Topic: W.T.F. is an 'N-Box'?

[willndmb]

it still blows my mind that of all the smart diy people on here no one has figured out a akg set up beside jk

[darktrain]

it still blows my mind that of all the smart diy people on here no one has figured out a akg set up beside jk

Has anyone hit up Jon at Naiant on this?

[NOLAfishwater]

it still blows my mind that of all the smart diy people on here no one has figured out a akg set up beside jk

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

[sparkey]

The 480's sound so nice, some one needs to do it.

it still blows my mind that of all the smart diy people on here no one has figured out a akg set up beside jk

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

[page]

The 480's sound so nice, some one needs to do it.

it still blows my mind that of all the smart diy people on here no one has figured out a akg set up beside jk

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

Bingo. I think part of the problem is incentive. From what I gather (and I could be wrong about it). Jaime figured out that the CMR setup was a possibility, and was motivated enough to seek out help from Church to get a battery box made. I'm assuming that he paid a small premium for the one-off, plus the man hours in research. At that point, it was proving that a box was somewhat commercially viable. I think it worked out that Jon's box designs are generally cheap to get changed around to accomodate another configuration and thus a mass producable tinybox came into fashion.

I don't see anyone doing the massive research and legwork on the AKG side. JK did a box cause he saw a potential for profit, Jaime did it cause he really wanted a small setup. Both had incentives that drove them whether $ or otherwise. I just don't see anyone with that sort of incentive and drive on the AKG end doing it. 

sparkey; 5 yd penalty for bad quoting form. repeat first down. 

[it-goes-to-eleven]

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

Since when did ripping off someone else's design become acceptable?

I'm going to guess that Jon's morals wouldn't allow that.

[darktrain]

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

Since when did ripping off someone else's design become acceptable?

I'm going to guess that Jon's morals wouldn't allow that.

Why would it be ripping it off? People want it and they aren't made anymore from what i gather, I don't see an issue with that unless there is a patent or something like that.

[sparkey]

sparkey; 5 yd penalty for bad quoting form. repeat first down. 

We can add that to a laundry list of ts.com transgressions :-)

[NOLAfishwater]

someone should just send their JK setup to mshilarious (jon w/ naiant) and let him reverse engineer it. this is assuming there is a demand for the product.

Since when did ripping off someone else's design become acceptable?

I'm going to guess that Jon's morals wouldn't allow that.

if someone wants to invest their own time and money to improve on a design and bring products to the marketplace, I am all for it.

[Chuck]

I've always thought that the real money in pursuing this is to get the cable and active electronics figured out, then adapt it to work with various brands of mics. Us AKG guys have been wanting to do it for a while, but if we can get the cable and active part of the design figured out, we could machine connectors that could make it usable for other brands of microphones as well.

[OFOTD]

I'll just add my $.02 on this one.

I got fairly far a few years ago with the AKG project.  Good bit of information both from techinical documents as well as product info. 

The single thing that killed this project was that the people who I approached with the idea ALL wanted 'the' cut of the pie.   One electrical design person wanted the profits or the hardware person wanted the profits.    One person was willing to share info but another was not.   Back and forth, back and forth.

The last thing that stood in the way was finances.  At the time I had more than enough people lined up to finance the project.   

re: when did ripping off someone else's design become acceptable?         About one second after the very first invention was created.    Chris Church isn't doing anything that hasn't been done before, Kwon ripped the Schoeps bar, any of our preamp builders aren't doing anything revolutionary.  What about our cable makers and the chopped XLR's?     

The JKLabs products seem to have been abandoned by their creator/builder.  Not one communication from him in years.   It would be different if Jon were still around but he's not.    I tried to buy the last JKLabs box in the YS a few weeks ago for the express purpose of having someone reverse engineer it.  If the seller wasn't adamant about keeping a premium price then I have no doubt it would be getting taken apart as we speak.


Anyone wanting to restart the AKG Project let me know. I still have all of the info and would love nothing more to see this project through.  But as I said in a previous thread I ain't holding my breath anymore.   Too many have committed only to have disappeared. 

[Chuck]

I for one am still interested. I'd be willing to pay money upfront if needed.
I have no desire to make a profit on this.

When Neil was working on this, I sent him my C-480 bodies. He wanted to see if there was a way to make them work "actively" like you can do with the C-460s. He found that the C-480 circuit board had a provision for making them "active" with the addition of one resistor. There may have been more to it that he didn't tell me...
That's when I got excited about this.

Like OFOTD, I am willing to share any info I have on this to move the AKG Actives Project forward.

Edit to add...

Maybe we should move this discussion back to the AKG Actives Thread?

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=93559.150

[illconditioned]

The electronics involved really aren't a mystery, or particuarly difficult, especially given that AKG has published the schematics.  This is a problem of machine work, not electronic design.  I don't do hardly any machine work, and I'm mainly only interested in my own microphones.

Dear Jon,

I think the simpest design would be as follows:
- small battery box, includes standard capacitors, but also polarization circuit to get 60V.
- the cable would be two wires, one for each capsule, joined in a 4pin miniXLRf, mates with a 4pin miniXLRM at your battery box.  Each cable is: ground, audio, and +polarize.  4pin miniXLR is: ground, L, R, +polarize.
- hard wire (solder and epoxy behind) to a pair of CK6x capsules.  Each capsule would have the FET from a Church, AT853, or similar capsule.  Hardwire/solder to capsule, then put brass mesh shield, finish with epoxy backing.

I think that is a minimal setup.  If it worked, perhaps the mech. people would be inspired to build something that would screw to the capsules.

  Richard

[johnw]

Just got this from Jerry Bruck.  $62 each isn't bad at all. 

Who is the best to talk to about swapping mine out?  I wasn't happy with the condition of the threads on the connectors of the N-Box I recently bought....

> Dear Josh,
>
> The piece you need is the Schoeps SCH 360, at $62.00 each.
>
> Jerry Bruck
>

What is the part number for the pieces on to which you screw the capsules?

I'd email Nick re: switching those out. He is the one who built those cables and would be the only person I'd trust to service them.

[stevetoney]

I'm hoping this gets done to keep this flea-bitten old thread from burping up every sixth month.