Another ER18 Build, #2, #3, #4 ??

[David LR]

Thanks for asking.

Life just keeps interfering, you know ?? Everytime I want to grab even an hour or so to work in the garage, it seems other people ( ie, wife) have other plans for me ! Should find at least some time on the 4th, not going to be celebrating ALL day.

Read your most recent post. Sounds like a tough job gluing down those thin strips that curled on you. If that was me doing that, I would have got glue all over both sides of the veneer ! How did you actually manage to clamp it all down anyway ??

 

[mattsk8]

Thanks for asking.

Life just keeps interfering, you know ?? Everytime I want to grab even an hour or so to work in the garage, it seems other people ( ie, wife) have other plans for me ! Should find at least some time on the 4th, not going to be celebrating ALL day.

Read your most recent post. Sounds like a tough job gluing down those thin strips that curled on you. If that was me doing that, I would have got glue all over both sides of the veneer ! How did you actually manage to clamp it all down anyway ??

Totally understand the 'life gets in the way' bit. I have 4 kids and an incredible wife so I'm super busy too. Thankfully she's a good woman so she lets me have my hobbies.

As far as clamping all that goes, it was kind of a hairy nightmare! I grabbed a bunch of these 3/4" thick polyethylene boards (like cutting boards basically) from my work a while ago thinking they'd make good jigs or whatever. I cut those down and clamped them over the strips (you can see them in the pic I posted, the white boards under the clamps), the wood glue doesn't stick to them so it worked well. Aside from the curling, another prob I had was that some were crowned or bowed, so I had to clamp them all together that way too so I didn't have gaps here and there between the strips. That was fairly tricky as well because I made the things so thin they just wanted to bend instead of clamp the way I wanted them to. After a LOT of sweating, hurrying, and scratching my head I eventually got the first side clamped. It turned out OK, I think I can fix/fill the areas that aren't so good; basically I took my pin nailer and pinned the parts that didn't want to lay flat. Timbermate makes woodfiller that's almost invisible on cherry; thank God!! The other 3 sides turned out great after I learned the hard way how it wanted to be done! I'll post some better pics of the good, the bad and the ugly once I'm done sanding (so in about 4 years!)

Edit: I did get a bunch of glue seepage between the strips too. Getting that off will be a blast , just more sanding. I usually just wipe the excess glue w/ a damp rag, but since it was under the white boards that had to stay till the glue dried I didn't have that option.

Bit of a rant here, but I've heard people say you don't want to wipe it off w/ a damp rag for this or that reason; I think that's absolutely not true. I've tried both ways, wood chisel after the glue dries and the damp rag method; damp rag works waaaay better w/ never an issue. The prob I run into w/ using the wood chisel is that the chisel tends to want to dig into the wood while trying to scrape the glue. They say the damp rag can dilude the glue w/ the water; to which I say just don't saturate it. Never had a prob w/ the damp rag method. Rant over

 

[David LR]

Wow, I'd be sweating too after all that.

Regarding the damp rag diluting glue, that makes no sense unless maybe
it's a critical joint the will be stressed a lot, certainly shouldn't matter with veneer, in any case, you're only wiping off the excess, and the rag is just damp, not dripping with excess water that will leak into the glued surfaces.

I'm with the you, the more glue you can get off before it dries, the better.

 

[WiseG]

Hi David, how are those speakers going?

 

[David LR]

Well, OK- resurrecting this old thread. I see that Mr. WiseG asked on Aug. 22, 2012 how the
speakers were going. I can finally report, on February 6, 2016, they are going just fine, and in
fact are finally finished !!

The other day I looked at my original packing slip from Meniscus, noted that the order date was
January 23rd, 2012 & the ship date was January 25th 2012. In an amazing coincidence, I actually
gave them a first listen on Monday, January 25th, 2016. So, it took me 4 YEARS to finish my speakers, more or less. Do I get some kind of dubious distinction or award for taking that long ? If you've taken longer I want to know ! Life happened, lack of equipment (drill press), daughter's wedding, etc., all sorts
of "reasons", but very glad they are finally finished.

In keeping with the speaker forum code that "no pictures=no speakers", I've included a few pics below.
The sides & back are covered with quarter-sawn white oak veneer stained with Minwax Dark Walnut,
the top & front covered with maple veneer, stained with Danish Watco Oil, Dark Walnut also. Amazing
that the Danish Dark Walnut is so much lighter than the Minwax Dark Walnut, I can only conclude that
the concentration of color is much lighter in the Watco oil, however, that contrast between the two colors
is pretty much what I wanted. The whole thing is top coated with Minwax water based polycrylic.
Also trimmed the base pieces with dark walnut 3/4" oak trim.

Not sure what the requirements are here for picture size so hope these aren't too big, should probably have re-sized them.

As you can see, they aren't perfect, but, they are done, look just fine from a sitting position !

This is my set-up, not ideal but probably similar to many. I get the sound reinforced by the corner on the right side while it disappears into open space on the left, not exactly conducive to balanced sound but that's what I got !

OK, now the sound review, not a magazine writer so don't expect great things. A little background,
I haven't had a huge number of speakers of the years, first ones were the Yamaha NS-500 two way with beryllium dome tweeters, (I'll leave it to you speaker historians to date those !), then the Dahlquist DQ-10s, (small house, had kids, had to sell them), then into DIY-got an 8" two-way from Meniscus, then a DIY MTM using the 6.5" VIFA P17WJ woofer with the matching VIFA tweeter (forget which model), this was a popular combination 10-15 yrs ago. The ER-18's replace those.

So, not a lot of speakers, but all quality speakers as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps my son put it
best when he said the ER18's were an order of magnitude better than any of my other speakers, and I agree with him wholeheartedly ! Even my wife was quite impressed.

These speakers are capable of so much musical detail, subtlety & nuance, especially in the quieter passages. They sound their best with voices & small groupings of instrument. Not that they sound bad with orchestral works, on the contrary, they sound big & full with a good bass, but you simply can't hear as much detail with that much going on. I finally have speakers with a good solid bass foundation (JS Bach Tocatta & Fugue in D Minor, 1st piece played, impressive !). Tweeters are great too, no harshness at all, to which I'm particularly sensitive, so I really appreciate that. Did I say that
the all the musical instruments sound much more like the real thing ?

All in all these are very, very good sounding speakers- full, rich, detailed, balanced, very enjoyable. Thanks to Dennis Murphy & Paul Kittinger for this design, I know Dennis has his own company now so it's nice he still thinks of the DIY guy. Of course they aren't the uber-speaker to end all designs, there's always another design, more money to spend, ah, will it never end !!! If I had a spare 4-5K I'd buy
Dennis Murphy's own Philharmonic 3's !

Anyway, there's my review, hope it's helpful.
Dave

 

[Swerd]

David – Congrats on the great looking speakers! All your efforts have paid off. Nice looking Your front baffles are nice looking and your driver mounting looks excellent, even with the close-up photos. I had just re-read this thread, and I repeat, talking about using routers, and making sense, is difficult. There is nothing like trial & error, more error… until it becomes experience .

Thanks for your the description of their sound. And I believe yours is the first review of the dome tweeter version of these speakers. With your previous speakers, all good quality, I think you have developed a good sense of what good speakers sound like. I hope you enjoy them for a long time.

 

[David LR]

David – Congrats on the great looking speakers! All your efforts have paid off. Nice looking Your front baffles are nice looking and your driver mounting looks excellent, even with the close-up photos. I had just re-read this thread, and I repeat, talking about using routers, and making sense, is difficult. There is nothing like trial & error, more error… until it becomes experience .

Thanks for your the description of their sound. And I believe yours is the first review of the dome tweeter version of these speakers. With your previous speakers, all good quality, I think you have developed a good sense of what good speakers sound like. I hope you enjoy them for a long time.

Swerd-
Thanks for your compliments. I do think they are handsome speakers. Question: Dennis has designed a center channel for these, available on Meniscus, however, they use the ribbon tweeter, not the dome.
Would I be able to successfully blend that center channel with my dome version or should I be looking elsewhere ?

Thanks-

Dave

 

[Swerd]

Would I be able to successfully blend that center channel with my dome version?

Yes I think you could easily do that. From what I remember when I heard the prototype ER18 with the ribbon and then with the dome tweeter, the overall voicing was quite similar sounding. I had to listen closely before I could be certain I could hear a difference. And that difference, to my ears, was subtle.