Repurpose Sierra 2 Seas Curv woofers after EX Upgrade?

[rockhound76s]

This may be a silly, long shot notion, but thought I'd ask....

I'm contemplating upgrading my Sierra 2 RAALs with the new EX woofers. Seems a shame to discard the original woofers. I thought it might be a fun DIY project to repurpose them into a custom surround speaker (or Atmos height speaker).

Has anyone done this?

I should add, I'm totally inexperienced with speaker building, but am fairly handy with tools and such. I wasn't sure if the custom woofer would easily conform to speaker building kits I've seen on Parts Express or the like, or if this would be a costly custom job that isn't worth the effort.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[curtis]

Any thoughts appreciated.

To do it right, you would need a proper tweeter, matched crossover network, and a correctly size cabinet.

Ascend doesn't sell the parts, but you might be able to come close in sourcing the consumer version of the RAAL tweeter, you could try and build a box to mimic the Sierra-1/2 enclosure, and essentially just build a set of Sierra-2 clones if you could find the secret sauce that goes into the crossover.

[djDANNY]

Probably not in the cards but I would personally be interested if Dave was able to put together a flat pack with a suitable tweeter and crossover that someone could reuse the original Curv driver and get a second set of speakers out of it when upgrading, and a semi-DIY kit like that would make it a cheaper and more cost effective option.

[rockhound76s]

To do it right, you would need a proper tweeter, matched crossover network, and a correctly size cabinet.

Ascend doesn't sell the parts, but you might be able to come close in sourcing the consumer version of the RAAL tweeter, you could try and build a box to mimic the Sierra-1/2 enclosure, and essentially just build a set of Sierra-2 clones if you could find the secret sauce that goes into the crossover.

I see. So, possible with some careful planning, parts sourcing and woodworking, but likely difficult to optimize without knowing the finer details of the crossover specs. Was hoping (probably a little too optimistically), that it would be simpler.

Probably not in the cards but I would personally be interested if Dave was able to put together a flat pack with a suitable tweeter and crossover that someone could reuse the original Curv driver and get a second set of speakers out of it when upgrading, and a semi-DIY kit like that would make it a cheaper and more cost effective option.

^This! That would be ideal! Or how about a forum community built around this idea? Surely there are folks with spare NrT tweeters and crossovers from their own Sierra upgrades that they'd like to unload or trade among members here. Maybe someone with woodworking chops could even come up with a cabinet solution.

Wishful thinking I suppose. I'll probably just table the idea for now. Would love to see some creative speaker build threads if someone does do something cool with these extra parts.

[curtis]

Probably not in the cards but I would personally be interested if Dave was able to put together a flat pack with a suitable tweeter and crossover that someone could reuse the original Curv driver and get a second set of speakers out of it when upgrading, and a semi-DIY kit like that would make it a cheaper and more cost effective option.

While it would be nice, it would be a lot of overhead to support customers with an offering like this.

[Pogre]

I've thought about this before too. I'd be way more inclined to do the EX upgrade if I knew I could repurpose the woofer.

Are there specs available? If so it might be possible to design a crossover and source a tweeter that plays well with it.

[djDANNY]

Maybe Dave can design a Sierra-2 Duo where he can just sell the cabinet, tweeter, and crossover and then people that upgrade their L-R Sierra 2’s can just plop the old curv woofers into that cabinet. And sell a fully assembled version of the speaker as well to make it more cost effective for him to design, produce, and stock.

[curtis]

The support overhead for a DIY product would not be worth it to Ascend.

[davef]

Maybe Dave can design a Sierra-2 Duo where he can just sell the cabinet, tweeter, and crossover and then people that upgrade their L-R Sierra 2’s can just plop the old curv woofers into that cabinet. And sell a fully assembled version of the speaker as well to make it more cost effective for him to design, produce, and stock.

This is an interesting idea but it isn't something that a manufacturer could offer. A speaker that is, for example, sold without the woofers is not something we could offer a proper warranty on and certainly not a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. I would almost guarantee that for the difference in price between this speaker with the woofers vs without the woofers, nearly everyone would choose the fully assembled version just to have the proper warranty and 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

[djDANNY]

Well I was thinking there would be two options. First is that Ascend sells the fully assembled speaker with all the drivers. Second is that it is offered as part of an upgrade package for customers looking to do a 2 to 2EX upgrade and will have two 6” curv woofers left over. That way Ascend isn’t developing a speaker only for people looking to upgrade their 2’s to 2EX, but it also gives people in that boat a choice to be able to get two upgrades (2 to 2EX and center channel upgrade) in one package. Honestly if you offered it without warranty I would be interested. It’s not like the 2EX upgrade comes with a warranty anyways and passive speakers I imagine rarely run into warranty issues (I could be wrong on that one though).