Kairos

[richidoo]

I ordered the Kairos kit from Meniscus.   It is designed by Jeff Bagby, using the Satori drivers from SB Acoustics in Indonesia.



Manual



I ordered the bare bones kit, with no parts upgrades. I wasn't excited about the upgrade caps they offered, nor the litz coils, nor the binding posts, nor the paper reflex port. When I saw the invoice with itemized parts I was a bit surprised to see that the stock parts include an iron core woofer inductor. But it was shipped within 3 hours of my ordering and Mark at Meniscus is a pleasure to work with. The kit price is very reasonable for just the drivers alone.

More to come.

[GT Audio Works]

I ordered the Kairos kit from Meniscus.   It is designed by Jeff Bagby, using the Satori drivers from SB Acoustics in Indonesia.



Manual



I ordered the bare bones kit, with no parts upgrades. I wasn't excited about the upgrade caps they offered, nor the litz coils, nor the binding posts, nor the paper reflex port. When I saw the invoice with itemized parts I was a bit surprised to see that the stock parts include an iron core woofer inductor. But it was shipped within 3 hours of my ordering and Mark at Meniscus is a pleasure to work with. The kit price is very reasonable for just the drivers alone.

More to come.

Let me know what you think of the SB woofer.
It looks like a copy of the Vifa unit.
I was interested in the SB23NRXS45-8, 8" Woofer
but its a few db's short of what I want.
                                                             Greg

[jimbones]

I have the regular SB29 tweeter that tweeter is an upgraded unit. Let us know how it sounds.

[richidoo]

Yeah, they are both hotrod drivers designed by this Ulrich guy who designed for Scan Speak, iirc. Wilson uses this woofer for their midranges. The standard tweeter is very good one, used in the Janzen electrostat panels... but this one has some major tweaks to the base model.

[rollo]

Is it soup yet ?


charles

[richidoo]

Hi Charlie!

The boxes are almost finished. I need to cut the driver holes, install the bracing and stuffing, build the crossovers. I am ordering hot rod coils and caps on Monday. I bought some nice stain and varnish today. Probably another week or two until ignition. I am anxious to hear them! Thanks for axing!

[Carlman]

Yay, so glad to see you doing this project.  
Looking forward to hearing your impressions.

[richidoo]

Got em runnin tonight. YAY! They sound BIG and very nice. Amazing low end for 6", very dynamic, revealing, natural honest tone.

We listened to Brendel's Moonlight Sonata, the 1st two movements were awesome, I was anticipating even more on the loud and fast final movement, but turns out that movement is compressed and lowered volume compared to the other 2 tracks, so the vavavoom was not as I hoped. The cool thing was that I never noticed the compression or the level reduction with previous speakers. They are so dynamic music feels very alive. The tonal texture on the piano is excellent. You can choose to listen to it or ignore it, just as I was hoping. Thanks to paper cone and silk dome.

Still need to varnish and install the final binding posts. Using cheap heavy brass Dayton posts temporarily.

These are brand new, never played a note before the Beethoven, so lots more bass and clarity to come with break in. Hard to imagine there's more still in the can. Pics and adjudication to follow.

[StereoNut]

Sounds (pardon the pun) very promising! Keep all of us updated.

SN

[richidoo]

My wife says it sounds better than my previous speaker builds. Says it doesn't sound shrieky. Can play loud without hurting. Thanks, I think...   

She is blasting Lady Antebellum now so that's a good sign that they sound good.

From the other side of the house they sound good, which means good freq. balance and dynamics.

[jimbones]

Got em runnin tonight. YAY! They sound BIG and very nice. Amazing low end for 6", very dynamic, revealing, natural honest tone.

We listened to Brendel's Moonlight Sonata, the 1st two movements were awesome, I was anticipating even more on the loud and fast final movement, but turns out that movement is compressed and lowered volume compared to the other 2 tracks, so the vavavoom was not as I hoped. The cool thing was that I never noticed the compression or the level reduction with previous speakers. They are so dynamic music feels very alive. The tonal texture on the piano is excellent. You can choose to listen to it or ignore it, just as I was hoping. Thanks to paper cone and silk dome.

Still need to varnish and install the final binding posts. Using cheap heavy brass Dayton posts temporarily.

These are brand new, never played a note before the Beethoven, so lots more bass and clarity to come with break in. Hard to imagine there's more still in the can. Pics and adjudication to follow.

They will need break in time that may be another reason for sounding compressed.

[richidoo]

Picture time!

[richidoo]

More pics

[richidoo]

They are sounding mighty fine. Still breaking in, but good enough now for sitting down for long listening. They are much cleaner and lower distortion than my previous speakers, so I am happy with the decision to move on to the next chapter.

Still deciding whether to add subs or not. For normal music down to 50Hz it is not needed. For symphonies, dance, organs, etc it will be needed. The huge woofer coils make excellent bass.

North Creek 10ga coils on woofers and 12ga on the tweets. Jantzen SuperiorZ caps and the resistors are the metal oxides that came with the kit. Once I decide that I am happy with the tweeter levels then I will put some Duelund graphite resistors, or make my own from pencil leads.

The woofers have incredible detail, layers and layers deep of texture. The tweeter has all the extreme detail of a metal hard tweeter without the bite, or the distraction. I haven't really done much serious listening to strong quartets or trumpets so time will tell if these really are world beaters. But so far there is no reason to think they will not be that good.

The edges are rounded over using table saw for rough cuts, block plane for shaping, sanding and a little filler. There is lots of internal bracing, mostly corner bracing between two adjacent sides which I have found to be the most efficient kind of bracing. The boxes are very quiet considering only one sheet thick.   I wanted to put the roofing membrane in them but the kind I want is not available in single roll.

I think I have a little too much stuffing, I'll experiment after break in is done. I'm using Electratube binding posts. They are very nice. Pure copper, gold plated, minimal mass and no threads in the signal path, and only $60/4.

They are playing just fine on Sol's I-15 integrated amp, 15 watts. But his I-60 will be a better match. I never thought a 85dB sensitive speaker could sound so alive and musical, but it does. The simple shallow crossover filters and super high quality parts minimize the loss of life.

Still have to stain and poly them. Then g2g.

[StereoNut]

Wow!  Nice work, Rich.  If I tried to build my own speakers they'd end up looking like some sort of Audio Picasso!