Faital 3WC-15, built by Jacob, US
Copyright 2021 © Troels Gravesen
Hello Troels,
Greetings from America. I thought I’d share
my experience of building and living with Faital 3WC-15. I have been
watching and reading your site for a while, and I ultimately decided on
pulling the trigger and buying a kit. After looking at many of your
options, I ended up building Faital 3WC-15 level II fabric dome.
The kit build took longer than I originally
anticipated, but overall, it went pretty well. I chose to use fine MDF
for everywhere but the front panels, which were oak so I could screw
into them, and covered them with black Formica countertop material. I
chose to make the midrange flush (which was slightly different than your
design; my thinking was your time aligning assumes the height and
location of the listener). I am extremely impressed with your speaker
and recommend it to anybody who has the time, patience, and, most
importantly, space. The photos of your build have little context to
illustrate this scale of the speakers, especially the depth. These are
some massive speakers.
Thank you for all your efforts
Sincerely Jacob
PS:
I have a question for you right now. I am running the speakers with an
Elekit TU-8500 Stereo Tube Preamplifier Kit and a 1990s
100 W Parasound (HCA - 800 II). And I was looking at getting the Elekit
tu-8600s; it’s a 9.2w 300b amplifier; I see you recommend 15+ watts? In
a small to medium size room 300 ft.² (apartment) with the primary music
taste of soft rock and folk, do you think it will be sufficient? Is the
impedance dip too large? Did you happen to use the Joplin 2A3 amp with
the speaker?
Or for the same price, I can get the
entry-level PrimaLuna 35W EL34.
Thanks again
Hello Jacob, thanks for pics and comments! Pleased it turned out to
your satisfaction.
I have added your question to the page here as it is not a new one and
may have general interest.
Given the sensitivity of the Faital-15, it has had quite some attention
from people with flea-powered SET amps, but the thing is there is quite
some difference between a vented 15" bass driver having 95 dB
sensitivity and an e.g. 95 dB, 8" driver in a horn-loaded cabinet. We
have to look at back-EMF (back electromotive force). To quote Wikipedia:
Counter-electromotive force (counter EMF, CEMF),[1]
also known as back electromotive force (back EMF), is the
electromotive force or "voltage"
that opposes the change in
current which induced it.
Very small amps may have trouble handling the back-EMF, where large
solid state amps are - well, cool.
In the end it all very much depends on the size of the room, how loud we
play and what kind of bass we want. If we don't play very loud and do
not want rock-solid bass, 5 watts may be enough.
I don't have the Joblin amp for test, so I can only refer to my EAR-869,
15 wpc and tell it does well, but not as powerful bass as my 32 wpc
EAR-861, which does not deliver as rock-solid bass as my 200 wpc digital
amp.
To be on the safe side, I'd recommend the PrimaLuna.
With regard to size :-). Yes, a 15" bass driver does require some volume
and as stated on my "choices" page, I always urge people to make a
cardboard box to get a real sense of size:
http://www.troelsgravesen.dk/choices.htm#size
All the best!
Troels
