First of all a very warm welcome to you as a new member of these forums.
Your craftsmanship is worthy of the highest praise.
I would imagine the low Q of the TL blends much better than the ML hybrids.
With a crossover at 200 Hz the bass driver will be a full space radiator, however it will have a radiation pattern different from the ES panel. I would think however that the results are good as you are in territory where the ear is not highly sensitive to these discontinuities.
I note your TL pipe has little if any taper. If there had been a 4/1 reverse taper, the driver would have assistance over a greater range.
I have browsed your website on a number of occasions, and found the materiel to be well presented.
Have your measured the maximum spl at your preferred seating position?
As far as Quads, method of tensioning the mylar diaphragm, it was a complex jig using pulleys and weights. Peter demonstrated it to me himself. The membrane was painted with Peters secret emulsion. He personally took me through the assembly of a Quad ESL 63.
Anyhow, I hope you have a long stay on these forums.
Thank you for the kind comments, TSL Guy.
BTW, I just visited your photo page and, OMG what a setup! That room must have taken some serious inspiration and thought and time (not to mention $$$) to create.
When I started my ESL project, I had very little money (got an ex-wife to support), no prior experience with ESL's or electronics, and certainly no idea what I was getting myself into with those TL bass cabinets.
I attempted to model the TL using MJ King's Mathcad program but never could figure it out-- it's the sort of thing that could end a guy up in a psycho ward. I eventually just gave up trying to understand it and just went with Roger Sanders' generic TL guidelines, from his ESL Cookbook. Fortunately, it worked out very well.
As you can see, my power supplies and transformer setup is about as simple and inexpensive as it gets. No doubt those cap/diode cascade power supplies, as fed right off 60hz house current, have tons of ripple, and I was concerned it would be audible, but in fact it isn't, and I'm now confident you would never hear any ripple-effects in the speakers provided the panels have no leak paths draining charge off the diaphragms.
I got lucky with those cheap toroids too-- bought them on a whim not knowing how they might sound or if they might short out and smoke my amps, but they too worked fine and sound fantastic. In fact, those cheap toroids give much better high frequency response than some expensive EI core audio trannys (wound specifically for ESL's) that I had originally purchased and used.
I don't have any measurement equipment/software so I can't provide any measurements of my speakers. I only have the digital crossover and EQ, which gives me great tuning flexibility. I haven't measured max SPL either but they can play louder than I care to listen (they won't blow the windows out but they will blow women's panties right off-- this I have confirmed but my gf says that could happen anyway, lol).
The only problem with my speaker design is that the cabinets are so complex and time-consuming to build that I hesitate to recommend them to others. As time permits, I'm drawing up a simpler design to post on my website, which will use the same panels and electronics, but with a simple sealed or ported box for the woofer. I want to post a drawing on my website that anyone can build.
The website is a labor of love, which I created as a resource for others like myself, who don't have a lot of money or prior experience with electronics. And I really enjoy getting emails from all over the world. Quite a few people have built their own ESL's using my website as a guide, and they write to me raving about how good they sound-- that's just hugely rewarding.
Have a great day!
Charlie