microTL kitchen radio thingie

[h@kan]

At breakfast we are listening to music trough a plastic cheap radio that sounds like...****. Since my audio projects, historically, tend to be big and prominently my partner, a female, repeatedly rejected my suggestion to build something that could replace the plastic...****. Then I tried a different approach that included my partner, yes a female, in the designing process. Success!. The "radio" had to be small and look old and antique to match the kitchen. Ok. After some negotiation we locked the dimensions to depth 9, height 9 and width to 12 inch.

I have some driver lying around and one pair of tang band w3-871 seemed to match the limited box size. I analysed them in ported designs, with bassboxpro, but was not quite satisfied with the result so I modeled a short negative taper transmission line with mjk's worksheets. Much better. A ~29 inch line tapered 9:1 resulting in F3 some where around 65Hz. Images, as following, shows the building process. There are a input selector and volume control, knobs of her choice , and the box are patinated to look...old and ugly . Left to do is to mount a iphone/ipod dock on the top.

I have not yet measured it, will do that soon, but the overall impression is great. And yes the female is happy as well.

Reagards H@kan

[chrisb]

that's almost too damn cute for its own good

[vaughn]

the cork kickstand is my favorite

[TheGimp]

Now THAT is cool!

[katana2112]

Any chance on getting dimensions? Looks about like what I want to build and use with a battery operated amp....

[gvimhoof]

Originally Posted by chrisb

that's almost too damn cute for its own good

+1

[mctavish]

Now THAT is DIY!!! My wife would require medication to work together on one of my audio projects, so my hat is off to you sir! Cheers!

[h@kan]

Originally Posted by vaughn

the cork kickstand is my favorite

Yes it's fantastic isn't it

Originally Posted by katana2112

Any chance on getting dimensions? Looks about like what I want to build and use with a battery operated amp....

I will post the dimensions as soon I find the paper I wrote them down to. If I don't find the paper i will measure the finished radio. What kind of amp are you planning to use? I'm using a tripath 2024 class D board, 12V. I'm sure you can use a battery pack to power it.

Thanks for all replies.

By the way I think the filter for "bad" words on site is quite excessive.
Regards H@kan

[Andrew Eckhardt]

Did they manage to glue the phase plugs in the center for you? I recently got a pair of the bamboo 3's and one of the plugs is darn near up against the coil former. For 25 bucks I decided to keep it, but overall it doesn't seem like a real hard thing to better. Make a sleeve to pin it in place or something until the glue sets. One more step, a little more tooling though. I'd pay another dollar to have it in the center far as the eye would notice.

[nicoch58]

nice shabby chic finish