Hi Troels,
I started the speakers in March and I finally
finished my DTQWT MkII in October as I had to wait for less humid
weather to spray the lacquer. I want to thank you for this
wonderful design and all the time you have spent perfecting them. I
have around 100 listening hours on them now and they sound great.
They have a big sound stage, very good imaging, nice dry bass and clean
vocals. I really think these speakers will be the speakers that
stay in my system.
Build: There were so many incredible
finished DTQWT’s out there so I borrowed from some of those ideas but I
also wanted to make them mine too. I made the cabinets from 18mm
Baltic birch with 30mm Baltic birch baffles on the front and back.
I used hard maple for the front styles, with mahogany insets on the
front and curly maple veneer on both the front and rear baffles.
The sides, top and terminal plate are ribbon mahogany paper backed wood
veneer. The spiked stands to get them off the carpet are made from
solid 12mm hard maple and 12mm mahogany laminated together. The finish
is natural Danish oil to bring out the grain and clear gloss Deft
lacquer. I will have to say I learned a lot about wood working on
this project as I had little or no experience with using a table saw,
router or a biscuit jointer before beginning this first time speaker
build. I debated buying the biscuit jointer, but am very happy
with the purchase, as assembly would have been much harder without it.
Veneering this large of a project proved to be a challenge, as I do not
have a vacuum press. I had to caul press all of the veneer and
even though I had a large piece of granite counter top and a lot of good
clamps I had issues with adhesion. I was able to hot iron the
bubbles out but that caused issues with the seams pulling slightly on
the non-paper backed wood veneer. I believe that part of the
problem was that the Baltic birch is not a flat as MDF and the slight
irregularities caused adhesion gaps. If I had to do it again I
might have tried laminating MDF to the Baltic birch so the surface would
be smoother and still get the possible sound virtues of the Baltic
birch.
My main system: I am powering the DTQWT’s
with a 25 watt per channel McIntosh MC225 tube amp and a MX110 tube
preamp. My sources are a Clearaudio Concept TT with a MM cartridge
as well as my computer through an Xfi soundboard. My audio room
set up is about 3.3m W x 5.8m L x 2.6m H. I have DIY sound dampening
panels on the wall behind the speakers and at the first reflection
points on the side walls. The room also has 3 inch rock wool
dampening material in all of the cloth covered soffits and thick carpet
on the floor. I have experimented with placement a little and at
least for now am very satisfied with the back of the DTQWT’s 75cm from
the front wall and about 65cm to the center of the speaker to the side
walls. The speakers are slightly toed in to the center. I
originally had them placed farther out into the room, but I thought the
vocals were a little less focused.
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