My TOSHIBA WX-1 Speaker upgrade

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BoomboxLover48

BoomboxLover48

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Instead of the plastic container you used over the speakers, if you use a ceramic small bowl, the sound will be mind blowing! It is worth a try. :yes:

Way back in 1976, I placed single speakers at the mouth of clay pots. I got super bass and nice sound. That was a cheap way to get some bass from 4W speakers. It sounded like 20W with deep bass. :-D :w00t:
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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BoomboxLover48 said:
Instead of the plastic container you used over the speakers, if you use a ceramic small bowl, the sound will be mind blowing! It is worth a try. :yes:

Way back in 1976, I placed single speakers at the mouth of clay pots. I got super bass and nice sound. That was a cheap way to get some bass from 4W speakers. It sounded like 20W with deep bass. :-D :w00t:
Click to expand...
Interesting idea but probably not applicable in this case since the bass is coming from the 6.5" subs, not the 4.5" woofers which are in the tub enclosures. The 2 layers of dead-mat & the insulation at the back of the tubs do a great job taming the artifacts from the tubs & isolate the back waves of each woofer from each other. I'm quite happy with the sound & the bass is quite adequate & quite good sounding. I hope people listen to these vids with really good headphones or speakers to hear what I do because this box has no problem now filling the room with good thumping sound & also quite balanced with many types of music from heavy BASS dub to good rock & roll...

We'll see how it does with some heavy, heavy tracks.

More to come...

Cpl :thumbsup: :rock: :-D
 
Barb Bush

Barb Bush

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Cpl-Chronic said:
hip hop tape test........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f49dMdksGwo&t=41s
Click to expand...
Using headphones I can really hear the difference from one to another. Sounds great.
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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Thanks Barb! I tinkered around a bit more, added some more deadmat around the edges of the drivers to further eliminate more leaks & added a 3rd layer of blanket insulation to the back of each food container to further isolate the energy from each woofer's back-waves. Works very well for a rough fabrication...

With the Bass, Treble & loudness controls, I can achieve a balanced & full sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIViaZGIM1I&t=83s
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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Found another smaller less noticeable flutter in the left channel again & opened it up to investigate. Again, a small fluttering noise could be heard from the bottom side of the dome enclosure I made for the smaller Pioneer woofer. This indicated a leak somewhere around the area where the wires enter the container, wrapped with dead-mat. Also, some areas of the Pioneer woofer had less dead-mat material around its circumference, where it mates to the cabinet. This seals the rim better with more mass added to the sealing surfaces to handle the pressure created inside the improvised mid-bass chamber without vibrating or oscillating which causes noise. When I opened it up at first, the dead-mat strips surrounding the edges of the basket were puffy when I pushed down on them indicating the woofer inside the food container was sealed but had enough force to blow the dead-mat away from it's original position, causing an air leak & a flutter that sounds just like a ripped or blown speaker...

This time I think I nailed it. I used a bit of JB Quik to seal the wire entrance, taped down wires properly & generally added more dead-mat around the home made mid-woofer enclosure. This should solve the issues with the fluttering bass & clean up the sound quite considerably.

More to come... :dj-party:
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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Well, the saga continues..... :bang:

Some heavy tracks still caused a couple of leaks around the tweeter of the right speaker & both L & R cabinets had very minor leaks around the latch hardware & brackets, etc. I resealed all surfaces, speaker edges, tweeters, hardware etc. with JB Quik(4hr set) & waited to test drive my masterpiece.

One important discovery I made about this model is the tweeters always sounded dull, Lo-Fi quality & I found out why. The black riser ring installed at the factory was choking the edge suspension of the tweeter itself. It's the paper edge that looks like an acordian all the way around the outer edge of the tweeter's cone. I cut down 2 old lids off of some vitamin bottles & created some riser rings so I could lift the tweeters off of the restrictive factory mounting & properly support them with these make shift risers so that the diaphragm of the tweeter can now move freely, as it was supposed to do when designed... :clap:

On to the next chapter of refining this beast...BTW, this thing pounds it at 8 OHMS. I don't care what anyone says about weak amp power but you can crank the 'Loudness' to '5', 'Bass' to '8.5' & 'Treble to '3' now & it is crisp & deep to my ears. Not quite floor shaking but definitely strong, especially for a boombox...

Videos coming soon.... :-D
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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Ok...when you watch the next video, listen to it on a good bass extension system or full range headphones.. The lack of power perceived when listening to a Wx-1 is due to the passive radiator system. Using a combination of a sub-woofer & a mid-woofer in its own sealed chamber, really improves the efficiency, sound quality & boosts output greatly. The new tweeter rings I made actually make a big difference in clarity of the treble top end. Notice the clarity of the cymbals, guitar & saxophone while the bass is strong & clean.

The extra work paid off finally after many revisions...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63lW3LXkdRQ
 
Line Out

Line Out

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So are those 120mm drivers and 165mm passives? I would also have tried to search for a low Fs / high SPL midwoofer and new passives. Passives can be found very cheap and you can fine tune them by adding weight to the cone. Finding a 120mm seems to be quite a bit harder, but there are many chinese options for that. What are those Pioneers?

Few 120mm options:
http://ebay.to/2olu7Eh "2pcs-5-inch-Magnetically-shielded-speakers-8ohm-70-watts-Loudspeaker-For-LG"

http://ebay.to/2Ca7X17 "2pcs-5-inch-6ohm-6-60W-NdFeB-magnetic-speaker-Subwoofer-horn-loudspeaker-For-MK"
http://ebay.to/2Hue9k5 "2pcs-5-inch-120mm-8Ohm-8-50W-Woofer-computer-speaker-Subwoofer-Loudspeaker"

http://ebay.to/2CAEGbD "1pcs-119mm-5-inch-Bass-speaker-8ohm-8-40W-woofer-HIFI-loudspeaker-DIY-Subwoofer"

Then you could upgrade the original tweeter to a small broad band mid/tweeter, some of those have really sweet sound.
EDIT

For 6,5" passive radiator, these Polk ones seem to invade eBay, if used will do. Probably higher quality than generic chinese bulk.

http://ebay.to/2Cz0C7a

EDIT: Of course lower ohms could benefit, but that's not always so straight forward. For example, the Hitachi CX-W700 has a 7ohm woofer, which sounds kinda odd.
 
Cpl-Chronic

Cpl-Chronic

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Line Out said:
So are those 120mm drivers and 165mm passives? I would also have tried to search for a low Fs / high SPL midwoofer and new passives. Passives can be found very cheap and you can fine tune them by adding weight to the cone. Finding a 120mm seems to be quite a bit harder, but there are many chinese options for that. What are those Pioneers?

Few 120mm options:
http://ebay.to/2olu7Eh "2pcs-5-inch-Magnetically-shielded-speakers-8ohm-70-watts-Loudspeaker-For-LG"

http://ebay.to/2Ca7X17 "2pcs-5-inch-6ohm-6-60W-NdFeB-magnetic-speaker-Subwoofer-horn-loudspeaker-For-MK"
http://ebay.to/2Hue9k5 "2pcs-5-inch-120mm-8Ohm-8-50W-Woofer-computer-speaker-Subwoofer-Loudspeaker"

http://ebay.to/2CAEGbD "1pcs-119mm-5-inch-Bass-speaker-8ohm-8-40W-woofer-HIFI-loudspeaker-DIY-Subwoofer"

Then you could upgrade the original tweeter to a small broad band mid/tweeter, some of those have really sweet sound.
EDIT
For 6,5" passive radiator, these Polk ones seem to invade eBay, if used will do. Probably higher quality than generic chinese bulk.

http://ebay.to/2Cz0C7a

EDIT: Of course lower ohms could benefit, but that's not always so straight forward. For example, the Hitachi CX-W700 has a 7ohm woofer, which sounds kinda odd.
Click to expand...
This was a long thread but in earlier posts I discussed the various options in front of me & decided to go with a 6.5" sub-woofer that does 40Hz in a small 0.16 cu. ft. sealed enclosure & match it with some high efficiency Pioneer 4.5" midbass woofers. I used a modified food container to create a small sealed enclosure around each 4.5" woofer within the sealed cabinet. This isolates each woofer so that they do not interfere with each other from back wave pressure. The real trick was sealing all air leaks so that both woofers had clean excursions. The result is much more powerful with punchier bass & the sound is warm & accurate down to about 40Hz. The woofers are wired in series for an 8 OHM load(4+4) while the tweeter uses a 4.7uF cap crossover & wired in parallel with the 8 OHM woofer circuit.

If you listen to the vid with a good sound system or headphones, you can tell the system has good power & very good sound. Lots of Bass & Treble with a nice balanced sound. I found passive radiators had a nice sound but lacked punch & overly rich in the upper midbass due to the fact that passives are very iefficient & the transient response is slow compared to a real woofer.
 
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