Hello Troels,
Enclosed are pics of my conversion of a DTQWT MKII to a MKIII. I made
the stepped baffle out of thermally modified oak as it came in the 28 mm
thickness required for the inset routing of the front baffle as well as
the dark color that I desired for the baffle. The routing of the inset
was difficult due to the amount of material required to be removed. I
ended up carving little islands in the field of Baltic birch plywood,
using an oscillating multi-tool to cut the base of the islands and then
using the router to even the surface afterwords. The multi-tool also
came in handy removing a section of the front baffle brace when
elongating the original speaker hole. All told, it took a less than a
week to do the conversion, taking in account the several difficulties I
ran into (with the fallback position of removing the entire front baffle
if it came to that). The original box front, back, sides and top were
made with 25mm Baltic birch plywood, the internal panels made from 18mm,
with adjustments to the exterior dimensions made to maintain internal
volume. The rear woofers are protected from handholds with a grill I
hacked from some Ikea Lamplig trivets.
I was very happy with the original MKII build and even more so with this
MKIII version, the bass being more solid and better defined. The added
presence also adds more articulation and richness to the timbre of tones
as well as voice, a piano being well represented. My perception of the
sound-stage depth has also increased with more focus and solidity on
individual instruments and voices in the sound-field. Several months ago
I upgraded from the Jungson Hedo amplifier to a Benchmark AHB2 amplifier
with a Benchmark DAC2 HGC front end which undoubtedly contributed to
this effect but more so with the MKIII. As I use my stereo for sound for
the television, err... home theater this also helps with the dialog as
the down-mix to stereo at times leave a lot to be desired. This seems
only true for recent productions as if they forget to add the center
channel (along with maintaining the correct perspective) while doing the
mix. My thanks to a wonderful upgrade to a wonderful loudspeaker,
Cheers,
John
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