SEAS TOK
(total/tweeter overkill)
SEAS
CA18RNX + SEAS T29CF002
Most often we will balance cost of components going into a
speaker construction. If we pick a midbass at 100
US $, we won't buy silver capacitors and state of
the tweeters at 4 times the cost of the bass. But
what if we choose to totally spoil very good
semi-priced midbass drivers with super tweeters,
super caps and super coils? Proper cabinet and
damping too, obviously. Could it be we might
reveal qualities from these mid-priced
mid-drivers, we otherwise wouldn't? I think I've
seen a commercial construction somewhere with the
same drivers seen here - and with too high
tweeter level according to the reviewer. When
reviewers have to warn about proper matching of
associated equipment, it often means that a
resistor at 1 $ should have been replaced by
another one. Instead buyers may have to change
cables, amps, etc., to proper balance something
being flawed in the first place.
I am a little serious about this
construction although I never expect getting any
feedback on the design. I have set it up and used
proper wound and baked copper wire coils,
Superior Z-caps and 10W MOX resistors. And does
it sound good? You bet it does. Someone might
even pick this one in a blind-test compared to
the CNO-mkII.
No, it's not as neutral as the CNO mkII, but
these light-weight, light-coated paper cones have
a responsive and vivid presentation that may suit
your musical taste well. The large voice coil
allows serious power handling and sensitivity
will be slightly above CNO-mkII.
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TOK set-up in test cabs.
Cabinets
- similar to CNO-mkII -
Crossover

Tweeter section is almost identical to CNO-mkII, where
most components for the bass section are different.
Measurements

Left: Response of drivers on cabinet baffle. Right:
Impedance of drivers in cabinet.

Left: SPL/1m/2.8V. System sensitivity = 86 dB. Right:
Driver response driven from crossover and summed response
(red).
Point of crossover = ~3 kHz.

Left: Final system impedance. Minimum is 6.8 ohms (!)
Easy speaker on e.g. 30 wpc (min.) PP valve amps.
Right: Impact on response from notch-filter. This makes
quite a difference. Without mid equalisation too much
"right-in-your-face".

Left: Vertical dispersion at 1 meter distance:
Red: 10 cm above tweeter, blue = at tweeter height, green
= between T and B, yellow = B height, purple = 5 cm below
bass perimeter.
Right: Horizontal dispersion at 0, 10, 20 and 30 deg.
(red/blue/green/purple).
Overall this speaker has excellent power response.

Left: CSD, 20 dB. Right: CSD, 40 dB.
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