SL-3 woofers

anyone no the brand and model #. I would like to try to use them in a DIY speaker project with a SEAS w18/Founteck ribbon.

wallacefl said:

anyone no the brand and model #. I would like to try to use them in a DIY speaker project with a SEAS w18/Founteck ribbon.

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Wallace

I would go to http://www.zaphaudio.com/ and scroll down to driver tests and use that. IWalker on this forum has used this guy for picking out drivers with HUGE success. Most likely you will find a better driver. Also, if you were to PM IWalker I'm sure he would be happy to help you select a driver as would JonFo.

Good Luck and remember to post your project here.

wallacefl said:

anyone no the brand and model #. I would like to try to use them in a DIY speaker project with a SEAS w18/Founteck ribbon.

Click to expand...

Are you saying you don't want to replace them, but use unit pulled from an SL3 in a separate project?

If so, I'd just get a new driver and plan the design around published T/S parameters.

I have the driver from my 'donor' SL3 (as part if the SL3XC project) lying around, nothing impressive, trust me. And a >6 year old driver is not the greatest foundation for a new project.

any recommendations for a brilliant replacement SL3 woofer? what are the things to lookout for?

ML offers replacement drivers. Contact them to see what they offer when doing your comparisons

dimensions87 said:

any recommendations for a brilliant replacement SL3 woofer? what are the things to lookout for?

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A new driver is available from Aurum Cantus, the AC-250Mk2, it has really flat frequency response in the critical 60 to 500hz range necessary for good woofer to panel integration.
Its low moving mass (for a 10" driver) of only 50g should result in low second and third harmonic distortion products.
Priced at $115, not a bad choice. It works better than others in sealed, smaller cabinets, with an F3 of 51Hz at 26 liters.

Since an SL3 cabinet is roughly 28 liters (or a cubic foot), this model should work fine.

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/pshowdetl.cfm?&DID=7&Partnumber=296-434&ctab=2#Tabs

I'm looking into whether this might be the 'one' to replace my old Sequel drivers with.

Unique view of an SL3 woofer box

OK, not many of you will ever see this view of an SL3 woofer chamber, but since I had this lying around my storage area, I thought it might be relevant to this discussion to see how the SL3 box looks on the inside.

This top view is probably rare

BTW- this is the left-over from my SL3XC unit.

PS- excuse the dirty garage floor, been raining around here lately.

Note the braces on the left, there was also a symmetrical one between the right wall and the top of the enclosure (it’s removed in this shot).

There could be additional bracing, but then the interior volume would continue to decrease, better to use that dampening material I listed here.

Rear interior view

And here is a rear view of the enclosure.

You can see how open the back is without the Electronics board there.

I would also point out the ensuring a really tight seal for the electronics board is critical to appropriate functioning of the Sealed woofer design. So use a fresh gasket.

hey Jonathan
if you had 2 boxes kicking around I could use the last 6" for the stretch project..... LOL
say do you have any idea where a guy could get some fresh gasket ?
Jim says ML does not have any now ...he also say not too important but if I can find it I will use it .
B

aurum

Jon
the aurum cantu's look interesting but are 8 ohm I see
Jim P told me the woofers on the SL3's are 4 ohm ...not sure about yours?

bernard991 said:

Jon
the aurum cantu's look interesting but are 8 ohm I see
Jim P told me the woofers on the SL3's are 4 ohm ...not sure about yours?

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The sensitivity is a bit more important then impedance of the driver. At 89db, the AC seems to be moderate in sensitivity, but I'm not sure what the factory speaker is at.

Also, I keep forgetting that most people want to keep the factory passive crossover.

That’s one of the first things I ditch, so I'm only really looking at speaker to box (since I can’t easily change the box characteristics) interface.

Crossovers, sensitivity (gain) and other items such as phase, EQ and whatnot, I can adjust in my speaker processors.


Somone whould have to try one of these and measure. There are a couple of resistors in front of the woofer that could be bypassed if sensitivity is less than factory specs.

JonFo said:

OK, not many of you will ever see this view of an SL3 woofer chamber, but since I had this lying around my storage area, I thought it might be relevant to this discussion to see how the SL3 box looks on the inside.

This top view is probably rare

BTW- this is the left-over from my SL3XC unit.

PS- excuse the dirty garage floor, been raining around here lately.

Click to expand...

Jon, thanks for that picture! This will help me with my blue led replacement for my SL3's!

thanks alot! gordon

My model year 2000 SL3 have Vifa M26WO-06-04 woofers that I have been looking to eventually replace. Here's a Vifa PL26WR-09-04 (on close-out? sale for $79) that appears to be as close to a PNP replacement as one could imagine:Vifa PL26WR09-04
I would be surprised if this isn't my actual driver with a different model number.

I'm looking for something like this Seas aluminum cone:Seas L26RFX/P
It also appears to be a perfect fit, but at 8 ohms will need a different crossover from the original.

Tosh said:

My model year 2000 SL3 have Vifa M26WO-06-04 woofers that I have been looking to eventually replace. Here's a Vifa PL26WR-09-04 (on close-out? sale for $79) that appears to be as close to a PNP replacement as one could imagine:Vifa PL26WR09-04
I would be surprised if this isn't my actual driver with a different model number.

I'm looking for something like this Seas aluminum cone:Seas L26RFX/P
It also appears to be a perfect fit, but at 8 ohms will need a different crossover from the original.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that Vifa looks just like the SL3 woofer I pulled from my center channel project donor SL3.

Pretty much perfect replacement IMHO.

the SEAS looks like an even better driver, but as you note, wrong impedance for the factory unit. But if you took out some of the added resistance in the X-over, it might work.

For people like me who do active crossovers, it might be close to perfect.

I'm mulling over an order ....

There's no added resistance in my SL3 woofer crossover, unless you switch in the -3dB bass control which adds about 1.8 ohm. Also the 19AWG inductor (Does anyone know its value?) has a DCR of about 1.2 ohms, which could be reduced with a bigger gauge inductor. (In parallel with the inductor is a 330uF bi-polar Bennic electrolytic cap, which doesn't seem to be the right value for a textbook 250Hz 4 ohm 12dB/oct low-pass...?)

I also expect to go active xo on the bass eventually, and then I'll probably add some EQ like this project:
Subwoofer EQ

But for now, I think the cabinet needs better bracing, especially as the factory didn't glue one side of a brace in tightly, leaving a gap. I think I can see the same problem in JonFo's pics of his sectioned cabinet. I'm thinking of an adjustable rod spanning side to side...

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but for those of us with original Sequels, with the ported woofer box, I'm assuming that the above-mentioned drivers (Vifa and SEAS) are probably NOT suitable replacements for our stock drivers, due to the different Q of our ported enclosures?

Has anyone replaced original Sequel drivers with third-party drivers? ML has told me that the aluminum-driver cones used in the newer MLs are totally unsuited to the Sequels because of different specs of the driver...

Thanks,
--Richard

Low resistance inductor?

Tosh, it sounds like you were considering the replacement of relatively high resistance inductors. I'm also considering replacing the 10mH inductors in series with the woofers in my ML ReQuests. I'm curious if you (or anyone else) can comment on this idea.

Jantzen 10mH 14 AWG C-Coil Toroidal Inductors are available on Amazon and have about 0.1 ohms DC resistance. This should produce more volume from the woofer, tighten the grip of the amp on the woofer, change the total Q alignment for less ringing and hopefully improve the sound and definition available from the woofer. But I'm concerned that the design of the resistor/inductor/capacitor filter that is in parallel with the woofer would be thrown off by such a change resulting in a overall sound worse than stock.

Rich,
I'm going to try using a simple active XO on the bass to avoid inductors altogether (plus give myself more flexibility and take advantage of the extra bi-amping terminals). But I expect to keep the passive XO on the ESL (although I have new caps and power resistors ready to try).

I can actually feel the heat in the main inductor (and also the resistors to the ESL) through the rear panel, so looking forward to getting rid of them and going active. It's also a step toward putting in the new SEAS woofers I mentioned earlier.

As long as we are talking inductors... This one and a welded up voice coil fried 2 amps before I found it.









It all started out with a torn spider.