MR FX Saber battery pack and speaker combo

[Zhi-don]

Question: Why is the sound much louder in the MR sabers than in other sabers even if the same sound board is used? Is it because there is an echo chamber in the battery pack?

Next question: Why does the Mace Windu saber use 6 batteries and the Obi-wan only uses 3?

This may be a dumb question, but I can never get the sound loud enough. Even if I use the same speakers.

[xwingband]

There is a limited echo chamber of sorts. So that'll do it. I always add in at least an inch for resonance.

The Mace has 6AA because it's an EL hold-out. It only uses 4.5V.

[Zhi-don]

What the heck is an EL holdout?

[xwingband]

Well, EL took 9V and they didn't bother to redesign any of the black plastic. It was easier to just slap in an LED board instead of the EL inverter. Kind of lazy...

[Zhi-don]

You mean the Mace Windu uses EL wire?????

[xwingband]

No... I'm saying that MR never got of it's lazy butt and made it an 4.5V 3AA pack. It was easier to set the pack as 4.5V and 6AA instead of redesign a new pack.

The mace was one of the first LED sabers. If you look at those they all were 6AA because so was the earlier EL sabers.

[Zhi-don]

Ok...I get it now. Very stupid and confusing to saber builders.

[james3]

Before Master replicas decided to conserve space they did a series parallel configuration so that the voltage would be 4.5 volts but there would be double the life. This is actually a better setup for the coversions we do but it does take a lot of space.

Like xwing said if you give the space you need to get the sound waves moving you will get a loud hilt. My custom hilt has about an inch and a half to two inches and tuned so it is louder then any standard FX out there.

[Zhi-don]

Can you send me some specs on how you did that?

I can mount the stock speaker inside my custom pommel, but when I had this done by someone else, they epoxied the bottom shut, so no sound could get out.

Thanks.

[james3]

Wow! That sounds like a very durable setup but it just kills the sound travel.

I like to have a small hole or holes in the butt, I then mount the speaker with hot glue or similar to the base of the battery pack.



I use the electrical tape to hold the batteries in while I beat the heck out of the neighborhood cats.

For my custom hilt I actually had a d-ring on it and Ambo just drilled a sound hole under the d-ring mount. I removed the original set screw, and turned the butt cap until the sound was at it's loudest.

I could go in to a long rant about that but looking up any diy speaker box will give the same great info.

Hope this helps. I for one only use the sound every once in a while as I find it annoying when my son and I are trying to talk and learn. But when I use the sound I like for it to be loud, clear, and as accurate as possible.