NS v.3 Historic Post
I wrote this back in 2014 regarding the NS v.3 - originally it had a super flexible sleeve system. We ended up making them all the "standard" gap after the sleeves failed to catch on. But it was a SUPER COOL thing.
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The Sundown Nightshade v.3 (commonly known as NS v.3): The third generation of our world famous Nightshade line.
The first generation Nightshade was launched in 2008 and was actually our first subwoofer line on the market as we started out as an amplifier company. It was our answer to the requests by Team Sundown to have a woofer to mate with their amplifier in the lanes. The first generation Nightshade was on the market for about 2 years; during which time we learned a great deal from first-hand experience in the SPL lanes as well as feedback from our Team – all of which lead to the next generation.
The second generation Nightshade came about in 2010 and provided massive improvements in terms of thermal power handling thanks to its much larger coil and its incorporation of a version of our cooling system developed for the SA series. It also provided gains in terms of motor force compared to the first generation and was the first “big boy” motor we sold to incorporate shorting rings. To this day NS v.2 motors are highly sought after thanks to their incredible performance in both daily systems and in the SPL lanes. Many of our Team Sundown competitors still run them to this day. These were on the market for about a year and a half; up until we launched the Z v.3 line. The Z v.3 was close enough in terms of performance that I wanted to push the Nightshade to the next level… so starting in 2011 I began to work on the third generation of the Nightshade line.
I wanted the third generation Nightshade to represent something really special for both Sundown Audio and our customers. I started the development process by looking back to our “Monster” motor prototype from 2008 (which I discussed briefly in the SA series blurb last week) – which was our first and only motor with a 250mm diameter magnet assembly. From there I added in all of the additional knowledge I gathered from the NS series and Z series development (all the way up to Z v.4 and X). So the NS v.3 incorporates several key technologies from these drivers :
1) Interlocked shorting ring into back and top plates from Z v.3 / v.4 – prevents any slipping or shifting of the back and top plates as well as the ring itself.
2) Improved version of the ventilation system from the NS v.2
3) Hyper-extended pole piece developed for the X and Z v.4 which increases linear throw and prevents damage to the coil when paired with the new suspension platforms.
Of course I didn’t stop with simply incorporating old ideas. We developed several new ideas and design aspects for the NS v.3 – some of which are new to OUR line specifically; some of which are entirely new to the industry.
1) The NS v.3 features the longest coil of any speaker we have made to date. We leveraged the advantage of the huge motor of the NS v.3 (quad stack 250mm magnets) so we could take advantage of a 4-layer coil – the 4-layer coil keeps the mass and inductance down while allowing us to use such a long coil – and the huge motor allows us to still achieve the level of BL we desired.
2) The sleeve system: This is something ALL new that nobody has done before. Every NS v.3 starts out with a HUGE gap before being “sleeved out” as we call it.
2a) The first part of the sleeve system is the “pole sleeve” – we currently offer 4 versions of this sleeve and this one is permanent and epoxied into place with a high temperature 3M epoxy. We offer two thicknesses of aluminum and two thicknesses of steel sleeves; the aluminum sleeves are for decreased inductance and the steel are for maximum BL. The “stock” sleeve is the thinner of the two steel sleeves.
2b) The second part of the sleeve system is the “gap OD sleeve” – we currently offer 5 different version of this sleeve or the motor can be left “open” for the fattest coil option for a full 92.5mm gap (so six total options). This sleeve CAN be removed and changed later – as long as the motor is shipped into us to be demagnetized. The “stock” sleeve is for an 85.2mm gap OD – we have various other sleeves to allow the use of ANY other 3” coil we have offered in the past. We can use NS v.1, v.2, Z v.2, Z v.3, Z v.4, or X coils in the motor with the right sleeve. We can also develop any other type of coil we want in the future.
You will notice I said “currently offer” as we are free to make as many other variations as we want in the future… that is in addition to the ~45 possible gap combinations already available. So the NS v.3 motor can be tailored for pretty much ANY application you can imagine. It is truly a unique and essentially “future proof” motor. The only real limitation is the permanence of the pole sleeve. For most typical applications the “stock” setup is ideal – which is why we made it stock – but we wanted to be sure we were ready for any other possible application of these motors.
Once our “SPL” cones and spiders are completed there will not be any application we cannot build an NS v.3 to excel in (these parts will be available in the summer). We can then build them for anything from reference SQ to musical average SPL to raw burp SPL. I and the entire crew here at Sundown are very proud to offer this incredible driver to our customers… full production levels will be available by May for all customers. We are making sure that all of the sleeve variations are in stock and that our build list is a bit more current before doing the full release.