Terminal leads weaved into spider

[HmoobVaj 10+ year member]

Many of the older subs have the leads going into the side of the cone and then down to the voice coil. I notice most of the newer subs now have the leads weaved into the spider. Is there an advantage of doing it this way?

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[Trey803 5,000+ posts]

no tinsel slap

 

[Seattle206 10+ year member]

"woven"...

 

[audioarsonal 10+ year member]

Many of the older subs have the leads going into the side of the cone and then down to the voice coil. I notice most of the newer subs now have the leads weaved into the spider. Is there an advantage of doing it this way?

All leads run into the cone under the cap where they connect to the coil.The woven ones of nowadays are are woven into the spiders to reduce tensil slap but still run under the dust cap and connect to the coils just like the older ones.

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

I've heard there are reliability issues with woven tinsels used in SPL applications, but for non-bassheads like me that don't abuse equipment regularly, I don't think there's any problem with it. I know the e12a.22 I've had for almost five years hasn't had any problems yet with them.

 

[hoss 5,000+ posts]

I've heard there are reliability issues with woven tinsels used in SPL applications, but for non-bassheads like me that don't abuse equipment regularly, I don't think there's any problem with it. I know the e12a.22 I've had for almost five years hasn't had any problems yet with them.

whats the point if you arent abusing the stiff regularly? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/confused.gif.e820e0216602db4765798ac39d28caa9.gif

some of the equipment with the woven leads had some issues, iirc, it wasnt all of it, but personally i think the potential is still there.

but thats not the only flaw in the design... the woven leads affects the mechanical integrity of the suspension, giving non-uniform load dispersion around the spider. this, and the obvius mechanical failure threat, is why most companies are shying away from the woven leads. the damages far outweigh the benefit.

 

[newusername 10+ year member]

Woven leads can burn or tear through spiders but do prevent tinsel slap.

A "free" lead can have tinsel slap, which can be avoided through careful routing of the lead with respect to cone geometry and minimized by the addition of a felt pad on the bottom of the cone.

A stitched or tied down lead is a good compromise between the two...the lead is stitched into the spider at two or three spots. This minimizes lead slap but keeps the leads out of the spider (for the most part).

 

[snoopdan 5,000+ posts]

some of the equipment with the woven leads had some issues, iirc, it wasnt all of it, but personally i think the potential is still there.

Of the drivers that ive observed personally with woven lead damage, it was mainly because the lack of proper suspension design in the first place. IE: only having two spiders when the particular driver really needed four.

 

[tommyk90 5,000+ posts]

DD has been using integrated tinsel leads forever and I don't see many (if any at all) complaining about them, and they are probably more widely abused than any other sub out there.

It just has to be properly implemented, just like anything else.

 

[Haunz 10+ year member]

Integrated leads are nice and I'm skeptical that 'non-uniform load dispersion' is really an issue...

Felt pads to reduce slap are ghey, and IMO are not necessary....

I use insulated copper lead for all of my recones... with a twist... //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[Electrodynamic 10+ year member]

Integrated leads are nice and I'm skeptical that 'non-uniform load dispersion' is really an issue...

In the extreme analyzation of spider linearity, woven-in leads do affect how a spider reacts. Imagine little parts of the spider being stiffer than the rest of the spider. That's what happens when you have little slits of aluminum or copper going through your spider fabric. Not to mention that woven-in leads can be problematic with high-power applications (not knocking DD as mentioned above, just going off of our previous experience). There's many reasons we shy'd away from them many many years ago.

Felt pads to reduce slap are ghey, and IMO are not necessary....

They're actually quite affective in reducing lead slap. It's an inexpensive way to eliminate lead slap with a design that would have otherwise had an issue. Our previous generation of Mag's used the felt pads and the pads did an excellent job of eliminating lead slap. For our new drivers we will use woven-on (not woven-in) tinsel leads to eliminate tinsel slap. It has proven to be the best of both worlds - it eliminates slap while allowing the spider to operate more freely.

 

[02parkave 5,000+ posts]

All leads run into the cone under the cap where they connect to the coil.The woven ones of nowadays are are woven into the spiders to reduce tensil slap but still run under the dust cap and connect to the coils just like the older ones.

not true.

i can name several subs right now that dont go that way. some merely tie into the coil, then are laid down next to it.

 

[yunvme666 10+ year member]

i personaly would rather have woven that regular tinsels, i had to many problems b4 with them.....

 

[sundownz Pro Seller]

Well designed regular leads work very well -- eg: the most recent SI Mag. The Mag has very large amounts of throw and I've *never* had one slap. As far as I know there haven't been any lead issues either.

I am a big fan of the "tied down" lead, hence why I went with that style for my Nightshade SPL sub. DDs method works well too as they don't interfere with the integrity of the spider as they go in between layers and don't weave into the material itself.

I just don't care for leads that are actually woven into the spider material (TC Sounds) or leads that are stuck THROUGH the spider (Konaki and some other Chinese built subs).

 

[SPL140.2 5,000+ posts]

Well designed regular leads work very well -- eg: the most recent SI Mag. The Mag has very large amounts of throw and I've *never* had one slap. As far as I know there haven't been any lead issues either.
I am a big fan of the "tied down" lead, hence why I went with that style for my Nightshade SPL sub. DDs method works well too as they don't interfere with the integrity of the spider as they go in between layers and don't weave into the material itself.

I just don't care for leads that are actually woven into the spider material (TC Sounds) or leads that are stuck THROUGH the spider (Konaki and some other Chinese built subs).

send me pics of the Nightshades //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

egg

 

[yunvme666 10+ year member]

Well designed regular leads work very well -- eg: the most recent SI Mag. The Mag has very large amounts of throw and I've *never* had one slap. As far as I know there haven't been any lead issues either.
I am a big fan of the "tied down" lead, hence why I went with that style for my Nightshade SPL sub. DDs method works well too as they don't interfere with the integrity of the spider as they go in between layers and don't weave into the material itself.

I just don't care for leads that are actually woven into the spider material (TC Sounds) or leads that are stuck THROUGH the spider (Konaki and some other Chinese built subs).

its been atleast 5-6 yrs since i played with anything of my own that had regular tinsels , i can imagine they had to have gotten better by now....

ive had one 3515 a few yrs ago burnt up a tinsel with a old dirty ass d2 clipped to far...lol... but then after heard others had the same problem who knows..... **** changes day to day theres always gonna be somethin new, if just thicker tinsels, diff routing etc.....

im not biased to just dd subs, lately ive almost felt a need to try somethin different again and all those other subs dont have tinsels like dd's..... tsns , lms and a few other come to mind.....

 

[Haunz 10+ year member]

In the extreme analyzation of spider linearity, woven-in leads do affect how a spider reacts. Imagine little parts of the spider being stiffer than the rest of the spider. That's what happens when you have little slits of aluminum or copper going through your spider fabric. Not to mention that woven-in leads can be problematic with high-power applications (not knocking DD as mentioned above, just going off of our previous experience). There's many reasons we shy'd away from them many many years ago.


They're actually quite affective in reducing lead slap. It's an inexpensive way to eliminate lead slap with a design that would have otherwise had an issue. Our previous generation of Mag's used the felt pads and the pads did an excellent job of eliminating lead slap. For our new drivers we will use woven-on (not woven-in) tinsel leads to eliminate tinsel slap. It has proven to be the best of both worlds - it eliminates slap while allowing the spider to operate more freely.

As sundownz posted properly laid out regular style leads will not give slap... so adding felt is really unnecessary as far as I am concearned....

As far as integrated leads go... feel free to post the KMS curve of a TC sounds spider with and without the leads..... I sincearly doubt it's affected to any significant degree over the useable stroke of the drivers......

In my own experience the spiders I use with integrated leads have never measured differently then their identical counterparts without leads when finding T/S paramaters.....

 

[budahbuddy803 10+ year member]

if you have dvc then how is it non-uniform? Seems to be balanced to me?

 

[snfsh79077 10+ year member]

it really depends on the brand and how well its made. however, i do prefer woven in. treo's are woven and i havent heard any problems about theirs nor have i had any.

 

[JohnEJanowitz 10+ year member]

There are several ways to do leads and all have to be weighed to determine which is best. I posted somewhere on this recently but can't find it so I'll give my thoughts again.

The traditional lead wires can be effective depending on the situation, type of tinsel lead, where it exits the cone, and how much excursion the driver has. For lower excursion drivers it works just fine almost any way you do it as long as they are the right length. For higher excursion drivers when we do standard tinsel leads we use a thick braided lead, then twist them in a certain way that they swing out to the side and loop just before going to the terminal. Someone else mentioned the twist also. It works good, but can't be used in all situations.

With an aluminum cone, you simply can't go through the cone. It's conductive and you'd short out the leads before you ever got to the coil. Options then are for woven in, like TC used, and sewn on. The woven in has a few issues up front. First, the lead is in the cloth, prior to the cloth being formed into a spider. This creates a couple problems. The cloth is formed by heat, and heating up the lead wire will make it much more brittle in the future. The leads also get stretched as the cloth is formed into the spider because the diameter of the lead is more than the thickness of the cloth. This means the tinsel is stretched and when pressure of the mold is let go it compresses back deforming the spider shape. It doesn't always deform the same and creates unequal lateral force on coil which can make it more likely to rock sideways. Also the leads get pinched with more pressure at the apex of the corrugations making them even stiffer at that point and giving them a natural "breaking point". With any rigid piece of metal, which the lead becomes, you bend back and forth and eventually it will break, or in this case the tinsel lead frays. As it frays and you apply high current it will arc, heating more, fraying more, arcing more, and can melt, burn, or even start the spider on fire. Then there is also the supply issue as nobody in the US makes spiders this way.

The next option is to sew on the lead wires. We have chosen to do this. The problem again was supply. Nobody in the US did this either. I wanted my spiders all done in the US to control the quality. I talked one vendor into doing this and they bought equipment for it. We then went and decided to get a sewing machine we could do this with in house also as we have spiders from other vendors as well. The leads are sewn, then we can pull them to give the right amount of slack to allow for full excursion and to make sure no additional lateral force is put on the coil. The drawback to this is simply cost in labor to do this. It seems to be the best option though as you don't get lead slap, no extra forces put on the coil, the leads stay fully flexible, and you make the connection without going through the cone.

Someone else commented about woofers that only had 2 spiders that should have had 4. There are only two reasons for multiple spiders in a properly designed woofer. To get different compliance values to raise the suspension stiffness, and to support an EXTREMELY heavy coil so it doesn't rock side to side. In the second case there must be space between the spiders to have much effect. Stacking 4 spiders together IMO is pointless when a single spider of equal stiffness to those 4 is much more practical. It is lower cost, and stacking multiples directly together causes them to wear on each other and shortens the life of the driver.

To support a normal coil from rocking, simply putting space between the spider and coil as they glue to the VC form is the best option. For an easy illustration, take a 4ft 2x4. Hold it at one end with both of your hands touching each other and try to keep the other end from dipping and it's hard to do. No matter how strongly you hold you just can't support the whole piece easily from one end. Now move your hands so they are 2ft apart and you can hold it just fine. This is the same thing with VC's in a woofer. Most people expect to glue the cone and spider to the VC at the same spot, far up on the top of the form. All the weight is on the other end though that isn't being supported. Moving the cone and spider even 1/2" apart greatly helps to distribute the load. If doing multiple spiders, they should be evenly spaced to distribute the load between them.

John