Thursday, October 27, 2011

Why Phase IV?

Just before going to college (1979) Graham, who worked at B&W, sold me a couple of 801 bass drivers. Phase I used these (they were really wonderful units) with Kef B110bs for the mid range and DM7 stand alone tweeters. The crossovers were stock 3-way units that crossed at 200 and 4k (at least as far as I can recall). I have no pictures of the Phase Is.

Phase II was a rebuild of the Phase I cabinet but used the same drivers and crossover. The result was fairly unsuccessful since I limited the bass response by making the air volume too small. Again, no pics.

Phase III was the intervening 30 years.

Phase IV was my attempt to build speakers using much cheaper drivers (my father, bless him, threw out the 801 drivers when he was cleaning out his attic in 1990). "Phase IV" (1974) was also a fairly memorable science fiction film for which "Silent Running" (1972), a slightly more memorable (also science fiction) film, was the supporting B-feature when I saw it (probably in 1976).

That there is a Mk1 and a Mk2 was an accident. I hadn't planned to build a Mk2, but as I noted earlier in the blog, it was a spur of the moment thing.

Aren't you sorry you asked?