Eeehaah's Folded Voigt Pipes by Eeehaah A special thank you to Herbert Jeschke, my project is a folded version of a straight Voigt for the RS 40-1354a. His pipes were made for a Lowther, but he used 1354's and I thought I would try it based on his reported results. All I used were his overall dimensions which I believe he got from the Lowther Club of Norway, I came up with the fold point, and other modifications to the port and cabinet myself. Let me start with a picture of the results. Below are the plans of my design I started from, as you can see from the above photos, the bottom looks different, what looks like ports at the bottom are actually not, the functional mouth/port is down-firing through a 6-3/4" Diameter opening (the same size area as the front-firing rectangular port you find in Herbert's/Lowther club's design) this "bottom" is just above those "ports". There are 6 openings below that, 2 front, 2 on each side of about 3" Diameter with kitchen cabinet air vent thing-a-ma-bobs inserted, they were hanging around from a kitchen remodeling and they found themselves in there! (UPDATE: These have since been cut out, leaving large open ovals including the gap between where they were. The back is open below the mouth/port. I would now recommend using 2-1/2 to 3" spiked feet or build just like the drawing). Click to View Plans These speakers exhibit very musical bass down to I would guess around 56 Hz, below that they are a bit inconsistant. I have a subwoofer I use when needed, however for most of the music I listen too, these pipes sound wonderful as they are. The subwoofer is currently mounted on the front of the 14" cardboard cube of a box the 12" speaker was delivered in, plastic port in the box top, wired directly to the center channel of my old tube amp. Don't laugh, I'm in no hurry to build it a cabinet, it sounds surprisingly good indeed. The cabinet is damped with an old wool blanket cut in half stuffed in each "V", up to the top of the angled board, I plan on exchanging that for Acousta Stuf ® but I'm in no hurry... "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" The top half of the angled board facing the speaker, and the top 1 foot of the interior of the cabinet is lined with 3M acoustic dampening material. It is about 1/8" thick, self-sticking/peel away backing. It is supposed to turn sonic vibrations into low level heat loss. I can't find the link, but I ordered it from Parts Express. My 1354's were broke in for a couple of months, the only tweak is the little hole-punched piece of black electrical tape on the center of the dust cap. I may Dammar them, but I am quite pleased with the sound of them in my pipes now. The 1354's reportedly go to 14 Khz at the top, again this is usually fine for the jazz and classical music I normally listen too, but occasianally that's not enough, so I have added 2 Acoustic Research 4 ohm 1" silk dome tweeters using a 4 uF cap to high-pass only send the frequencies above 9,937.5 Hz to them. An L-pad is used to adjust their output level. I am also using a 17 mH inductor with the subwoofer that will keep it's frequencies below 74.9 Hz. I let the 1354's roll off normally. The woofer is switched, so I can switch the woofer in and out as wanted. Classical music sounds better without the woofer. My other speakers are 1974 Klipsch Heresy models, so when I speak of how my Voigt pipes sound, they are compared to some very good sounding speakers. With the better tweeters in, and the subwoofer going, these pipes compare quite well with the Heresies. Less colored than the Heresies, a wider frequency response than the Heresies, but the Heresies do have this "shine" for a lack of a better word that the pipes don't, not necessarily better, just different. With the pipes by themselves, they have way better imaging and life-likeness than the Heresies, and a very easy-going attitude, you just want to keep listening. It doesn't have quite the range and punch, but geez is it enjoyable. My amplifier is a Knight KG400 integrated amp, it uses 12AX7, a 5AR4, and 6BQ5/EL84 tubes and puts out 14 WPC before clipping. Summing up… These were my first venture into full range speakers. I am quite impressed and thankful I seem to have gotten lucky and hit a home run my first time at bat. These speakers are very warm, especially driven by tubes such as EL84's. The full range from around 56 - 14,000 Hz is very smooth and detailed, female voices are unbelievably realistic. I now understand what the thing about single driver full range speakers is. Lowthers are now on my shopping list... the AER MK-1... who knows, I hope so! Special Thanks to: Jamie Wright, primary cabinet builder Mailand King, interior damping and speaker/hardware mounting Jeff Wager, photography and the eternal DIY inspiration of John Wyckoff Materials: 2 - RS 40-1354a full range whizzer cone speakers; $30/pr. (discontinued) 3/4" MDF, the softer kitchen cabinet grade; $23.29/4' X 8' sheet 1 pair Gold Plated Speaker Cabinet Terminals; #50-2100 from MCM $2.86 9 sq. ft. 3M acoustic dampening material; $10 (approx.) Dampening Stuffing free - $35/5lb Acousta Stuf ® 2 to 3 feet speaker wire and assorted things such as solder came from around the place Also added were various things that were around such as dark granite Formica to the front and sides, as well as three quarter round dark wood trim, and light wood base and top as well as those vent thing-a-ma-bobs. See specs for this driver on the Parameters page. Top