Who needs a clean car? 
Can sympathise with finding the time, especially with children… can’t have seen myself doing this a few years ago! My list of jobs did grow during this build and I’m still catching up … a bit of tiling to do in the bathroom tomorrow 
Yes still loving the Illuminators, listing to Eric Clapton Unplugged right now 
My CNO4’s are sounding great again… I am not as keen to go barreling into another build just yet.
Over the last year or so i had altered the tweeter to a lower resistance, and then again later to the lowest one, chasing a brighter top end. After some experimentation the other day, I have now gone back to the highest resistance setting and have found that it has had a really interesting result.
Lowering the tweeter level (increasing resistance) has effectively boosted the midrange, bringing more depth and body to voices, guitars, spatial atmosphere sounds etc. I had tried to increase the spatial atmosphere sounds by increasing the tweeter level but it seems to have had the opposite effect. Going back has also had the effect of smoothening out the mids, even though there has been no change to the mids at all.
I have found it really difficult to adjust the treble level with this speaker. I think the first order crossover means that the mid tweeter integration makes it hard to tell what is doing what. You can’t really hear the tweeter playing. When it’s set right it sounds like the tweeter is off. I suppose this is a good thing. It just takes some getting used to.
Anyway, it is now back to sounding great.
@Mark63 can you tell me where you got your black HDF from? My dad is going to build the Illuminator 71 and he might use the same. If he can get it. He is in the uk also. Nottingham.
Thanks mate.
@Mark84 Sorry Mark, not been reading the forum for a while … I used mdfdirect.co.uk, reasonable delivery cost (some others I looked at were crazy) and quick. Pretty expensive cutting, I had a full sheet cut into four so I could handle it this end, each of those pieces is very heavy.
I’m sure he’ll love them!
@Mark84 Hi Mark, has your dad started his build? Occurred to me that he’s not too far away, about an hour and a half drive, if he’s interested in hearing them.
Edit: just saw the “two months later” on my post … where has that time gone 
He’s probably listening to his now!
Hi Mark. Last time i spoke to him, he had settled on the same illuminator kit but has still not ordered it yet. I think he will build the floor stander version. I will let him know about your offer to listen. Thankyou, that’s very nice.
Spent a couple of hours yesterday listening to the new classics through these … I love my Illuminators even more now
Focal Diablo Utopia
The new boxes I’ve just acquired have meant that my AV amp that was in the middle of my rack had to be taken out to make room 
I miss it far too much so I had to negotiate with my wife to move it elsewhere … that was expensive! 
Back to the garage for some more woodwork
Enjoyed trying new joints, didn’t want to use screws anywhere and it needs to be strong.
All glued together.
Shelves, top and side panels made.
First coat of wood stain, in hindsight should’ve had the mitre joints on the front!
End result, pleased with the way it turned out. My wife likes it too, which is a relief
Next job is a shaker style door in the new year, but can now enjoy Christmas movies on the big screen again
Perhaps I should rename this topic … at least it’s kind of audio related
I have a bunch of resistors on their way so I can tweak the treble response, feels a little too much on some recordings with my new boxes so it’ll be interesting to try stepping it down a bit.
Should be arriving in time for the weekend, fun little project
Well they were supposed to be delivered yesterday but haven’t turned up yet … so after work yesterday I modified the crossovers to use the higher value alternative resistor I had already mounted on the board. The difference is much more noticeable than when I experimented doing this with my previous system. The treble is still there of course but it feels like some of the life has been taken out, some of the impact with drums even, and this is just with a one ohm increase. Glad I ordered a full range of small increments, judging by this test it’ll likely be somewhere between this and the default value.
Not long after posting the above they’ve arrived
The terminal blocks on the right are the ones Troels recommends that I bought (just in case) when building the speakers … time to put them to use!
Had quite a lot on this weekend but made a bit of progress…
The plan is to mount the resistors on the rear of the stands for easy access.
I didn’t have any suitable thin ply or MDF so had the bright idea of cutting channels out of a piece of 18mm MDF…
It worked but would’ve been easier to go out and get a sheet of something thinner 
Slapped on some paint, doesn’t have to be pretty, and screwed on the terminals
Resistors glued to the boards ready for soldering, default treble level on the right, decreasing to the left (to the level I currently have wired up).
May do some of the soldering later but a bit knackered… grandkids are exhausting
Mark. Are you going to mount this on the back and run the wire from crossover out the cabinet and back in?
I have thought about doing this in the past also.
Hi Mark, yes, going to mount it on the speaker stand (as it’s going to be temporary) then run wires from the crossover. I’d rather not drill a new hole in the cabinet for them so the plan is to take one of the screws out of the port mounting and drill through there. Once I’ve settled on the level I can plug that hole, put the screw back and add the resistor to the crossovers.
Will definitely build this into the next speakers I build.
Anyone thought about taking the crossover out of the cabinets completely? Particularly if you’re building the stands, could easily put them in an accessible enclosure on the rear of them. I’m not sure if running the cables to the drivers for longer than they would be with an internally mounted crossover would be at all deleterious (early in the week for long words!) to SQ?
I think Royd had a good approach to external crossovers on their Apex floorstanders, where they were mounted entirely within the small steel base of the speaker, making them very accessible.
They provided sockets into the crossover for single wire or biwire/biamp use, or you could just plug cables directly into the speaker cabinet for active use.
That’s what I did. As I didn’t want stands, I extended the cabinets creating a compartment in the bottom for the crossover.
Troels does do that on some of his larger designs, usually mounted on the back or in the base … I don’t think longer wires to the drivers would affect sound quality … look at his photo of the ScanSpeak demo room on his Ellipticor-1 page, they’re on the floor
That’s neat … certainly benefits to having easy access. The PMC Fact and larger Focal (I believe?) speakers have external treble/bass adjustments … very handy for room/system matching.
