Goodbye Binding Post Cup. 1.2tl's

Dude, that's sic!!

How much for the old cups?

Cool! Quick tip, I would connect your main speaker cable to the HF posts, and jump "down" to your LF. Probably doesn't make a significant difference, but I'm anal. I like the better quality wire feeding the upper freq's first.

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Thanks!! I think it gives it a more hi end look.. I will let you know about the cups cincycat pm'ed me last night about them..

No worries if they are gone. I'm probably going to just send my cups directly to Trey when he does my upgrades. I wanna use the Cardas posts and go neutrink for the AI-1.

Only a matter of time until folks start bugging ya to make a batch of these. I'll stick to cups since I don't own a router or know how to get that cut proper.

I really admire the mod.

DarqueKnight wrote: »

Outstanding as usual!!

What?, would you expect anything else from Larry. All kidding aside it's really nice to see that quality craftsmanship hasn't completely died out in this country.

Larry, email coming your way via you work address.

Very impressive :cool: - I want a pair!

Most impressive! High marks on the binding post plate! Makes you want to mount mirrors on the wall behind the speaker to show them off.

I believe Larry is talking about routering a "recess" for the tee-nut.

They did and they are installed.:biggrin:

Toolfan66 wrote: »

Where's the pics big guy??

They are in my computer waiting for me to complete my listening evaluation.

Toolfan66 wrote: »

BTW I am feeling better, Thanks..

Glad to hear that.

My SDA SRS 1.2TL's turned 23 years old this month. I wanted to give them a nice birthday present.

I opted not to do the flush mounting that Larry (Toolfan66) did for two reasons:

1. I have not used a router since high school woodworking class. I have plenty of scrap MDF to practice on, but while I was contemplating the purchase of a router and associated accessories, it dawned on me that I did not want to take time to practice getting getting all that precision cutting just right. In the future, when I'm more dedicated to audio than I am now, I might go back and route out insets for the plates.

2. Without flush mounting, the rim of the binding post plate only extends 1/8" above the rear of the speaker. This is still more visually pleasing and more mechanically stable than the stock plate.


Figure 1. All set! Delrin/Aluminum binding post plates, Cardas CCGR-L gold-plated tellurium copper binding
posts, and AudioQuest Perfect Surface Copper jumpers with silver plated bananas.


Figure 2. Oh Monoliths...what have I done to you? You have big holes in your backs.

All drilling and cutting was done with the speakers standing upright. Two rubber doorstops were placed in front of the speakers to prevent "walking". A jigsaw was used to cut the rectangular hole using the edge of 3/4" painter's tape strips as guide lines. Two inch wide strips of painters tape were used to prevent the base of the jigsaw from scratching the cabinet's surface.


Figure3. Essential protection against toxic dust.

Dunes of dust were generated from cutting a 4-1/4" x 6-5/8" hole. A dust mask and enclosed safety glasses were required. In retrospect, it would have been good to have another person vacuuming the dust as it was generated. MDF generates two types of dust: the heavy sawdust that falls to the floor and the misty, powdery dust that suspends in air and forms a cloud around the workspace. The dust is an eye, nose and throat irritant and has been shown to be carcinogenic in lab rats...and audio naysayers.


Figure 4.Test fitting.


Figure 5. Final wiring. A 1/2" wide strip of Armacell foam tape was applied as a gasket.


Figure 6. Installed. My plates were installed with the top of the plate butting against the bottom of the rear
label. This provided enough room for the bottom binding posts to clear the large inductor in front of them.
It is a very elegant and high end aesthetic.

Since I did not flush mount the plates, the 3/4" hex head cap screws Larry included were a little too short. Fortunately, I had some 1-1/4" screws. I like the contrasting look of the black anodized screw heads against the aluminum plate. The aluminum face plates are a nice compliment to my 1.2TL's exotic wood finishes.


Figure 7. SDA SRS 1.2TL custom tiger maple end cap.


Figure 8. SDA SRS 1.2TL custom tiger maple side strip.


Figure 9. Steel retaining ring behind plate.


Figure 10. I had to make sure the bottom binding posts cleared the 2" height of the SDA inductor.


Figure 11. The former binding posts and plate.


Figure 12. The sleek new binding post plate in brushed aluminum with thick Delrin base.

steveinaz wrote: »

Cool! Quick tip, I would connect your main speaker cable to the HF posts, and jump "down" to your LF. Probably doesn't make a significant difference, but I'm anal. I like the better quality wire feeding the upper freq's first.

I'm a bass-head/SDA imaging-head, so I want the better quality wire feeding the low frequency and SDA circuits first. Also, this is the configuration recommended on page 7 of the SDA SRS 1.2TL manual:

"In normal use jumpers are used to connect the black terminals together and the red terminals together. The amplifier is then connected only to the lower set of red and black terminals."

Some Intrigue

The former binding post plates had the HF binding posts removed and the HF and LF wires were soldered to the same single pair of binding posts. I did the right speaker first and did a quick listening evaluation to confirm that there were no connectivity or assembly problems. I first used the AudioQuest jumpers. I was surprised at the smeared, boomy bass and loss of high frequency detail on the right. I put in some homemade jumpers and they sounded better than the AQ jumpers, but not as clear and detailed as the non-jumpered connection on the left. I knew that the AQ jumpers would require some break in time, but I did not expect them to sound that bad. I waited to do the left speaker and let music play at normal listening level (85 dB-C). The AQ jumpers use three solid polished surface copper conductors with an aggregate wire gauge of 15. The AQ bananas are direct silver plated over beryllium copper.


Figure 13. Homemade jumpers made from DSR Silverline speaker cable. This is a hybrid copper/silver-plated
copper cable with a cross sectional area of 6 square millimeters. This places the wire gauge between 10
gauge (5.26 mm^2) and 9 gauge (6.63 mm^2). The bananas are Monster Cable gold-plated brass.

Over a period of three hours, the right side, with the AQ jumpers, improved to the point where it sounded better than the left. There was a little more overall clarity, detail and image weight. The right side also sounded louder. This was a counter-intuitive result because I expected the right side to either come close to or equal the sound on the left. The left side had the wires from the HF and LF sections of the crossover directly connected to a single pair of binding posts. The right side had the AQ jumpers between the LF and HF binding posts, with the speaker cable connected to the LF posts. Sometimes, Such Good Sound pops up in unexpected places. So far, after 17 hours of play time past the initial 3 hours, I have not heard further improvement. AudioQuest recommends a break in time of 100 hours. The AQ jumpers were purchased out of curiosity. I did not expect them to outperform my home made jumpers.

I sent my initial listening results to AudioQuest. I received this reply:

==================================================================================================
"As for your experience, the stranded cable is the biggest culprit. The interaction between strands is responsible for the worst type of distortion in a cable. This is why (almost all) our cables (and Jumpers) use solid conductors.

Secondly, using a single 10 awg conductor is introducing skin effect problems. Multiple small gauge conductors avoid this issue.

Thirdly, the soldered connections don't help. In our higher end interconnects, digital & video cables as well as HDMI cables, we don't solder, and haven't done in a long time (around 20 years or so). We use a proprietary "Cold Weld" system that provides a "mechanical connection," always the best type of connection to make. In the same way, all speaker cables use a connector that provide a "mechanical connection."

Add it all up and the accumulation of distortion is giving you these results. The aim is to keep distortion to a minimum. Biwiring the speakers would give you the minimum amount of distortion with aftermarket Jumpers as the next best thing to do.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Alasdair Patrick - Customer Service
AudioQuest"
==================================================================================================

PS Audio also uses cold welded terminations for their cables. It sucks that my soldered connections were electrically noisier...even though I used such good audiophile quality Cardas Quad-Eutectic solder.

I have had mixed results with biwiring (and biamping). A brochure for the SDA SRS TL series does not mention Biwiring, but highly recommends biamping:

"For even greater dynamic range and lower distortion, the SRS loudspeakers may be connected for Bi-Amplification using the two sets of inputs provided on each loudspeaker. By permitting different amplifiers to reproduce the high and low frequencies separately, the SRS loudspeakers achieve their greatest sonic potential."

The SDA SRS 1.2TL manual devotes 1.5 pages to biamping and casually discusses biwiring in only one paragraph.

Thanks to Larry for sharing more of his machinist's art.

How can I get these??