Robert_J

It's ready. PM me your address so I can send it. I'm also including 6 1/4" #20 by 1 1/2" long stainless steel machine screws with tapered heads. These center the basket better since the tapered part of the head goes down into the the bolt hole of the basket just a hair. I would also use some Plumber's Goop between the plate and motor as well as between the basket and the plate to further keep things from shifting. Don't forget your Loc-Tite also. FIRST - dry fit everything. Nothing is worse that laying down a bead of glue and finding out that things don't match up. Here are the pictures of the plate mounted to a TC9 motor that has the exact bolt pattern that Fi uses. -Robert

Do you mean Scott? As in Scott the owner? I'd go with the O Audio amp over the PE model. The PE has a fixed SSF at 30hz. Way too high for home theater use. The O Audio model has an adjustable SSF. If you use multiple ports you can basically clone what SVS does with their adjustable tuning subs. Right now as in healing and it will get better or right now as in you will be fitted with some sort of pirate hook?-Robert

Did you get the Theile/Small parameters of the sx/xxx? That depends on the T/S parameters of the driver, the amp and your goals. Double thick MDF is always good. Did you mean 'all thread'? That is not a good way to brace a box. Just go with window pane braces. No one configuration is better than the other. Front fire both. Front fire the driver and down fire the port. Do whatever works for you. Which will give you slower port air speed? That's right, no T/S parameters so you can't figure that out. Did you figure out which amp you are going to use? Does it have a sub-sonic filter? Yes - tune right below the SSF. No - tune as low as possible.By the way, you can pick up a keyboard with a working shift key at Wal-Mart for just a couple of dollars. -Robert

I don't want anything. I told you I'd do it and I will. Just do a build log so I can see it. You can PM me your full address. I'll probably mail it Tu or Wed depending on how long it takes the paint to day. And I've done 5 coats of primer with some sanding in between with 400 grit. One more coat unless the rain hits again. We are under a severe thunderstorm warning right now.....I don't know how long it will take on the regular paint. It is Rustoleum automotive paint in gloss black. It won't affect anything. Size wise, it is completely insignificant. You need to tell Scott what you want a 3HP recone for sealed use and how much amp power you will be providing. He takes care of the rest.-Robert

Working on it. Between work, 100+ degree heat every afternoon and pop-up thundertorms I haven't made as much progress as I want. I did make a 1/2" thick plate yesterday and got the bolt pattern correct (took 6 different plates). Today, that 1/2" plate becomes 1" thick. Drill out the holes so they go all the way through. I should get to painting today. A few coats of sanding sealer, a few coats of primer and finally a couple of coats of automotive gloss black. You are the test subject on the paint because I want to use it on my sonosub build. -Robert

A google search for 'rca to XLR adapter' only returned 59,000 hits. Musician's Friend was the first link. Not only would you need a crossover, you would need a 5 or 7 input crossover, 5 or 7 channels of EQ and amplification for just the mains. With the adapter above, it should work. If not, you can get an Art Cleanbox and perform the capacitor mod. It is guaranteed to work then.-Robert

The connection should be easy. The Crown probably uses 1/4" mono phono plugs (they look like an old 1970's headphone jack). Just use an RCA male to 1/4" mono make cable. Got mine from Radio Shack. Since I use a pair of subs, I use a 1 male/2 female "Y" adapter and run my Behringer amp in stereo. The voltage to drive the amp can be the issue. I run a Pioneer receiver and have no problems pushing the Behringer into clipping. At that point, the output of my dual 15's is downright scary. I can't even hear my wife screaming at me to turn it down. There were issues with Denon or Onkyo receivers and their output voltage but I don't remember reading anything about the Sony models. -Robert

New? Been out for a while - link. I've read a few build logs and reviews on the various forums including Fi's own forum at Home Theater Shack.-Robert

Depends on the driver you pick and the room you are putting it in. If you check out the DIY sections at most of the forums that cover home theater, they are going with very large and very low tuned boxes. By large, I'm talking 6 cubic feet for a 15" and up to 12 cubic feet for an 18". Tuning starts at 16hz and goes down from there. -Robert

The LA Storm used a motor with a 4 bolt pattern. That's why it needs an adapter to match up with a 6 bolt basket. I was going to do 18's with four of my LA Storm neo motors but decided to do them with TC9 motors after getting the recone kits from Fi. Instead I put the neo motors on a pair of 15" TC-3000 top assemblies and have a pair of 15" TC-3000 baskets that need recones. I just have to find a source of 10" spiders other than RU (too expensive). I'm probably going with 18's for my LA Storm ceramic motors. I'll just make my own adapter plate so I can learn a little metal working along the way. -Robert

How It's Made - Speakers - Slideshow of me building a sub - link -Robert

Besides bolts, there is usually a bead of glue holding the motor to the basket. When I rebuilt a TC Sounds sub, I had the same problem. I just used a thin blade screw driver like a chisel and tapped the seam between the motor and the basket. About the 4th tap, the screwdriver went into the seam and I was able to pry the two pieces apart. -Robert

Let me re-phrase that. You are limited to 15" if you use Robot Underground as that the largest basket they have that doesn't need an adapter plate. If by chance you can find an 18" Eclipse basket then it would work perfectly. But I have been looking for well over a year and have only found 18" baskets in 12 spoke (like Fi uses) or 4 spoke (like Soundsplinter uses). You can use an 18" or 21" recone from Incriminator but you will need a metal adapter plate as they have a different bolt pattern. -Robert

I had seen pics of this motor used with the Eclipse style baskets but like I mentioned earlier, it is just expensive to get recone parts for those. And you are limited to 15". With a normal 3HP (see pic), there is no additional part of the top plate sticking into the basket area to limit the backward motion of the cone assembly. At least an adapter plate will give more surface area to the basket/motor junction that the spacer idea I had before. And after seeing the pictures, it was a really bad idea from an engineering standpoint (I'm not an engineer either). I have the day off on Friday and will build sonikaccord an adapter plate just like I said I would. I wish I could do it in steel or aluminum but I don't have the ability to mill metal. It will be a material that is easily shaped by a standard router. -Robert

I've seen a video of an Eclipse Ti Pro 18" with a baby sitting in the cone going up and down.But I'm worried about the motor shifting if you mount the sub with the cone vertically. It's not the force of the motor, it's the force of the car bouncing around and if the spacers can keep that 40 pound motor in place. -Robert

Looking at the spacing in the first pic, 1" is perfect if you want to go with a 12 spoke or 4 spoke basket from Fi. It will be a good test if you can get a 6th spacer and try to mount that in a box. But with a complete spacer ring, you have a lot more surface area between the motor and the basket. That looks like the motor could shift easily. Just so I don't go down in SSA history as having the worst idea ever, I will build you a spacer ring. Let me ask around and find some material to work with. I even pulled my 4 foot tall drill press out of storage this weekend for a project I'm working on. -Robert

PR's aren't used in cars that often. Driving around curves and hitting pot holes sends a lot of force through a car. A speaker cone that weighs 155g (a 10" BL sub), can easily handle a couple of G's of force. An 18" PR from AE Speakers has 1,600g of moving mass and can be weighted to over 2,000g. That's 4.4 pounds. The forces put on the suspension of the PR will be tremendous. Also, PR's can't be mounted horizontally. You must mount them vertically for them to properly work. There are a lot of PR's available. Audiopulse when they come back from bankruptcy and AE Speakers are two of the more popular manufacturers. PR's are used a lot in home theater subs. Check out the TC Sounds' beast for one extreme example. The magnet is often referred to as the motor.-Robert

The Lightning Audio/TC 3000 frames use a 10" spider. We have been asking Fi for 10" spiders for over a year. Again, you can make an adapter but you will have to send in the motor to Fi for a recone because the measurements from the spider landing to top plate, spider landing to surround landing, etc. will be different from standard. ED and PAP may sell you parts instead of a kit. Let's say that on a normal 3HP motor, there would be 40mm from the spider landing on the frame to the top of the pole piece. That means your xmech is 40mm or you have 40mm before your spider crashes into the pole. Now mount your motor to the same basket. Instead of an xmech of 40 mm, you would have an xmech of 11.7mm. Since 1in = 28.3mm, you are moving both the top plate and the top of the pole 1" closer to the spider landing and losing 28.3 mm of rear mechanical excursion. That's why you need a 1" adapter plate.Buy the material and send it to me. I'll make you an adapter plate. Or you can use some spacers that are available at Lowes. They are in the nuts and bolts section called Nylon spacers. They are white but you can paint them. They look EXACTLY like this. Just make sure your bolt barely fits into the hole in them. Or get them in chromed steel. Your bolts should be 1/4-20. With my 1/2" spacer, I used 1/4-20 x 1" stainless steel machine screws with an oval phillips head by Hillman. With your 1" spacer, you will need the same size but 1.5" long. The stainless steel bolts were more expensive but they are not very magnetic. Nice if you happen to drop one. You don't need to get a hernia pulling it off the top plate. I also used blue Loc-Tite on the threads of each bolt to make sure they will not back out. With the spacers or an adapter plate, you can just request a standard 3HP recone kit and basket from Fi. You can have it put together in an hour and the expoxy cured in 24 hours. As for actual IB performance, this motor is a little overkill. But Scott and crew and basically build you anything you want. I got my IB recone kits from him after explaining what I was going to use them for and my amp. -Robert

If it is a PE BASH amp, then yes it has an SSF and it comes from the factory set WAYYYYY to high. It's around 28hz or something. OK for a music only system but not a home theater sub. Especially not a sealed HT sub.-Robert

$300!!!!! Da-um!!!! I don't think Patrick wants to sell many kits. I have a pair of TC-3000's that need a recone. I'll price them from him but I've already figured out a way to use an 8" spider on my baskets that normally use a 10" one. The adapter plate will not impact the sub's performance one single bit. Have you taken any measurements of the motor yet? How tall is that extended part of the top plate? -Robert

I've posted this before but if you haven't seen it, it may help. link I built a 12" sub from scratch with parts from RU. -Robert

Then you need to use a basket other than the standard 12 spoke that Fi will supply. The Eclipse and TC-3000 style both use 10" spiders that Fi does not carry. If you really want this reconed, then Patrick from Robot Underground can supply you with the parts. And when I say parts, it is that. Not a drop-in recone kit. You have to glue everything together and make sure that you get the voice coil centered in the magnetic gap. When I built a sub with parts from RU, I had to rig up a set of spacers to make sure I glued my spiders to my voice coil in the correct location. I learned a LOT building a sub. If I was doing this for a living, I'd have jigs built for everything to take the guesswork out of the equation. I seriously doubt that you will hear anything from Eclipse. And talking to them would be a waste of your time. Go to AVS Forums and contact a member named Kyle Lee. He is the same Kyle that would answer the phone when you called TC Sounds. He MAY know. No guarantees. You have the motor in your hands so measuring is the best method. The RL-p's use TC9 motors. They look like this. The 3HP has a much taller top plate. Yours is a little different. With a basket on it, it looks like a TC9 but the extented center of the motor makes it a 3HP.Think about the adapter plate a little more. It will be your least expensive route to take. -Robert

You won't lose the settings. All modern receivers have an internal battery, slow release cap or store the settings in non-volatile memory. You only need surge protection on them. Like I said earlier, I only need 2 to 3 minutes of time to properly turn off my projector. But I want my DVRs to run as long as possible so that I don't miss a minute of my TV shows. I record most of my HD programming via antenna so it takes a MASSIVE lightning storm to impact the signal. -Robert

The extended top plate/pole piece will stick up through the bottom of a standard 12 spoke basket and give you very little room for backwards movement of the cone. That motor was designed to work with the Eclipse style basket or the ones that are used with the TC-3000/Audiopulse Axis/Lightning Audio Storm. Those have HUGE amounts of clearance below the spider landing. You can build up some type of spacer to move your basket/motor joint even with the top plate. I had to do that with my 18" recones from Fi. They were designed to mate with my 3HP motors but I decided to use them with TC-9 motors. I used a pair of 5/8" stainless steel nuts on each of the 6 bolts. They were placed between the motor and the bottom of the basket. The width of each nut was 1/4" so a pair gave me the 1/2" clearance that I needed. I got the idea from a recone that was for sale in the Sundown section. In your case, I think the spacer may need to be a little thicker. In my quest for a spacer, I looked at everything from aluminum to MDF. I lacked the tools for creating one out of metal and MDF is great as long as it is dry. I almost went with Corian (solid surface countertop material). It is machinable like MDF and extremely strong as far as compression strength goes. It is also waterproof so that it will not absorb moisture. Finally, it is available all over Ebay with people selling scraps from kitchen and bathroom remodels. -Robert

I use a combination of a surge protector and a few, small UPSs. I protect my receiver, DVD players, projector and misc electronics. Each of my 3 DVRs has a dedicated UPS that allows it to run from 15min to 45 min. My Behringer EP-2500 is plugged directly into a dedicated 20amp circuit with no protection. I'm looking at getting a larger UPS to cover multple DVRs and moving one of the smaller ones to my projector. I don't care about watching TV during a power outage. I just want to shut down correctly and have the fan run for the 2 or 3 minutes to cool the lamp. -Robert