at the corners, and the (front) "ports" were holes in the baffles with a short bit of bronze-coloured PVC pipe stuck in them. Classy, eh?



There was just about room to swing a cat in the shop, but not if you also wanted to be inside WITH the cat.

[southall-1998]

Enjoyable thread. Mission has made great speakers.

S.

[SteveTheShadow]

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Stands for the Missions are done apart from choosing the finish for the bases.
Now I have a yard to clear and a mess of tools to put away and I’m knackered.
Paint the poles black and white and I have a set of traffic lights

[SteveTheShadow]

It didn’t take long for me to conclude that the tops of the stands look like crap.
The solution was a couple of large toroidal transformer washers:

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The stands now look a whole lot better:

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The construction is dead simple. The bases are a four layer glue-lam made of 12mm ply. The stands are held together by an M8 threaded tie rod passing up the pipe and it holds everything in compression. Years ago I had a pair of B&W stands under my KEF Coda IIIs that used the same principle.

As you can imagine, these much taller versions are far from rigid. Their main resonant frequency at around 3Hz - way below the audio band. However despite the lack of rigidity, the sound is superb. It was very good with the wooden top platforms, but with the washer platforms, the sound is outstanding for a pair of budget speakers.

Also because I designed the Fane full range speakers for my own room, they could just be thrown in and would sound good. With the Missions, I have had to re learn how to position speakers in a room. They ended up 10.25in out from the back wall, toed in a couple of degrees and spaced 66in apart.

I couldn’t be happier with the result. Have I backed out of DIY? Not quite I suppose or I would simply have bought some stands, but these cost around thirty quid for materials so not a bad outcome in the end. But in the case of amp building, that’s it I’m afraid.

[Vinyl-ant]

I hope the speakers are secured to the stand in some way
It wouldnt do to knock them off and smash the telly....

[SteveTheShadow]

I hope the speakers are secured to the stand in some way....

‘Course they are.

[SteveTheShadow]

Like all speakers, the Missions are front heavy. They are wider than they are front to back, so even more front heavy than a more modern speaker. Due to the stand’s top platform now being circular, there isn’t a lot of resistance to the tendency for the front to try to tilt downwards, ie only a single point at the underside of the front.
I had visions of the blu tack gradually giving way at the back and the speaker crashing forwards off the stand in the middle of the night and killing the cat.
Anyway, I’ve solved that with a couple of 3mm aluminium strips epoxied to the big washer: that should stop any toppling tendencies.

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