Categories
projects

Altec 846B Valencia renovation

Altec Valen­cia 846B after renovation.

Over the past months I have ren­o­vat­ed a pair of Altec 846B Valen­cia speak­ers. They looked like you would expect from a 50+ year old speak­er that has seen one or the oth­er house par­ty in its life­time: beat up. When I went to pick them up I noticed some­thing way worse, though: both 806–8A com­pres­sion horn dri­vers didn’t work, as in: at all.

Every­thing else looked in rel­a­tive­ly good shape and untouched, so I decid­ed to go all in on the ren­o­va­tion and use these as my main speakers.


Com­po­nents

  • 806–8A com­pres­sion drivers
  • 811B horns
  • 416–8Z (416–8A) alni­co woofers
  • N800-8K divid­ing net­work, lat­er sub­sti­tut­ed with
  • N1201-8A divid­ing network

New crossover based on the N1201-8A frequency dividing network.
New exter­nal crossover based on the N1201-8A fre­quen­cy divid­ing network.

More details about every­thing to fol­low soon. In the mean­while check #altec7188 on Insta­gram and the videos below ↓

Categories
book design

Futuring Human Mobility

Hans Georg Näder, Futur­ing Human Mobility

Categories
projects

Speaker Stand Architecture

Some time in the fall of 2019 I decid­ed I need­ed stands for my new Klip­sch book­shelf speak­ers. After check­ing the options, I quick­ly came to the con­clu­sion: “Nah, I can do this myself for cheap” (spoil­er alert: I was wrong, at least about the lat­ter part) – and thus laid down the foun­da­tion for what would be an unex­pect­ed­ly tedious yet most­ly excit­ing path I was stum­bling along on. I’ve learned a lot about wood­work­ing, as well. Here are some insights about the thoughts behind the stands, as well as how I actu­al­ly built them.

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions and thoughts
The two speak­er stands are dif­fer­ent, but fol­low the same idea and mate­r­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions: A heavy black­ened steel frame, joined togeth­er by glass fibre enforced, sol­id epoxy-filled joints (ide­al would have been weld­ing). A cus­tom poured con­crete base sits in the bot­tom of the frame to add actu­al weight with­out adding visu­al weight. Adjustable damp­en­ing feet for bet­ter acoustic iso­la­tion are screwed right into the steel frame. The plat­form on which the speak­ers sit is made from sol­id 4 cm thick wal­nut. Black acrylic glass hides a nar­row space under the wal­nut, into which lights are installed to illu­mi­nate the mere­ly dec­o­ra­tive wood­en side pan­els of the two speak­er stands, which are also their main difference.

Archi­tec­tur­al side pan­els
The side panels/walls are inspired by Japan­ese lat­tice work and archi­tec­ture. For speak­er stand “Type EZ” the walls are built in a straight­for­ward and easy grid. “Type KK” is heav­i­ly inspired by Japan­ese archi­tect Ken­go Kuma’s Sun­ny Hills build­ing façade, a com­plex array of 3‑dimensionally con­nect­ed wood beams. This right here was the real chal­lenge and labor – from fig­ur­ing out how to do it to cut­ting hun­dreds of wood joints at sub-mil­lime­ter pre­ci­sion, with hand tools.

A very ama­teur­ish lo-fi video I made on my phone, show­ing “Type KK”

Detail photos

Here are some detail views of the speak­er stands. For those who real­ly want to dig in, some work-in-progress footage of the con­struc­tion fol­lows fur­ther down.

Planning and construction

After lots of plan­ning and try­ing to wrap my head around how Ken­go Kuma’s Sun­ny Hills façade is actu­al­ly built up (archi­tec­tur­al plans from Arch­dai­ly helped), con­struc­tion on the stands start­ed on 31 Jan­u­ary 2020. Here are some work-in-progress pho­tos – more info is in the pho­to captions.

Categories
album photography

Harz

Categories
album photography

untitled album Japan

Categories
album photography

Summer Escape 2016

Categories
book design

Imagining Everyday Life

Tina Campt, Mar­i­anne Hirsch, Gil Hochberg und Bri­an Wal­lis (eds.)
Imag­in­ing Every­day Life: Engage­ments with Ver­nac­u­lar Pho­tog­ra­phy
Stei­dl, co-pub­lished with The Walther Collection.

Design by Hol­ger Fer­oudj and 

“Pho­tog­ra­phy Cat­a­logue of the Year Prize” award­ed in 2020 by Paris Pho­to and Aper­ture Foundation

Categories
book design

Sanlé Sory, “Volta Photo”

All pho­tos cour­tesy of Steidl.

Categories
book design

Harf Zimmermann, “Hufelandstraße 1055 Berlin”

All pho­tos cour­tesy of Steidl.

Categories
book design

Harold Edgerton, “Seeing the Unseen”

All pho­tos cour­tesy of Steidl.