Finally picked up my speakers, they look as cheap as the price indicated.
I decided to reinforce the inside of the cabinet with MDF as I found more woodborer tunnels on the inside of the plywood, this will make it a lot heavier but should help it hold together for another 100 years. just need to find a flat surface and I can glue the sides in,
Have a pretty good idea how to mount the baffle so it is removable, was going to have a two part baffle, part of it glue to the front with a removable insert behind the grille opening, but don't think i'll need to do that.
still need to find grille cloth, but there is no rush as I can fit it any time.
as a side note I still hate MDF, have a respirator now but i'm still a bit itchy from it and it's just not "nice" plywood only in the future, I care even less about the purported "acoustic deadness" of MDF after reading a few threads here.
plenty of room for both 8s
I'm going to paint the whole inside black with a brush instead of a rattlecan to keep the theme going, might even sleeve the speaker cables with brown shoelaces...
I decided to reinforce the inside of the cabinet with MDF as I found more woodborer tunnels on the inside of the plywood, this will make it a lot heavier but should help it hold together for another 100 years. just need to find a flat surface and I can glue the sides in,
Have a pretty good idea how to mount the baffle so it is removable, was going to have a two part baffle, part of it glue to the front with a removable insert behind the grille opening, but don't think i'll need to do that.
still need to find grille cloth, but there is no rush as I can fit it any time.
as a side note I still hate MDF, have a respirator now but i'm still a bit itchy from it and it's just not "nice" plywood only in the future, I care even less about the purported "acoustic deadness" of MDF after reading a few threads here.
plenty of room for both 8s
I'm going to paint the whole inside black with a brush instead of a rattlecan to keep the theme going, might even sleeve the speaker cables with brown shoelaces...
Unless you're quite sure the borer are dead, treat the inside of the cabinet before lining it. Your local hardware store should have paint-on or spray-on liquid for the job. The insides of that era of cabinet were usually stained black, not painted. Use a NGR (non grain raising) ebony wood stain.
Nice!Are you going to wire the speakers in stereo?
Stereo to begin with, may go mono later if it sounds funny.
Will have to look in to that, will the stain work on MDF? Will probably just use paint as I already have it.
had a few spare minutes so cut out the baffle and routered holes in it. cut a recess in the rear of the baffle for the speakers to sit in and chamfered the front of the holes.
decided not to get fancy, the baffle will just be pushed lightly against the front of the cabinet with brackets/something mounted to the MDF sides i still need to glue in.
need some short screws to mount the speakers to the wood now.
front view
rear view showing clearance between speakers and recess
baffle behind grille, if you look carefully you can see both speakers sitting on the bench behind the cabinet. guess what happened when I tried to move the cabinet with the baffle still sitting inside it?
decided not to get fancy, the baffle will just be pushed lightly against the front of the cabinet with brackets/something mounted to the MDF sides i still need to glue in.
need some short screws to mount the speakers to the wood now.
front view
rear view showing clearance between speakers and recess
baffle behind grille, if you look carefully you can see both speakers sitting on the bench behind the cabinet. guess what happened when I tried to move the cabinet with the baffle still sitting inside it?
pretty much, it fell over and landed on both drivers, the front gasket took most of the fall but it partly crushed the whizzer of one and put a dent in the cone of the other. they don't sound obviously different, i'll paint some glue on the whizzers and not worry about the dent, worst case i'll buy another pair for not very much money at some stage.
so I've used this thing a few times, and the sound is "tiring" for want of a better term with both my class T amp and my denon stereo amp. that and I can't shake the feleign that the left and right channels are sitting on top of each other, which they are somewhat.
the eBay Bluetooth receiver worked pretty well.
I now have some 8" carbon fibre sherwood woofers (i'm sure they are garbage as they were from ebay and cheap) that i'm thinking about swapping in, and adding a tweeter (think it is really lacking high frequencies and my ears still work OK, there is only room for one)) and converting it to a "2.5 way" mono setup. Might even add a ported subwoofer as I have one spare.
the eBay Bluetooth receiver worked pretty well.
I now have some 8" carbon fibre sherwood woofers (i'm sure they are garbage as they were from ebay and cheap) that i'm thinking about swapping in, and adding a tweeter (think it is really lacking high frequencies and my ears still work OK, there is only room for one)) and converting it to a "2.5 way" mono setup. Might even add a ported subwoofer as I have one spare.
My wife never liked any of my DIY speakers. They were rather ugly and didn't match her décor.
We were wandering through a flea market several years ago when she spotted a Zenith console radio from 1941. She asked, why I couldn't make speakers that looked like that........The light bulb started to glow......The radio was dirty and the grill cloth was ripped up, so I made a low offer and got it.
Later I spotted an identical radio on Ebay for a reasonable price, so I emailed the seller. He was 10 miles away! I went over to his apartment and got the radio.....the light bulb lit up!
I removed the original 14 inch field coil speakers, the Wavemagnets, and the original boards the speakers were mounted on because the holes were odd sized and I didn't want to modify anything. All of the original parts were packaged and stored so the radios could be reassembled if needed.
In went a pair of Hawthorne Silver Iris speakers designed to work in open baffle enclosures. These things have been driven with tube amps from 2 WPC to 125 WPC, and they rock!
We were wandering through a flea market several years ago when she spotted a Zenith console radio from 1941. She asked, why I couldn't make speakers that looked like that........The light bulb started to glow......The radio was dirty and the grill cloth was ripped up, so I made a low offer and got it.
Later I spotted an identical radio on Ebay for a reasonable price, so I emailed the seller. He was 10 miles away! I went over to his apartment and got the radio.....the light bulb lit up!
I removed the original 14 inch field coil speakers, the Wavemagnets, and the original boards the speakers were mounted on because the holes were odd sized and I didn't want to modify anything. All of the original parts were packaged and stored so the radios could be reassembled if needed.
In went a pair of Hawthorne Silver Iris speakers designed to work in open baffle enclosures. These things have been driven with tube amps from 2 WPC to 125 WPC, and they rock!
Attachments
Thanks.
I made those several years ago in Florida. We have moved twice since then, and she liked those so much that they are in the living room upstairs, connected to the TV set.
I think I'm going to swap those drivers out for something cheap. She will never hear the difference. Then I will put the drivers in some UGLY boxes down in my basement lab / loud room!
they came up great! old radios/old anything isn't that common here, but I love the veneered wood look, so when/if I make some speakers or subwoofer/s I want to veneer them in a quasi art deco style.
the veneer on my box is quite simple, but the pattern works pretty well.
just found the ebay link for the speakers I have in lieu of any parameters, it suggests putting them in a sealed box (only) of 60-80 litres. will try them OB anyway, but i;m probably better off sticking with the speakers that I put in the box already.
the veneer on my box is quite simple, but the pattern works pretty well.
just found the ebay link for the speakers I have in lieu of any parameters, it suggests putting them in a sealed box (only) of 60-80 litres. will try them OB anyway, but i;m probably better off sticking with the speakers that I put in the box already.
You can go stereo to mono with something like this...
Passive Stereo to Mono Resistive Mixer
...you could even make it switchable
Passive Stereo to Mono Resistive Mixer
...you could even make it switchable
You can go stereo to mono with something like this...
Passive Stereo to Mono Resistive Mixer
...you could even make it switchable
interesting, and very simple. most stereo to mono converters i've seen have a ~20k resistor from signal to ground, wonder why?
Update time, finally found some grille cloth after a long time not looking very hard, (it's brown dyed hessian) so tried adding a tweeter out of a dismantled speaker. That didn't work. Tried some different speakers out of another failed experiment, they sounded horrid.
Then I tried the centre channel from a satellite surround speaker set which is useless now because someone smashed one of the front/rear speakers to get the tweeter out of and it sounded heaps better than the fullrange speakers, more bass to which is funny as it has ~3" speakers in it.
So I seamlessly installed this sideways in the baffle like so:
I'm also going to re-use the subwoofer that was in he same set as the centre channel, but I'll have to build a new enclosure for it as it is deeper than the radio cabinet. If I do this at a leisurely pace I should be able to get it done before the low pass filter arrives from ebay.
Then I tried the centre channel from a satellite surround speaker set which is useless now because someone smashed one of the front/rear speakers to get the tweeter out of and it sounded heaps better than the fullrange speakers, more bass to which is funny as it has ~3" speakers in it.
So I seamlessly installed this sideways in the baffle like so:
I'm also going to re-use the subwoofer that was in he same set as the centre channel, but I'll have to build a new enclosure for it as it is deeper than the radio cabinet. If I do this at a leisurely pace I should be able to get it done before the low pass filter arrives from ebay.
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