DIY Rocket 850 Sig Ninja Elite w/ No Rez - How-To w/ Photos

[James1005]

For you Ivan...

Photo #1: Illustrates the photo of the speaker to be modified. Pretty isn't it? :biglaugh:

Photo #2: Remove the four 5.25" drivers using a H3 bit (4 screws per driver). Before pulling them out, mark the "top" position of the driver, and note which wire goes to which terminal before desoldering them from the driver terminals. The midrange and tweeter are in their own separate and sealed chamber and they won't be touched, so there's no reason to remove them.

Photo #3: Shows the top of the woofer chamber, along with the 4 wires leading from the XO to the midrange and tweeter, and the thick felt lining the chamber. Cut the 4 wires in front of woofer hole #2 (top is #1, bottom is #4). Rip out all the felt that's to be replaced with No Rez.

Photo #4: Shows the crossover mounted on the left side of the speaker cabinet in front of woofer hole #3, along with some of the leftover felt that's stuck to the dried hot glue. Cut the two wires leading to the binding posts, unscrew the 4 philip's screws holding the XO, and remove the XO.

Photo #5: Shows the stock XO. Overall, a pretty clean layout with all the caps aligned parallel to each other, and the inductors oriented properly to avoid cross-talk. When oriented the same direction, the inductors are spaced well apart.

[James1005]

Photo #1: Peel off only part of the spongy material on the underside of the crossover - just where you need to solder. The spongy material will help dampen the XO against the MDF, even though the XO has plastic standoffs. After removing the spongy material, use an adhesive remover to wipe off any remaining goo/bits of spongy material that are stuck on the soldered terminals of the caps & resistors that you'll be replacing. You don't need to clean all the terminals mind you. Just the ones you'll be working on. If you don't clean them, that stuff will "blend" into your solder joint while it's in a liquid state.

Step 2 (no photo): Now it's time to remove the 5 caps and 1 resistor. Every one of them is secured to the board using hot glue. The Ninja recommends using a hobby knife to slice the glue before trying to desolder each end from the board. I disagree, and use the following method:

- Use the wire cutters and cut (as close as possible to the cap/resistor) one wire.
- Now you can rock back & forth the cap/resistor until it is free from the glue.
- Now desolder the cap/resistor at one end, and use the needlenose pliers to desolder that remaining piece of wire that you cut.
- Do this for all the caps and resistors.

I don't like the Ninja's method because when you use a hobby knife to slice through the glue, you don't always slice through all of it. Likewise, if you're clumsy with the knife....

Photo #2: Hot glue 4 bypass caps to the 6.2uF, 8.2uF, 12uF, and 39uF caps and solder the bypass caps to their respective main cap leads. It's a lot easier to do this now, before you solder the caps onto the XO board. Do not install a bypass cap on the 56uF cap because that bypass cap belongs on the XO board.

Photo #3: Shows the completed XO board. I recommend installing in the following order:

a) 0.1uF bypass cap on the XO board
b) 56uF cap. Hot glue to the XO board before soldering. Be sure to "lean" the cap toward the inductor (see Photo #4 - perpendicular green line added for emphasis) because the cap CANNOT extend beyond the edge of XO board. If it extends beyond the edge, there's no way you'll reinsert the XO board into the cabinet without using a dremel, or other tool, to make the driver holes bigger. I believe Derek Wayland had to do that.
c) 1.5 ohm resistor
d) 39uF cap. Hot glue to the XO board before soldering.
e) 6.2uF cap. Hot glue to the XO board before soldering.
f) 8.2uF cap. Hot glue to the XO board before soldering. DO NOT let the 8.2uF cap extend beyond the edge of the XO board.
g) 12uF cap. Be sure to "float" the 12uF cap (Photo #5 - highlighted w/ green arrow) and hot-glued to the 6.2uF and 8.2uF caps (highlighted w/ yellow arrows) so that all 3 caps don't extend beyond the edge of the XO board. Notice that the Sonicaps are larger than the stock caps so you have to "float" one of the caps.

It's very important to hot glue the parts I mentioned because the XO board is oriented sideways inside the cabinet. This will provide additional stability, instead of relying on just the soldered ends to keep the caps attached to the boards.

[James1005]

For the first time ever, I have to say that I am half disappointed with a Skiing Ninja product. I'll explain later in this post. But for now, the how-to:

1) Before you reinstall the upgraded XO, you have to scrape all the old glue and remaining thick felt from the inside of the cabinet. A good, rigid paint scraper works the best, and (fortunately) there are plenty of woofer holes on the 850 for you to reach to every surface that needs to be scraped. It took me about 15 minutes per speaker.
2) After scraping, wipe everything down to remove any remaining felt pieces, etc.
3) No Rez is just peel-and-stick, and the pieces from the Ninja are numbered, so just follow his instructions (sort of). I've attached the instructions to this post.

Now, having said all of the above, I love 1/2 of the Ninja kit and hate (loathe) the other 1/2.

We'll start with the part(s) I love:
1) 1-2-2 on the left upper chamber and 1-2-2 on the right upper chamber fit pretty well, leaving a 1/4" gap between each piece. This is acceptable.
2) 2-2-2 on the lower right chamber - spot on perfect fit. Excellent.

Here's the part(s) I hate:
Photo #1 (screencap from the Ninja's instructions): The #3 pieces have to be trimmed 1.5" in width as highlighted in red to accommodate the stock XO board. Now I can understand some variation in manufacturing runs, but 1.5" for each piece?

Photo #2 (screencap from the Ninja's instructions): The #4 pieces are not wide enough and leave the areas highlighted in red OPEN AND UNCOVERED. Each #4 piece needs to be 1" wider to even think about "notching" for the ports. I had to use the No Rez trimmed off the #3 pieces to help fill in the gap.

Photo #3 (screencap from the Ninja's instructions): The #5 piece used to line the top of the woofer section is less than 2" wide. How the F*** is such a narrow piece supposed to line the entire top surface of a speaker that houses 5.25" drivers in the front baffle AND the rear baffle is wider than the front? The simple answer is: IT CAN'T. And what the F*** am I supposed to do with piece #6 if you have an 850, and not a 1000? The answer is, for the 850, you have to use both the #5 and #6 pieces to line the top of the woofer section. And they won't line up nicely either. You have to trim them into at least 3-4 separate pieces to cover the area.

Now I can understand some variation in the cabinets causing pieces to not fit nicely. That's fine. But, it would have been nice for the pieces to have been too large, and require some trimming to make it fit. That's called "being conservative". It isn't very nice to provide instructions to trim pieces that are already too small. That's called "being skimpy".

3/20/11 UPDATE: Per the latter posts in this thread, Mr. & Mrs. Ninja did send me replacement No Rez pieces to correct the above deficiencies. No problems now. See 4th photo.

[James1005]

Now that you've installed No Rez into the speaker, it's time to put everything back together.

Photo 1: You can solder the 4 wires leading to the midrange and tweeter back to the XO board before putting the XO board back into the cabinet. That's assuming that you (a) cut the wires in front of woofer hole #2 to leave enough slack, and (b) that you installed the caps per my directions so that you can actually slide the XO board back in. :D Try sliding the XO board back in first. This photo shows the 4 wires soldered, and shrink wrap surrounding the solder joint. After doing these 4 wires, insert the XO board and resolder the two wires from the XO board leading to the binding posts.

Photo 2: Shows the XO board reinstalled into the cabinet.

Photo 3: Shows some of the leftover thick felt that's used to cover the XO board. I used Velcro strips to secure the felt, but hot glue works too (assuming of course that your hot glue gun is small enough to fit into the speaker cabinet (mine wasn't).

Now reconnect the wires to the drivers, and screw the drivers back in, and you're (finally) done! Don't forget the "Skiing Ninja" sticker on the back. :woo:

[USSOCOM]

Wow, those cabinets DO look good, Bryant!
Have you listened to them again for tuning your ears for the "before and after" sound test?
I guess I will never know what they sounded like before...

[James1005]

Wow, those cabinets DO look good, Bryant!
Have you listened to them again for tuning your ears for the "before and after" sound test?
I guess I will never know what they sounded like before...

Nope. Haven't even finished speaker #1 yet.

[brh986]

This is what I had to do, to get mine to fit in... :-(



Because of the CAP at the top left was hanging over the board some and I had no room to push it in...

[James1005]

Because of the CAP at the top left was hanging over the board some and I had no room to push it in...

Yep. That's exactly why you "lean" the 56uF cap, and you "float" the 12uF cap on top of the 6.2uF and 8.2uF caps. I noticed what a tight squeeze, with the smaller stock caps, it was when pulling the XO board out so I knew I had to leave things reasonably compact.

[brh986]

I agree, but I had the Ninja build mine for me, so I had to deal with what I got. I might have been able to de-solder and modify, but I really didn't have the necessary materials AND I was WAY to anxious! :D

[ben9732]

I had my own board width issues when I did my Refs .... along with NoRez needing some alternate sizing. Most of the NoRez was fine though.

I did my own board layout, different then what Sean designed. The other thing I did was not use hot glue, but wire tied EVERYTHING. This allows you some leeway if you have to massage something when bring the board into the cabinet, and makes it easier if down the road you want to play with other caps, etc.

[James1005]

I agree, but I had the Ninja build mine for me, so I had to deal with what I got. I might have been able to de-solder and modify, but I really didn't have the necessary materials AND I was WAY to anxious! :D

I know Sean built them for you. I'm actually very surprised at this oversight (along with my disappointment about the No Rez kit). You can see, even on the ELT525M Elite XO upgrade that Sean "floats" the 12uF cap so that the cap won't be pressing against the side of a cabinet that's lined with No Rez.

[The Ninja]

Bryant,

We've sold tons of 850 and 1000 upgrade kits and this is the first we're hearing of any network (Derek's) or NoRez fitting issues. Please shoot an email to [email protected] with your thoughts so we can figure out what is going on. We're happy to re-do anything you need.

Thanks,

Sean

[James1005]

Thanks Sean. I'll shoot an e-mail to Mrs. Ninja. As an example, here's a photo of two #4 pieces. Way too narrow to cover the rear baffle. What's in between are the leftover pieces that I had trimmed from the #3 pieces.

[ben9732]

Even your side panels in the first picture are a little shy.

[The Ninja]

This is troubling for sure. We'll get to the bottom of this I promise.