The 1” baffles definitely have a different sound than Steve’s thicker versions.  Steve’s have a lower, fuller sound to them.  However, mine seem a bit faster and emphasize the mids.

If I had to do it over again, I’d spend another $175 and double them up.  I’m leaving this pair as is.  Still very enjoyable.  

Where I think I will end up longer term is building the smaller baffle at 2”.  The 36” stair treads are a little less $$.

I don’t think you can go wrong with these drivers.  You can tune them with the material you choose.

Basically it’s a piece of oak that is 36” X 11” that you step on when you walk up a set of stairs.  They come in various lengths (widths).  If you go into Home Depot they will be in the stair parts section in lumber.  The one tricky thing is you have to cut off the round over front lip of the tread.

And make sure they are solid oak. I just looked at some yesterday that were glue-ups of unknown woods with an Oak Veneer on them. I was pretty disappointed as I was hoping to make some very solid shelves out of them.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/11-1-2-x-48-in-Red-Oak-Engineered-Tread-8430R-048-HD...

I still like these BB slabs.  Big enough for the large baffle and 1 3/4" thick.  By the time you make the baffles, the little extra material cost will be irrelevant.

https://www.foodservicedirect.com/john-boos-oil-finish-hard-rock-maple-industria...

My baffles are 42".  But you can use 36" treads for the smaller big betsy.

I got mine at a hardwood store and they cut off the roundover.  Very precise cuts.

They also had about 50 of the 42" treads so I was able to choose grain and make sure the ones I bought were flat.

I shopped my local home depot and all they had were 36' at the time.

The Big Betsy is 1.1” red oak.  The Crystal 10 is 1.5” Baltic.

Maple, Cherry, White Oak, and Red Oak stair treads can be ordered from Home Depot. Free delivery if shipped to a local store.

I am leaning toward stair treads for the medium build for the F15s. Possibly with a cut cherry tread flanking red oak. One inch baffles on the F15M version of Steve's design might scale well and create negligible differences with the thinner baffle. My room is on the small/medium size so F15L would be overkill and maybe the F15M still to large. I have not ruled out the F15 Betsy's but concerned about the diminished mid/bass response because of the smaller baffle.

Butcher block would be an easier build. Just draw the pattern and cut with your favorite weapon! Aesthetically, BB would look like a table set up on it's short edge or a hardwood floor pattern set in a vertical fashion. Not appealing in my opinion. Finger joints in the construction of BB also is a concern. Hopefully all the fingers where perfectly cut...if not, cross cutting the joints could expose ones that are not, thereby creating issues with the edge finish.

My thoughts of using pallet slates for construction of a baffle is enticing but very time consuming. Reclaimed slates can be purchased cheep but would need extensive work to assemble. I got better things to do with time.

I believe sawn hardwood is the only material for this open baffle build. The interaction with the very fast F15 and different wood cell structure combines to form a blended instrument of faithful engaging sound reproduction. For me this would rule out any composite material for baffle use that can only take away from the F15 design.

I listen to Steve's recordings of Lii's Crytal-10 and cabinets. The combination does sound great but the cabinet can be heard which is missing in the OB recordings. My preference leads me to the OB and F-15.

The F15s are on the way!

Cheers!

John

Palomino, the picture shown is the builders grade version of stair treads. There is one rounded edge.
I hear you about selection of treads left to others.
Funny thing is my local HD shows 72 36" treads in stock! I could not find them a week ago. Hmmm! Plus the stock items are a dollar or more but not listed as builder grade.

I wonder if one could use Mahogany MDF boards and glue them together where one would get a 2” thickness.

Archie,

We recommend WATCO rejuvenating oil if the hand-oiled speaker is being waxed. The rejuvenating oil dissolves old wax with each application.

For less serious maintenance, we recommend HOWARD Feed-N-Wax wood polish & conditioner.

The advantage of wax vs. re-oiling as that you can't mess up with wax.  Adding oil can easily ruin the look of the finish by increasing the gloss and or increasing the gloss in some areas more than others.  Not a real issue for a wood worker, but imagine the customer using linseed oil without having first learned all the things not to do.  If they keep it waxed, they may never have to add more oil, or at least prolong it for quite some time.

Anyway, the two products above are friendly enough that customers  can get great results without problems.

Steve

Thanks for the Wax guidance Steve.

I was at Home Depot tonight checking out their wax products and went to the stair parts section.   They had 36” “engineered” treads with the mdf innards but they also had about 30 - 48” solid wood red oak treads.  The other HD store I frequent had 36” last time I was there.  Maybe it’s a Chicago thing.

About $300 with tax for 12 - 48” treads to do a 2” thick baffle.  You could cut them down to 36” and use the leftover wood to start your bases.

I am presently experiencing enlightenment as the direct result of making these speaker demo videos...

In addition to the 4 vinyl LP tracks I am making videos of for each speaker, I have also compiled a 12 minute digital sampler that I will be playing as a single track (video).  

I have just completed it for the Lii Audio Crystal 10 Reference speakers, and am now repeating the same tracks on the ZF15L and the true differences in sound between these two speakers are astounding!  

So I will be adding this digital track, despite the extra work, to the collection for each speaker.  That means each speaker will have four analog tracks and one 12 minute montage of digital tracks.

Studying these all the videos I've done so far with mid-priced headphones directly plugged into my iMac, it is easy to hear what's happening over here.  I haven't even let myself hear these tracks on a real DAC yet, because as always I use handicaps as tools to make things extra better. ; )

The enlightenment is how much more solid, and dense, and dynamic the ZF15L is compared to a cabinet that can go easily below 30Hz, even on the Leeds Organ track (the first one) the lowest notes had twice the sound from the ZF15L even though that should be nearly impossible.  Seriously, I've said it before... I have never heard a speaker that has better or more natural bass than these, with the only exception being the Imperial Horn, but frankly that's going by memory so it's possible I would like the more open boxless sound I have now.



Steve

The digital 12 minute track thru Crystal 10 box displays a lot of the known issues with digital recorded/reproduced music. I will go on a limb here and say the upcoming(soon I hope ) OB comparison will add a touch of character!

Alex, creating the radius for your cabinets must have been a chore. Sealed box right? I though the sound was excellent but attenuated.

John

Arch, I can pretty much get anything.  There is a hardwood store about 20 min from me that stocks all the staples plus exotics.  6/4, 8/4 etc.
What they don't have they can get.  What really sells me is that they do those precision cuts for a buck.  I have them do all the critical cuts and it lowers the stress level immensely.

I priced out several types of wood and the treads were the easiest and cheapest route.  It took me about 30 minutes to glue up the three treads for each baffle.  

Much better than planing multiple boards, gluing them up, etc. And only $175 including the cuts.  The 36" treads are even cheaper.  The next closest thing in terms of cost was the $269 ea. ($538 for two) butcher block posted recently.

Here is pretty much my final product.  I may still add some mass to the base, but other than that, any additional effort will go into the medium sized baffle.

BTW, thanks on the Howard Feed-N-Wax suggestion.  Super easy to apply, nice finish and much better smell than paste wax.

Yeah that is a concern.  If your treads aren’t really flat it could be a problem.  I did Baltic birch for the crystal 10s and it was pretty easy but the ply was flat and it was only two boards per baffle.

Yeah the last few details were to put the plugs in to cover the lag bolts, wax them and do the black rim.  I’m pretty happy with it.  They are the nicest baffles I’ve done to date.  Very appreciative of Steve/Randy sharing the design and everyone else’s .02.

Ive decided to make my OB to look like the head of a cobra, which is where the driver will be, and it will taper of 2" on both sides until it gets to the base where it will curve into the blocks on the bottom. So it will look like an inverted "L", slighting leaning back. It'll be like a rectifier tuber tapering off at the bottom to about 2 inches. It will look something similar to this image without the top horizontal layer. The base will be like the Betsy base though.

I went with the Beats on an Ipad for this demo. Mainly to do an A B between the two on Safari browser.  I was too lazy to go downstairs and grab the SOL Republic headphones.

Do I here tone control adjustments? Silly question, right? When doing the comparison between the C10's and F15's, I could not escape the thought that Steve is adjusting a new tone control on his amps! Very expensive tone control and cumbersome to adjust moving the speakers around and all .
The highs on both the speakers is top notch and similar. The mids, I believe, correlate with the bass on both sets. C10's shallow bass effects the mids to the point of being lean(probably the reason for yesterdays comment). F15's bass is predominate and carries to a fuller mid presentation. Matter of preferences...mine F15.
Steve going forward, it might be worth to get the SPL meter out and try to compensate for the efficiency differences for a speaker comparison. It is obvious your amp is on a pleasure cruise driving these speakers!. Just saying

Pal, your F15Ls look stunning. Good job! I may start small with the F15's upon arrival. Randy's Betsy baffle pair can be created with just two 48" stair treads with enough excess material to create some sort of base frame. I can always move up to the larger size.

HK, how does your F15 Betsy compare to the F15L? Bass?

Thanks
John

I didn't mean to be harsh, but that's just where it is re my ears vs. auto-tune (in)tolerance.

In any case, I have 'home and financial' issues to get through first, but I look forward to getting a Zen amplifier and a Caintuck 15" 'Betsy Lee' about ten-twelve months from now.

Thanks to Randy and especially to Steve for making all these wonderful things available to us.

Quote:


If you have been following the thread, you already know the highly compressed track was selected to break-in the new F15 drivers, not to demonstrate our wares.  And in fact what was being demonstrated is the difference between a broken-in driver and a non broken-in driver.  
In fact the demonstration came with a clear disclaimer about that track.

I share your distain for auto-tune microphones in todays pop music and much of todays pop music period... but this track was from the 1980's, long before autotune, and the auto-tune sounding part was in fact a synth effect.

Steve

I was listening to Philip Glass play some of his piano works this morning and I remembered a conversation I had with Steve 5 or 6 years ago when I was first into Decware.  I told him that I've never been fooled into thinking that the play-back piano I was hearing was a real piano in my living room (which I have).  He told me that neither had he.

I can now report, that with the F15s in the large baffle, that has changed.  

Like all things Decware, the best advice I can give is to jump right in!

Hehe, we're both equally offended by autotune, and I knew what you meant... If not for the fact that there are new people who jump into this thread every day starting on the current page of course, who might think we actually chose that track to demo our equipment with...  I would have never felt the need to defend it!  

I think in inches, you are saying it will be about 30" tall by 24 wide.  If so, then yes, that's about right.  I think its around 1cm = .39 inches.

Dennis,

That should be fine. My baffles are about 2" bigger each direction. I have Crystals in mine. Some of us have to let the room dictate what we can use. I've seen quite a few favorable reviews of Randy's baffles with the F15's, so your plan should work great.

Dennis, on your drawing, the diameter hole 36cm for the F15 might be too big, I made it 34.5cm and the drawing given by Lii is even smaller 33cm. with 36cm I am afraid you won't have enough material left between the screw and the driver hole.