Can anyone tell me what specific silk dome tweeter the LCR uses?
The specs say:
Tweeter: 1" Custom Silk Dome designed and manufactured with precision Scandanavian parts

The reason is that I am looking for a center channel speaker to match my current fronts. My fronts are a kit MTM tower speaker that uses the Scanspeak Relevation tweeter D2905/9700.
Here are the specs:
Two way floor standing D'Appolito bass reflex enclosure.
Frequency response 35Hz to 30KHz
4 ohm
Efficiency: 90.5db 1w/1m.
The tweeter is the D2905/9700 28mm silk dome,
based on the Revelator.
The Woofers are the 15W/8530K01 Revelators,
long stroke 5.5 inches with treated and choped paper cone.
The crossover is a third-order Butterworth at 1.8kHz with zobel and L-pad.

Will the LCR match this? I not looking for a perfect match only a better one than I got now, which is a paradigm CC-250.

Thanks,
Jamester

The woofer is a SEAS part, and the "precision Scandanavian parts" suggests that the tweeter is also made by SEAS but is probably not one of their standard spec pieces.

Because my speakers are a kit there is no matching center for them unless I make one from scratch with the same drivers and x-over. This is possible but I prefer not to.

I am tempted by the LCR since it also has a silk dome tweeter. I know there is a return policy on LCR so I can return it if the match is bad but I would like to have a few opinions from the experts if my logic is sound before I take the plunge. Is there anything else I should be concerned about on matching the center?

Jamester

Jamester,

Which DIY kit did you build? Designing a matching center is not necessarily a trivial task but it is not insurmountable either. However, depending on your kit there may be a very good kit already out there. I am getting started in the DIY speaker world and I have been doing a ton of research lately so there is a good chance I have seen your kit and may know of a good matching center.

The SVSound MTS speakers , including the MCS-01 center channel, use a ScanSpeak tweeter so you might want to give that a shot.

mdrconsult,
The kit I built is the Scan-Speak Ultimate Revelation from Solen in Montreal. http://www.solen.ca/v1/ssur.htm

These are nice speakers and I love the sound but my center cant match them. I could order just half the kit and design a center but I do not have access to a wood working shop any more.

cvinfig,
Thanks for the link. I did not know about these speakers before. I will look into them.

Jamester,

That looks like a fairly nice kit that you built. Do you have any pics of the build and final project? I always like to see how DIY projects come out.

Anyway, I have found two possible options for you. They both are Troels Gravesen's designs from Denmark. He is a very talented designer and has done a great deal of work in helping the DIY community. OK so here are the two different designs:
W1500/97
Ellam d\'Appolito

The W1500/97 uses the exact same drivers as your kit, but it is designed as a mini monitor, which may or may not fit your HT needs.

The Ellam d'Appolito is a MTM design of course but uses a slightly different tweeter. I am not sure that you will be able to notice the difference. Some really picky people think the 9800 is a little more metallic sounding but frankly I don't hear it.

Now there are a couple things to consider with the mini monitor vs. the MTM design. First of all laying an MTM on its side and calling it a center channel has some inherent problems, mostly off axis listening is somewhat degraded as compared to other designs. So if you looking for a rather large sweet spot this is probably not the route for you. However if you just want to hit a one or two chairs (side by side) optimal listening area this will work quite fine.

The down side of a conventional monitor is mostly making room for the cabinet. However this one is only 12" high so that probably won't be a problem. Another draw back for this choice might be that it will be a little thin as compared to your main drivers, i.e. the bias will probably be +3 or 4 DBs to get it to balance again not really a problem unless you like really loud listening. But fear not there is still a solution and it is what I would go with if I had the equipment. You could build two of these monitors and drive them in parallel from a single center channel. You would have to play around with the spacing to get them to voice well, but it certainly would be doable. Also, it would give you a very large sweet spot for your listening area. In order to do this you would need to take the pre-amp output of your center channel and split it to two different amp channels with one driving each speaker.

One other note, if you need surrounds the mini monitors would make excellent surround speakers.

Good Luck and let us know what you decide.

Thank you mdrconsult,

I have seen these speaker also in my web surfing for speakers. I did not contact Troels Gravesen yet but I will send him an email. They do look expensive.

Here is a link to my DIY speakers:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31075876@N05/

Jamester,

Those speakers look very nice!

Now after seeing your setup I think I would definitely go with building a single mini monitor for the center channel. The only thing I think you would need to do is to make sure that you brought the center speaker forward a bit into the room. This is a rear ported speaker so it won't like sitting up against the wall.

As far as this speaker being expensive, this is still a DIY project and it uses the same drivers you have in your original project. The crossover is not very complex so all in all I think this would be a very affordable solution that will voice very well with your mains.