Ultralight Birch Marlin Pair
The "ultralight" is the same build quality as our popular Marlin speaker - with standard polished and oiled internals, custom 2D and 3D constrained layered damping materials...the works. But instead of being built in heavy duty 3/4" plywood, these are built in ultra lightweight 6mm (1/4") Birch plywood. The Initial production batches sounded and measured phenomenally well. Somehow, the room presence and sonic imaging qualities are especially good in this miniaturized Marlin design. Only 5lbs a pair!
Functional Furniture
“Real speakers should be made of thick veneer polished plywood because whenever the speakers are not being fed a signal from your receiver/amplifier they become pieces of wooden sculpture. All these beautiful materials fastened and combined together also become the acoustic properties of the speaker.
Fastening every single part of the speaker together with sandwiched damping materials between them has given excellent results. With the tuned, sandwiched damping materials I am now able to passively filter out unwanted resonances with accuracy because every absorptive material has been tuned and located to only absorb the problem frequency ranges at each site inside the speaker. What’s left after all those unwanted mechanical and acoustic resonances are filtered away is the glorious sonic benefit of having used natural materials in the first place. ”
Technical Details
Full Range Single Driver
-Banana pulp paper cone
-Large magnetic circuit
-Low wattage rated voice coil works perfectly with low power SET amps (thin wire, low weight)
-Voice coil technically rated for 5-15 watts
-Sound great with any amplifier between 1 watt to 100 watts per channel
-Mechanical clipping (overdrive) is gentle and does not damage the speaker driver
-Uncanny midrange articulation
-Stamped steel frame modified for smoother resonance properties
-High excursion cone suspension for excellent bass response
-Seamless acoustic integration with the 5 1/4” Benthic passive subwoofer
Hardware
-Stamped steel washers
-Steel screws
-Neoprene washers tuned in conjunction with driver frame
-Mechanically independent driver gasket/air seal
-Hand torqued and gauged driver screws
-Floating driver frame over combined dual durometer constrained damping material layer
-Generously proportioned air gasket is the high-frequency stage of constrained layered damping
Internal Wiring
-Same as Waterline Cables
-Swiss manufactured 13 gauge ultra pure Oxygen Free Copper (OFC)
-Hand-crimped, hand soldered connections
-Non-resonant, low capacitance hammered in binding posts
Cabinet Details
Acoustics
-Bass reflex ported enclosure
-Polished/oiled solid wood port
Construction
-Wood burn brand
-150-year-old coachmaker's varnish recipe of linseed oil
-Void-free plywoods have interior layers that are the same thickness and wood quality as the exterior layers
-Extra strength, non-toxic and waterproof wood glue applied in all workshop joinery and internal glues inside of the plywoods
-Hand clamped 100% open construction joinery
-Swift glue ups allow glue to cure in a single stage for lower internal stresses in joinery
Internal Bracing Design
-Faceted, polished solid Douglas fir internal braces similar to those found inside a guitar, piano soundboard, or inside other acoustic instruments
-Constrained layer acoustic damping materials bonded to cabinet walls with a low durometer adhesive that itself functions as a dual purpose high-frequency absorber
Finish
-Polished internal and external wood surfaces
-Linseed oil application lowers surface noise coming from all combined solid wood surfaces
-Polished, oiled surfaces are naturally protected from various hazards of the typical household environment
-An optional semi-annual application of the non-toxic linseed oil will deepen the golden shine
Feet
-Low durometer clear urethane feet decouple the bottom of the speaker cabinet from the top of any surface
-Urethane feet provide grip as well as carefully tune the high-frequencies that should not travel into neighboring pieces of furniture via a constrained layer of damping
-Please handle cabinet feet with care - they are meant to grip, not slip!