Hello Troels,
I promised Michael at Jantzen that I would give you some feedback on my
CNO 25 construction once they were finished and run in.
I built a pair of Seas Neon speakers back in 1991 and over the years
have bought replacement speakers, but I was always ultimately
disappointed with the commercial speakers and went back to the Neons.I
recently auditioned more expensive commercial speakers again but came to
the conclusion that to better the Neons on my budget I would need to
build my own pair.
After agonising over the different designs on your website I finally
took the decision to make the CNO25s as I have always enjoyed my
previous Seas speakers.
I chose a bespoke kit through Michael Jantzen which was a halfway house
between the Standard Z and Superior Z kit, in particular upgrading the
tweeter capacitor.
I built the enclosures from 18mm mdf with the front panel being made
thicker than your recommendation with two 18mm panels giving a nice
rigid 36mm panel.
The enclosures were built with a 3 degree tilt to match the tilt on my
current LED tv, for aesthetics.I chose a forward facing port as I have
to position my speakers close to a rear wall and this worked well with
the previous Neons.
Other than that the enclosures were built to your recommendations
including chamfering of the driver cut-outs, bitumen pads and damping
materials.
It is worth pointing out to others that the base unit crossover could be
seperated out to another set of terminals for bi-amping purposes. I
would probably have done this if I had spotted it earlier in the build.
An annoying thing is that Seas W18NX001s bass units have a logo moulded
into their surrounds but the position varies from speaker to speaker -
so looks a little odd - but that's probably my OCD.
Although I knew the speakers would take time to achieve their full
potential, I was still disappointed by the thin sound at first. They sat
alongside the Neons for a couple of months before the sound improved to
the point were they bettered the Neons.A few weeks later and the sound
has definitely surpassed that from the Neons and so after 25 years of
service my Neons have been retired to another room.
Overall I am really pleased with the speakers and have attached some
photos of the build process and the final result alongside my old
speakers.
The other components within my system are:-
Rega RP3 turntable with Elys 2 ( recently upgraded from a Rega RP1 with
performance pack - pictured )
Marantz SA8003 SACD/CD player
Chord Mojo - used as a DAC for CD and beyond (highly recommended)
Marantz PM8003 Amplifier
So here's to another 25 years of musical enjoyment ( unless I catch the
bug and build the ATS4s next ).
Many thanks for you website and designs.
Regards
Andrew
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