Over the last couple of weekends I have made quite a bit of progress on the Duelund-WRSE Project. Last weekend my buddy Dave and I worked on the final chassis design for the outboard Duelund crossovers, and we went into Dave's woodworking shop to get the chassis started and made a lot of progress.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been really excited about building the final chassis for the Duelund external crossovers. The chassis design for the crossovers is inspired by the designs of Mr. Ken Ishiguro of Acoustic Revive fame, and I chose to base the chassis for the Duelund crossovers on the Acoustic Revive RST-38 Quartz Under-Boards, which I reviewed in Chapter 7 of The Acoustic Revive Chronicles.

The main difference between the Duelund chassis Dave & I built and the RST-38 is the size - the Duelund chassis needed to be larger to fit the huge Duelund components on - and the top plate is solid walnut instead of a laminate, and the frame is maple.

We decided to use walnut & maple as tonewoods along with the quartz isolation concept, and I think it's going to be spectacular. In the above photo you can see the walnut terminal blocks Dave made, which I'm using to mount the binding posts that are used in bypass mode (e.g. as clamps holding two pieces of wire together, rather than as part of the signal path). You can see the walnut top plates that the Duelund components will be mounted on to the left in the photo below, with the Duelund breadboard on the right.

Today I transfered the Duelund components to the walnut top plates and wired it all up with Neotech solid-core UP-OCC mono-crystal hook-up wire that I ordered from Parts ConneXion: 20 gauge silver in a Teflon jacket (blue in the photo below) on the high-frequency crossovers, and 14 gauge copper in a Teflon jacket (red in the photo below) on the low frequency crossovers.

The frames for the isolation platforms aren't quite done yet. Dave has applied a dark ink stain to the maple frames to accent the CAST center of the Duelund components, and Dave is in the process of applying a lacquer finish to give the frames a gloss that will complement the Duelund components. As soon as those are ready I'll show you the finished isolation bases, probably next weekend.

Here's a closeup (below) of the purist version of the Tannoy WRSE high-frequency controls. Zero signal degradation compared to the stock units. Notice the copper set screw lugs I used for connections. No signal degrading solder. Just wire on wire for maximum fidelity. You have to manually change the jumpers by loosening a screw and changing the jumper location, but in reality that's not much of a bother over the stock setup.

I bought my copper set screw lugs from McMaster-Carr. The item description is "Copper Set Screw Lug, Straight Tongue, 14-8 AWG, #10 Stud, Item # 6923K61" in case you want to order some for yourself. The copper set screw lugs are $1.82 each. I ordered 55 of them, which gave me a few extras to work with.

A closer view of the copper set screw lugs.

I think it's important to mention that almost all of the connections were made using just the leads of the Duelund components themselves with only the copper set screw lugs providing the connection. Where that wasn't possible, then the Neotech UP-OCC mono-crystal hook-up was used in point-to-point connections using the copper set screw lugs. Wire on wire. It's better.

Speaking of the Neotech hook-up wire: As I mentioned above, I used the Neotech solid-core UP-OCC mono-crystal hook-up wire, which was recommended to me by Mark Coles of Sablon Audio. Even though I used the leads from the Duelund components for all connections to the set screw lugs, and minimized the amount of hook-up wire used as much as possible, it still takes a bit of wire to get everything wired up in point-to-point fashion. I ordered my Neotech from Parts ConneXion: 12-feet of 20-gauge silver in a Teflon jacket (NEOTECH-70761, $21.34 per foot) on the high-frequency crossovers, and 8-feet of 14-gauge copper in a Teflon jacket (NEOTECH-70757, $5.95 per foot) on the low frequency crossovers. I had only a few inches of the Cu & Ag Neotech left over when I was finished wiring, so its not likely you'll get by with less wire than I did. Like the Duelund components, the Neotech hook-up wire is spendy, but from what I'm hearing it is well worth the expense! Thanks for the recommendation Mark!

Just a quick comment on sonics: using a natural tone wood like walnut in combination with the Neotech wire made a huge difference in sonics & musicality compared to the plywood breadboard & generic hookup wire I was using. I guess there's a reason that musical instruments are made out of tone woods instead of plywood! Take note.

Ok, I'll have a lot more to tell you later, as there's still lots more to do for the Duelund-WRSE Project. Now I'm going to take a break after a hard day's work and drink a glass of wine while listening to a little jazz. Let me just say this: the Duelund crossovers are sounding incredible, with both astonishing sonics and extreme musicality, it's a real high-fidelity treat! I am very pleased with the results so far!

Thanks for stopping by!