Loud HL Panther

[Panther_John]

Hi all, been looking around the forum and i'm impressed, i've not had to ask a question until now. Right, i've just finished putting the good electrics from a wrecked Tiger into my new Panther (and it still works ) but had to take the speaker out of the black box to get the hull top to close up. It sounds ok but not great, can someone give me some advice on a speaker that'll fit inside a HL Panther hull with no messing around and sounds good please?

[BigPanzer]

Hi John,

There are some good quality driver units made by a company called Visatron and they are available from RS and Farnell amongst others.

However, the driver you use is only part of the story - what you put it in can make or kill the sound of any model. What happens to a loose driver is the air that is moved by the cone as it moves forward simply goes round to the low pressure area created at the rear of the cone so much of the sound (particularly the bass) is lost.

To get the best results does mean some messing about I'm afraid. What I've done with my T55 is to make a custom box out of hardwood, lined it with cotton wool and sealed it up so that it is completely airtight (except for the hole, obviously). I've used two driver units salvaged from a dead ipod dock and though they are only 30mm diameter the sound quality is very good indeed.

Try to avoid using plastic. Wood gives better results. I got my hardwood in strip form from Homebase. Its about 20mm x 5mm thick.

Making your own box means you can make it any size and shape you like. Just make sure the wattage rating on the drivers and their impedance matches the values printed on the back of the original unit.

Peter

[Panther_John]

Thanks Peter, i'm an idiot . I build car boot installs so i should know better, all i need to do is scale it down to 1/16 scale.

Next time i'll put brain into gear first

[BigPanzer]

Hi John,

If you build ported enclosures for cars, don't try scaling the ports down! If you do then the maths will come out wrong and you will lose bass instead of gaining it. I went into the theory of porting once when I built some bass cabs for use with a guitar. About 4 pages of calculations, you need to know all the details of the exact speakers you are using then when you are done you have to tune them by ear anyway. Of course there is probably software for it these days!

Good luck with it, let us know how it turns out.

Cheers

Peter

[wibblywobbly]

Get a 20kb potentiometer from Maplins and replace the volume control. The HL pot is just a cheap little thing that is very poor quality, so any sound that goes through it hasn't got a hope of being any good by the time it gets to the speaker, no matter how good your speaker/enclosure is. It will clean up the HL sound, and it needs all the help it can get.

[BigPanzer]

Hi,

Good point wibbly. I forgot to mention the pot!

Peter

[Panther_John]

Get a 20kb potentiometer from Maplins and replace the volume control. The HL pot is just a cheap little thing that is very poor quality, so any sound that goes through it hasn't got a hope of being any good by the time it gets to the speaker, no matter how good your speaker/enclosure is. It will clean up the HL sound, and it needs all the help it can get.

Oh goodie, a trip to Maplins. Need to go there for my electrics, i build Star Trek models (yes, i'm a trekkie) so i'll pick one up while i'm there.

Thanks for the tip