My CROWN SZ-5100 ** PROJECT COSMIC CRUISER

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Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
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floyd

Boomus Fidelis
that's one box you can never over customize , i like it makes me kinda want one but i got too many as it is .
 

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
By far, the easiest MOD to date. 1 small slot is drilled along 1 edge of the face for the remote wires & 1 hole drilled for the sensitivity knob. No other holes made for this mod so far...he-he....that may change. We'll have to see....

Cheers,
Cpl
 

blacksnake

Member (SA)
I do in fact like that one. The pictures are excellent. The Crown box itself is not a real looker to me, but those lights make it pop!
 

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
Thanx, Blacksnake & as well to my faithful LED friend, Northerner.

Here's some snaps with both woofers nearly done. I'm in the process of putting the final coats of silver on the grills & gluing down the LED strips in their final positions. I haven't decided how far I want to go with the CROWN yet. I still have to install the sensitivity control & possibly a few more LEDs if the design calls for it in my mind.....


stay tuned....



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Beosystem10

Member (SA)
Excellent work. The bars on the woofers are a gift for LED modifiers and I do believe that these Crown/Lasonic/Binatone/Spinney/Triumph, etc. big boy blasters really suit the look.
Has it made you rethink your opinion of Lasonics in general though, CPL? :-D
 

Northerner

Boomus Fidelis
Ha ha what can I say, I like LEDs even if a lot don't! In fact I'll go as far as saying this is my favourite...I like the hidden nature of it, you can't see them unless they're on. Plus I love the glowing woofers...they're fab :-)
 

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
Well, I don't want to stir up more debate again with the LASONIC crowd so I'll pass on making any comments, good or bad. Truthfully, I have no experience with the LASONIC brand & past opinions on the subject were really based on the horror stories I've read about repairing & rebuilding their boxes.

I can state what I think of the CROWN I worked on. Inside is very basic & again all wires are soldered together, between boards. The decks are made of cheap metal, with lots of plastic parts, including what looks to me like the bottom deck fly-wheel & while playing tapes you can feel the keys are cheap plastic & already the RR button seems like it wants to jam sometimes. IF the blaster wasn't in such great shape & was full of grime & dust, I would hate to try to clean the decks since they seem very cheaply made. Both decks are easy to reach but again very flimsy feeling & not much is holding them in place, inside the cabinet. The plastic is thinner than most blasters. The mounting posts for the cabinet screws is very thin & easy to snap, etc.

I like the looks of them & they are decent sounding but I would hate to fix one & the features are lacking, that's all. I'm not a big fan of 5-band EQ's either & much prefer the BASS, TREBLE, LOUDNESS setup of other blasters. cheap EQ's are noisy & muddy the soundstage imaging...

Just my opinion tho & hope no one is offended by it....

Cheers,
Cpl
 

floyd

Boomus Fidelis
no offence taken man , just letting you know lasonics are not as bad as you might think , i think for as cheap as they are they do pretty good.
 

blu_fuz

Well-Known Member
Staff member
JVC Floyd said:
i might add that almost every lasonic is built better than the sz 5100 .
100% agree. The Crown SZ-5100 is like the Lasonics ugly step sister. The crown is SO gutted and empty inside that if you set it down on carpet you have to worry that the frontal weight of the components will tip it over forward!!!!


There are more electronics in the i931's than in that crown. The piezzzzo tweeters are real junk too.
 

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
I'll believe you guys, when you say that LASONICS are much better built blasters. The crown feels a bit on the cheap side & the components are low-quality but the build was actually quite clean inside with beefy sinks on the amp board. The power supply is a tank & rated at 50w draw from the wall plug so this box has a couple of surprises but mostly a decent, low cost blaster. Blu_fuz, I appreciate your bluntness & agree that a light breeze would knock it over or even blow away in a strong wind. YES, the PIEZOs suck baull$$, no doubt.

That's why I was surprised by the transformer/rectifiers & the AMP sinks....everything else is low cost & here you have more power than the blaster can use..

It's also fun to customize this 1 'cause I have no real bank to lose if it goes wrong. It's no grail but still a huge blaster with lots of chrome so I can't resist blinging it out....

Cheers,
Cpl
 

Beosystem10

Member (SA)
How about fitting the paper tweeters from the Lasonic-badged version? That should address its perceived sonic weakness, not that the piezo tweeters are always bad - Panasonic used them in Technics' SBF05 (the speaker bundled with the SAC05 range) among their other "Linear Phase" models and when they're set behind a suitable bell end with cross hairs to ensure that their sound isn't sourced too far forward of the woofer, they work fine though considering that a ribbon occupies around the same amount of space it's easy to view the piezo technology as a cheapskate way to do it.

I'm not comparing these multi-branded, generic club book-sourced boxes with anything made by mainstream audio equipment manufacturers but the piezo speakers themselves were made by Vestel and they - before they turned their plant over entirely to CRTs - also supplied ESLs to many of the high end outfits such as Quad, so they've kept decent company at some point in their lives.
Besides, it's all about the looks, who wouldn't love that in their collection and if it wants screwing to the ground in case the wind blows, so be it.
 

Cpl-Chronic

Member (SA)
Hey all, =)

What's crackin'?? I made my decision about the direction of this project. As you may guess, for each blaster I do, I come up with a different design. I want to go stealth on this one for the fans who don't like the body lites. I think the woofers look fantastic so I want to finish the design off without any visible LEDS.

This 1 is for the STEALTH LED fans.....

Cheers,
Cpl
 
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