PA Project for Church

Simon Wires said:
Reuben,

Your project got the luck of the Irish, I guess!! But it also comes along with a sad story.

That uncle who shared you that Grundig spool tape passed away on 30th May at the age of 76. On that day,I was out of city, and somehow managed to reach the crematorium to pay my last respects. That moments reminded me of Johnny Cashs Doc-Brown song, but only with a slight exception that there were not many present there, as the custom calls it.

As said earlier, he was a sound & acoustics engineer who worked with quite a lot of companies and his last assignement was with T-series. As happens with the story of many audio enthusiasts, in this era of ipods & iphones, the children are not interested in these tangible & outdated audio assets and so the call landed on me. They were LPs , casettes, a TEAC Z-5000 master tape deck (lovely one, but needs little service), this robust DIY speakers (pic below),a huge load of labelled tiny boxes filled with ICs, Resistance, LEDs, Caps etc etc, 100+ nos of recording tape heads (Japs) etc. Only thing they wished to keep themselves were the spool tapes, for it had some memorabilia recordings.

Little about the speakers.. Its robust and solid built like an Enfield bike,not so good in finish like WILLYS Jeep, each one weighs around 50Kg, and to my novice ears it always sounded pleasant when he played Frank Sinatra & Shadows. Whenever I suggested him to buy an Epos/Wharf, in a flash he would throw back a frown laced with his audiophile signature.Such was the love he had over this speakers, who was also an ardent Tannoy fan. I remember him telling me that he designed it by keeping one woofer set idle with wool packing, inorder to balance the pressure or tone, which , with my limited knowledge I failed to grasp, and he is no more now to explain that. All i could make out is, the horn tweeters were Motorla Mexico make, and I didnt ponder further about other specs.

If this speakers would find place in your charity project, please say little prayer for the departed soul of Mr.Ragunathan Iyengar, and take it.


Regarding shipping part, dont worry, I would pick it up from his house this weekend and dispatch it in few days time.





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I pray for the departed soul to rest in peace. Also appreciate your deed in donating the speakers for the Church, I am sure rueben would put it to good use.

Best wishes,

Lifewater
 
Reuben, just got a mail from our FM ASK07.

He has a, still in box never even once used AHUJA mixer, to donate for your charity project. If it fits, ensure a prayer for his factory to flourish, and take it.

A few words; He is indeed an altruist, humorous,soft spoken gentleman. Once when I was searching for some rare vacuum tubes, just like that, he had send it to me all the way across 1500 miles, for free.

I wish, he would soon buy a private jet and expedite his long pending visit to the south!


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Thats great news Simon, with this mixer, we can increase the mic intake capacity significantly. Kuddos to our FM ASK07. Actually this Parish is quite a small one with only a few decently placed families. Most of the Church stuff including the building, carpets, seating, PA, etc have come from donations. This is well and truly a fantastic gesture, especially from our forum.

Simon Wires said:
Reuben, just got a mail from our FM ASK07.

He has a, still in box never even once used AHUJA mixer, to donate for your charity project. If it fits, ensure a prayer for his factory to flourish, and take it.

A few words; He is indeed an altruist, humorous,soft spoken gentleman. Once when I was searching for some rare vacuum tubes, just like that, he had send it to me all the way across 1500 miles, for free.

I wish, he would soon buy a private jet and expedite his long pending visit to the south!


Ahuja_MMX_55_M.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Cling wrap packed and kept it in the donors house itself. Once I pack the my speakers, will despatch together possibly by Wednesday.

The same family wish to off load a 100W DIY stereo amp and preamp too. It works fantastic but cosmic condition is 6/10.

A ink jet printed label in amp says IGBT output SA 3400 and for pre SA 4300. Will call discuss with you soon.




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Thad E Ginathom said:
Great. Add some acoustic treatment in there (unless I missed it): I'm sure that will pay off, especially with stuff like clarity of speech.
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Actually I had suggested the use of some sound absorbing tiles but due to budgetary constraints, we had to take this out of the presentation (or the Parish council might have got a bit gittery). Hence what I will do is lower the height of the speakers from the floor (increasing the distance with the roof) which will work better when all the doors and windows of the hall are open.
 
Suggest that you look at the DIY options. People seem to get worthwhile results. Perhaps if you fund the materials, you get a couple of youngsters helping out on the construction.

Of course, I haven't tried this myself --- only suffered from its lack in various music halls.
 
Earlier today, I had the opportunity to speak with Roshan Thomas of ProXS and he shared with me some very interesting concepts and the related literature. Though these are beyond me for this project for budgetary reasons, the concept was exciting and revolutionary. Thought I'll post the literature here for all:

Presentation: https://app.box.com/s/abl8ehnc1u4ftuilrgxm

Other documents:

https://app.box.com/s/adwxe7fvr7dw3nyk3c3a

https://app.box.com/s/26diviguzdn0p070qby6

https://app.box.com/s/9t4far82fypdxprcl6zw
 
We saw the Line Array speakers, and experienced their directionality and ability to aim sound at a Chennai meet a couple of years ago. Very interesting technology.
 
did some shopping on Saturday, 3 new mic stands, 3 new microphones, 1 new altar microphone, 1 mini horn speaker for the church compound, some microphone cables and microphone holders (these are screwed on to the microphone stand, most of these at the church were broken)
 
Was out of station can got back today to find some huge speakers at home. The DIY speakers were replicates of the famous Technics Linear Phase speakers of the 1970s with some improvisation. There were a pair of Sony floorstanders too.

What was extremely touching for me was to find a lot of small plastic boxes filled with different types of components, mostly brand new and un-used. It was evident that these were probably bought for several projects over the years and were left un-used. Simon got these after the gentleman passed away. It reminded me exactly of my father. After his death, when cleaning up his cupboard, we found a lot of similar boxes with components of different kinds. These components now make up my electronics junk box. The components which Simon passed on to me, from this late gentleman were more contemporary with loads of ICs, modern power transistors, loads of resistors, LEDs, fuses, and what not. There was also a separate bag with a load of reel-to-reel deck record/playback heads. I will sit down over the weekend and catalogue all these components.

I connected up the speakers and tried them out. The Sony floorstanders sounded so very typically Japanese. I'll make some modifications to the cross over to enhance speech handling. The other massive speaker pair with double bass drivers, a mid range and dome tweeter and an additional horn tweeter, each again sounded very boomy but loud. Need to modify the crossover here as well and customize for speech. Will investigate these over the weekend. It was quite spectacular to note how well these speaker enclosures are built and how heavy they are. I was surprised to note that my wife drove down from Trivandrum all the way to Marthandam (about 50 kms from Trivandrum one way), picked these speakers up from the courier depot, carried them and loaded them in the car (there was space only for the driver after loading) and drove them back to Trivandrum and then unloaded them and carried tham all the way upstairs. I think she can find a place on the Indian weightlifting team for the forthcoming Commonwealth Games :)

That's the benefit of involving one's family members in one's hobbies.
 
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So it was quite an eventful weekend and a lot of progress was made with the customizing of speakers for the project.

I received the following speakers from my good friend FM Simon_Wires as a donation to the church:

1) a pair of custom-built DIY 4-way Hi-Fi speakers with a passive low-frequency radiator
2) a pair of vintage Sony 2-way floorstanding speakers

As per the church's requirement, they would need 3 pairs of speakers in the main hall and foldback monitor speaker for the Altar. The Church already has 2 pairs of 2-way Ahuja speakers.

Started with the DIY 4-way speakers. Each unit consists of a wired 10 inch woofer and a 10 inch woofer which is un-wired and used as a passive radiator (looks like Technics stock woofers), a Philips 4 inch mid-range speaker, a Peerless dome tweeter and a Motorola horn tweeter.

When I connected up the DIY 4-way speakers, noticed that the hi-frequency units we not functioning on both channels. This was easily rectified and it was time for a listen, driven by my 3020 with Garrard RC210/EEI CS2000 ceramic cart. First of all the speaker design is modelled on the famous Technics Linear Phase SB7000A speakers from the 1970s. This is something I once wanted to have and hence got a chance to check these out (at least conceptually). While they sounded excellent for music, they sounded quite boomy for speech (used a microphone and my son's voice to test this). Hence it was time to open these up and re-do the cross over. On opening it, noticed that they speakers featured quite a comprehensive DIY crossover. I completely removed these, eliminated the passive radiator (it was a working driver anyways) and put in my own cross over, simple but better for speech and then tested them out with the same setup. Sounded great and exactly what the church requires. Here is the circuit of the simple crossover. The woofers are completely exposed to the amp without any intervening inductance.

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The got down to the Sony floorstanders and noticed that they sounded pathetic. Opened them up to to find an empty box and no cross over (the paper-cone tweeter was wired through a 3.3mfd capacitor). Completely lined all inner surfaces, the the cabinet cotton wool and re-did the crossover. Now it sounds quite nice.

Pictures to follow.
 
Was planning to install the speakers today but realized that the teak colour veneer on the boxes does not match the church decor. Hence the speaker boxes are off to the carpenter's for felt layering.
 
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