Negatron II

[phillihp23]

Hope your knee is better. No fun falling from a ladder. I have twisted my ankle bad in the past from a ladder tumble.

 

[NBPK402]

Thanks it is better now...so glad I did not actually fall on the marble tiles from the 10' ladder.

A little update...
I now have nodded my 2 stands for the RP160Ms, so the base screws through the bottom angled piece of wood that the speakers have attached to the bottom to give them an angled look. Tue reason we did this is the base plates for the stands were only 5x5, and the speakers could possibly fall off if bumped...now they are rock solid.

As I post this my friend is machining new pieces of aluminum that will attach to my wall mounts for the RP150Ms. The mounts only gave us about 10 degrees max adjustment, and the modification will give us a 25-40 degree adjustment which will put us in the proper angle range for Auro3d, and Atmos.

 

[NBPK402]

Update: I finally found a shipper that was reasonable to deliver my K402s to Laredo, and they arrived in Laredo yesterday. My mail forwarder said if they go out Thursday... I will have them Friday or Saturday. Most likely we will complete the mods to the speakers for the 2 15" woofers, and then start on the amps. I do not anticipate having the speakers up and running until March at the earliest as I need to make the cabinets, and then either get them painted or finished with a hardwood overlay.
Today or tomorrow I will have my custom mounting brackets for the height channels completed. I still need to measure the angles to determine the height the speaker needs to be off the floor. Once I have that done I can make or modify my old wood hangers for the speakers. I wish I had checked out how much 12 gauge I had left as I am way short. I just ordered 200' of Amazon basic cable to run for my height channels. Once that comes in I will wire up my 2 front heights, and 2 side heights. This should be just in time overseas family to enjoy when they come here for the holidays.

 

[NBPK402]

Custom wall mount brackets attached to my RP150Ms. these will give me 25-50 degrees of adjustment.

 

[JStewart]

Those are really nice and look super sturdy. Were they made near you?
Happy thanksgiving!

 

[NBPK402]

My new end tables are done...

 

[JStewart]

Those end tables are great. What an awesome idea!

 

[NBPK402]

Those end tables are great. What an awesome idea!

Thanks, I picked up the reels up off Ebay, and ordered tripods off ebay from India for $140 shipped via DHL Express. The glass tops were about $10 custom cut. Great deal IMO for a custom end table.

 

[NBPK402]

Today I installed the 4 height channels... it was no fun standing on a 9' ladder, raising the height channels up to clear a 13' curtain rail. I have a fear of heights, but I worked through it, and got them installed. I still need to clean up the wires a bit before I install the room treatment.
Right now I am running 9 channels with no subs, and 6 of the channels are running of 50wpc chip amps.
My friend will be working on the mods to the k402s, and they should be ready by Christmas. I am going to make a stand that can be used as a brace when I make the cabinets, but first we are going to set them up as open baffle Synergy style horns. This should be interesting to compare to a full sealed box. If I like them better as an open baffle, I am going to see how they sound with a cabinet, but no back too.
I am attaching some pics of the heights installed...quick pics with the phone.

 

[NBPK402]

Well I got some great news today... When I received my used k402 pair a few weeks ago we noticed one had so thing going on in the horn throat, andwethought it was paint or dirt...no big deal. I had a friend come over, and he said I was the gel coat flaking,so I Filed a claim with Klipsch to buy a replacement horn. Today I was told my replacement was approved, and they would be sending it out for me. I will be billed for the horn, shipping, and tax of course, but the replacement horn is considerably less tha what the used horns were, and they are made of ABS now which means my shipping weight is much less now too.
I should have this one by Christmas. What I am going to do is mod the 2 ABS ones, and also one of the fiberglass horns, and then have my friend make a mold from one of the used horns. I am doing this in case anyone breaks in and steals my horns... I will then have the mold in the garage hidden away
. This will also open up the way to possibly having 5 Synergy horns. I have 7 or 8 EV DH1A drivers laying around so that is covered. I would need another Xilica, and 1 more pair of woofers as I have 8 in boxes now to complete the project.

Hmm... Synergy horns for 5 channels....

 

[phillihp23]

Those are some cool end tables.

 

[NBPK402]

Thank you... i went the whole process of ordering the film reels, and then the stands,and then found some metal ones for $120 which is a little less than what it cost me.

 

[NBPK402]

Still no progress...my friend is swamped right now with his business...hopefully he will have time soon. Meanwhile I ordered another clone amp case for mysurround, and rear surround channels. This case is much smaller than the Krell one, and it appears to be a Burmeister clone amp case. For this am I am only going to install 2 Icepower stereo amps...as I do not need the extra power, and I had these laying around from my old 10 channel amp we made in Concord. I guess I will have to get 4 XLR to RCA adapters as we will not be running balanced, but the Xilica has balanced only. Would it be possible to get a cable with XLR on one end, and RCA on the other end? How hard would it be to get a XLR cable and mod it to this connection preference?

 

[NBPK402]

Still waiting for my friend to have some time...so I ordered another amp case for the horns that will be used for the surrounds, and rear surrounds. Really nice clone amp case for $113 shipped to Texas... It will be about $20 more to my door. This amp is a very nice simple case that we will be installing 2 power buttons that will also match the big amp buttons. We will also be using Powercon cables (one for each stereo amp module), and XLRs (internally wired as single ended), and Speakon speaker connectors. This amp will be around 50wpc x4, and it should be way more than needed for the horn drivers.

 

[NBPK402]

Today I received my clone case for the 4 rear horn amps. I picked this one because...
1: They substituted a blank rear plate
2: It will match the design somewhat of the big case in that it has some simple grooves cut into it.
3: I really like the simple design, plus the other one I had wanted they could not ship for some quality problem, and it was almost double the price of this one.
4: Can not beat the price for such a nice box made out of Aluminum, and anodized too.
5: Very fast shipping.

 

[NBPK402]

This would make a great case for a minidsp 8x8 or 10x10 I think.

 

[Bpape]

Coming right along. Hope you are enjoying Mexico. I know we do whenever we go down.

 

[NBPK402]

Coming right along. Hope you are enjoying Mexico. I know we do whenever we go down.

My friend that has been doing the machining said he is going to try and see if he can start tomorrow on the projects (he injured himself working). We have 3 amps, and 3 speakers to get built first on.my list for him. Once he gets all the parts machined I will assemble the speakers, and have him either do or assist me in the wiring for the amps.My projects are not the only things he is working on so sometimes delays happen... I am just glad he is able to work on my projects when he has time. I am paying him for the work as I do not want him to be doing it for me for free.

I ordered another one of the above cases for a amp... I went to put the minidsp, and amp modules in the amp, and decided it was too cramped. Each of the above cases will have 4 channels of amplification, and a minidsp 2x4hd in them for surrounds, and surround backs. The big amp will only have 4 bridged amp modules in it... I was tempted to make the big amp into a Computer for my Media HDDs, and buy another cas that matched the other 2, but I was unsure if I would need cooling for 4 HDDS, and a low power CPU...like a i5.

Where do you go in Mexico? We love it down here...could not ask for better weather or more friendly people.

 

[Bpape]

We usually to down to Cabo though we're going to try a couple of other places the next couple years.

 

[NBPK402]

Has anyone ever used Transfer plates?

TE-CO 50201 Ball Bearing Parallels MFGD | eBay

Manufacturer Part Number: 50201. - Balls: Grade 200 Carbon Steel. Load capacity per ball: 3,000 lbs. - Plate: 1018 Steel. Black oxide finish on plate. Manufactured by TE-CO. The product images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product you will...

rover.ebay.com

I am thinking of getting these to install on the bottom of my rack for a low profile way of moving the rack. I have tried sliders and they will not stay under the rack when I move the rack the sliders stay put and the rack moves off them.

 

[NBPK402]

We usually to down to Cabo though we're going to try a couple of other places the next couple years.

We live in San Miguel de Allende...lot of XPATs down here and the weather is very nice pretty much year round. It is also one of the most expensive places in Mexico to live. My wife calls it adult Disneyland, we have hot air balloons flying over our house every week. The other day the balloon was so close we could hear the people talking. There are celebrations almost weekly, and fireworks .

 

[NBPK402]

For a while I have been having a problem with movies pausing once or more times when watching them on my Dune HD Pro streamers. I thought it was my Cisco switch which is 7 years old, but I was not sure. The other night I pulled out the switch and saw that the switch was one of the used ones I had bought and not the new one I had bought 7 years ago. I installed it and found zero difference. I then thought it mist be my Unraid or my Dune players and this time I included the Dune in my search. Well I found out that when UnRaid switched to the latest update they went from 32 bit to 64 bit, and others were complaining about the problem with Dune and the NAS. I had a new 8TB WD desktop drive that I had just received so Incopied some movies to it, and the problem went away for my Blurays. I then ordered 3 10TB WD desktop drives....since the drives were on the way I decided to copy over 6TB of movies (started at A and went up to E. Tonight I went and started to play the ark movies on thenUSB3 setup, and low and behold ZERO PROBLEMS so far! I am now watching Atomic Blind which is over 50mps to see if it pauses on me. So far my other 4k movies have played flawlessly, so it looks like it was a good choice to buy 3 10TB drives! Next I will be trying all thebHDDs on a USB Hub to see if I can set them up to be seen as a media server through my Dune streamers, and relegate the UnRaid NAS to a backup for my new HDDs. If this works out I am thinking of getting another case and doing a custom install in it with the new USB HDDs (I really like the new custom cases we are making and do not like having a clutter of HDDs in the rack).

I will post up pics of the new cases as we get them completed.

 

[NBPK402]

A few mods to my old Cisco switch... we moved the power to the same side as the lan ports, painted the case, rerouted the ground, and installed an aluminum front panel.
My friend said the CNC should be ready this week...so we can start the k402 build.

 

[NBPK402]

Update... Today I took all the pieces for nodding the k402 MEHs. We are making them as a OB design that will slide into a test cabinet also. I am doing it this way so we can test to see which way sounds best in our house.

We should have pics of it within 2 weeks now.

 

[NBPK402]

Update...MDF pieces should be all cut up for the mod next week. Then I need to get the wood for the space frame construction for OB version, and also more MDF for the removable panels for a cabinet. The removable parts will be veneered, and the space frame will be solid wood. 6 4x8 sheets of wood backed Mahogany veneer are on the way.
The construction of all the MDF pieces will be 1 1/2" thick...this will be heavy! I am hoping my
Design will make it easy for me to assemble, and be light enough to move all the parts by myself before it is assembled. I am anticipating over 200lbs per speaker completly assembled.