bigrfish:

Very much I like the idea of dealing with folks where your word is good as gold and things happen so wonderfully simply with just an e-mail or a phone conversation, and where people are willing to help in any way they can

This is actually a vast conspiracy and we're setting you up for the BIG one!!

Now...  I have a cousin in Nigeria who died and had 40 U.S. million dollars left unclaimed....  all I need is to find someone to pay the taxes and split it with me..... 

bigrfish:

The next thing I need to do is figure out what components to install in them to make them sing, also where to source them

Well, CB has a lot of "spares" that the bears haven't gotten to yet but if you get around to considering a fresh Mc-2125 amp, I have one resting here. I got to witness some of the build of the cabinets you are getting and heard the finished product. You are in for a treat my friend.

O/T: Hi guys, just never have the time to visit anymore. Got the two channel going but will be a while before the HT is up and running. God am I glad I moved the 'important' stuff! Steer clear of Atlas Van Lines, how DO you loose a living room suite and smoker?

 Aint this a great forum; enjoy the cigars & speakers.

ps. Bob Crites is a source for innards.

Arky:

 Aint this a great forum; enjoy the cigars & speakers.

ps. Bob Crites is a source for innards.

 Well,

The cigars have been delivered in good order, and Bob and I have a plan to meet up at his place on Sunday to make the swap and fellowswhip a bit. His street showed up on my GPS maps but the Cigar Bum says don't count on it...We talked about doing it last weekend, but I had a daughter that came up under the weather. The grandma was keeping the baby, and I had to stand by in case she needed to have her situation escalated....as it was she responded well to Rx and started feeling better Sunday night. The cigars came Tuesday, I notified CB immediately and travel plans were made, and work has been happening last night, tonight, and tomorrow night, so I will be busy and maybe not obsess so much before Sunday finally comes. It's just like a child waiting for Christmas.

If I can't come up with the $$ for a custom set of wooden mid horns, who has any good ideas about that? I just saw a set of Altec 311-90 sectoral horns sell on e-bay for over $1800 within the last week The horns that go lower tend to be 2" throats, and Eminence and Selenium both have suspects for horn lenses. I have had limited though good experience with the 1" selenium titanium drivers.  Eventually, I feel a set of 2" wood tractrix horns in my future, but need something usable for right now that will go into CB's beautiful cabinetry. For woofers, I could go with Mr Crites' products, or try my hand at freelance sourcing. I think it is Pioneer that lists an interesting paper-cone speaker that would not break the bank. If those or another less pricey option does not work, I could always install them in my KP 3002's and move the McCauley subwoofer-woofers to a new home...might be interesting to try them in the new CS bass bins....I can see experiments coming down the pike. If this is settled by Christmas I will be fortunate and happy. gotta re-do a whole room...reached the tipping point...

The next question is whether to make a stab at running them two-way or three-way, and hatching a crossover scheme....I am tempted to build them myself.

So much to learn and do...no time for getting old...

Chuck

bigrfish:

Arky:

 Aint this a great forum; enjoy the cigars & speakers.

ps. Bob Crites is a source for innards.

 Well,

The cigars have been delivered in good order, and Bob and I have a plan to meet up at his place on Sunday to make the swap and fellowswhip a bit. His street showed up on my GPS maps but the Cigar Bum says don't count on it...

 Gang,

 Sunday was a beautiful day for a jaunt into the North Georgia mountains. The GPS (new TomTom) got me to the foot of the Cigar Bum's driveway. The driveway was paved but the road wasn't. Cell phones only work up there if both parties are either in the same valley or on top of the same mountain. The mountains were a beautiful riot of color, washed with the afternoon sun.

Bob was a great host and a prince of a guy. He must have German rather than Austrian ancestry; i.e., when I got there, the FIRST thing we did was load the cabinets. (FYI they fit with about an inch to spare on the top and bottom, lying on their sides...Tahoe is perfect vehicle to haul a set of CornScalas in).

We fellowshipped and chatted, and I enjoyed the tour...the Cigar Bum has his own little piece of shangri-la right up there on that mountain...he said he came outside for morning coffee and meditation one day I think it was last week, and found a bear in his upper fish-pond, trying to catch a mess of his big goldfish for breakfast.

Seeing and hearing the downstairs K-horns with backs on them and the Al K wooden horns and Crites crossovers, powered by a McIntosh amp literallty bristling with tubes was an interesting experience for me. I guess the last time I listened to a set of K-horns was 1982-1983, and since I worked at a place that sold them and I did a lot of helping on installations, etc., I was around them a lot of hours a week for several years, so heritage K-horn is burned into my brain. The sound of what the Cigar Bum has is not the same...sounds different, maybe a bit more musical, certainly something for any K-horn fan or owner to look into. I would not go so far as to say that everybody who has K-horns needs to go do this thing with the big wooden horns. The two things sound different, and neither of them bad. There is a distinctive "sound" to a pair of heritage K-horns....this is not it, but is very close in most areas that count. Having the backs on the bass cabinets seemed to positively effect the stereo imaging...in that respect they were the best I ever heard. If I got a pair tomorrow, before the sun went down, I would be on the phone with Bob about what to do to install those backs.

Our Cigar-Bum friend has a new project...Bambi and Thumper I think he referred to it/them as. I will let him fill you in on all the details. Good-looking, impressive, utilitarian I am sure.

If anybody ever declares war on the South again, y'all just go to Bob's. What can I say? 

We sat and listened to the water running and an occasional whisp and rustle of wind and leaf for a while as we chatted quietly in the sanctity of Bob's "Church" as he calls his porch, smoked on some cigars, had to leave off the booze because of the drive back...no better place for a temperate gentleman's sip or two than up there on Bob's porch, though, with a beautiful view of Chimney Mountain just over the way a little bit...

Bob makes some beautiful cigar humidors, with really thick cedar wood liners...I was partial to the one with the fancy wooden inlay work on the top.

As to these Corn-Scala cabinets, they are nice, but I did not know how much nice until I got them unloaded this morning. I did not get home until nearly 0100, so I buckled it all up and went to bed, totally exhausted, and went for it this morning around 10. First, the cabinets are sturdy and rigid. They are well-made. They are heavy. I do not have a scale, but I'm guessing right at 75-100# each. I was glad they were devoid of components. I got them safely inside, stowed until I move everything else in the room in order to find a new home for the CornScalas. These puppies are getting built where they stand, when I make that place. They look really nice and I know I am going to enjoy them for a long time to come. Bob could not have found a better place for these to live now. I want to thank him for being so gracious and generous.   

Bob did a first-rate job with these cabinets and I know they are going to do very well...and I hope he enjoys the Fuentes cigars...and that before long Bambi and Thumper are doing their thing up in the high woods chasing the bears away from the goldfish pond....  

Chuck

 Sounds like a great visit. Only thing I would have done different is I would have taken Bob up on a sip of JW blue. Thats some of the best you can find.

Now to put drivers in those beautys.

"Now to put drivers in those beautys", JL said.

So, first question...how low does the midrange horn/driver have to go to make this whole thing work? As I have looked into it, this seems to be a first  consideration.  The 1" throat ones do not seem to go too low, and the 2" seem generally to go lower, and of course, the 2" drivers and horns are more expensive.  The next question I have is what might be the ideal relation between the woofer's top spec. frequency output and the horn's lowest frequency. What might be the ideal overlap there? Given that set of parameters, (third question) what crossover point would one choose for bass-to-mid?

For some reason, I am not feeling as much trepidation making these decisions with regard to the mid to high transition.  In my gut, I feel like this low to mid transition is deserving of more thought and effort now.

I know that in various forum posts Mr. Crites has suggested a Pyle horn that they are not making any more...seems like it went down to about 800Hz but don't hold me to that. Does any one of you know what might go in there nicely save a wooden T-horn? I do not feel like I am in the position to go high-dollar on this project to start with. Of course, I would rather use 1" drivers if I could, and Selenium has a phenolic-diaphragm 1" driver that will extend down to about 400 cps which might be serviceable given the proper horn.  Seems like I also read something about plans for a long wooden T-horn with a 1" throat that would match the Selenium Phenolic driver I was talking about earlier.  

Now, to get completely off the wall hypothetically, how would this project work if the current midrange section of the cabinet was turned into a passive radiator space with porting from below, (might not work too well b/c the lower cabinet is ported as the Cornwall usually is) or even a place for a driven 12" woofer...have not measured yet, (would a 15 work in there?)...and then set something akin to one of these jubilee tops on it...making it a Corn-Jub...These cabinets are built like armored personnel carriers and that got me thinking about the handiness of having an airtight box up top??

Thanks for any help, and will re-post this in a more fitting section forthwith....

Chuck      

 Here is one idea: If it were me I would target 500hz as my woofer to squawker crossover point. I suspect Bobs cast frame woofers can handle that. I would then look for a pair of suitable mid drivers and horns and that can go down to 500hz with a 24db/octave slope network and up to 16K. JBL 2441 can do it as well as others. Then I would use Al Ks. ES500 network or an active xover and two amps to talk to them. Then you will have a 2 way speaker system that should sound fantastic. 

Lots of different speaker driver combinations other there to choose from. Had your hearing tested lately? That might be a place to start. IMHO, don't worry about 20K if you can't hear it.