[Elecraft] Excellent External Speaker for K2

[Dave Andrus]

I fully agree.

One other thing to check is to make sure that any clipped component  
leads didn't somehow get attracted to the speaker's magnet, lodging on  
the top or bottom of the speaker cone near the center (the voicecoil  
area).  You'd be surprised at what a common problem this can be for  
kit builders, and can happen either during a build or later when you  
open your box.

Even a single clipped component wire, stuck in the right spot (and  
believe me, they all stick in the right spot!) can cause lots of  
"buzzy" sound.

Also make sure that the speaker didn't get torqued down too tightly on  
one or more corners, causing distortion of the cone and pulling the  
voicecoil off center.  This can cause horrendous sound as the  
voicecoil drags against the magnet or basket.

Oh, and FWIW, I like to use an old Radio Shack "hi-fi" full-range  
speaker with a 6 inch woofer and small paper cone tweeter (about a 12"  
x 8" wood box).  I built a simple mixer/amplifier that allows me to  
mix and control audio from all the rigs in my shack to this single  
speaker.  The sound is much fuller when you really want good audio.   
You can always narrow down the effective bandwidth in each  
transceiver's audio or DSP filtering.  You'd be surprised at how good  
many of these cheap low-fi "hi-fi" speakers can be for great  
communications audio, and the price is usually very low.  I just  
picked up a similar pair of Radio Shack's "Presidian" line bookshelf  
stereo speakers with similar specs to mine, in black boxes, for US 
$14.95 for a new pair--on closeout sale.  Now I have one for me to  
keep, and one to pass on to a friend!

73,

Dave K7DAA
http://www.k7daa.com

On Mar 21, 2008, at 4:02 AM, Peter PA0PJE wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I can only agree with Roelof. All K2 internal loudspeakers I have  
> heard sounded great. But beware that it is not ill treated before it  
> was fixed to the top cover. Check that the speaker's voice coil  
> moves freely in the gap and that neither the rim nor the magnet has  
> been deformed. A stuck voice coil renders the best loudspeaker  
> useless.
>
> best 73,
> Peter PA0PJE
>
> Roelof Bakker schreef:
>> Hi,
>>>> The internal speaker on the K2 is so bad, it is almost unusable.<<
>> I never used a speaker on CW, but my K2's internal speaker sounds  
>> so good that it is on most of the time.
>> So something is probably amiss with yours!
>> 73,
>> Roelof, pa0rdt
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