was planning on a voigt pipe, now not so sure.

My dad has been trying to get me to do a DIY build for a while, and told me that jeschke's voigt pipes would be a great idea. I said I liked the thought of some striking looking speakers (of course great sound as well), and he figured they'd be great. Plus after looking at the plans I was hooked on the INSANELY simple design

After reading around the internet a bit more I found that the reviews say the speakers are kinda lacking.

Are there any other really simple designs out there that sound decent and are cheap to build? Should I just stick with my plan of building the VPs?

By the way, I'm fifteen, and this'll be my first DIY build. I listen to everything, but these speakers will be mostly focused on '60s and '70s rock. I'd probably be briefly powering them with a sony str-d365 receiver, until purchasing a new amp.
 
When I was fifteen, the best bass I ever heard came out of sealed (acoustic suspension) cabinets. Good luck finding anyone who still builds those now, or even any commonly available designs or recommended drivers for such cabinets. The big upside to sealed cabinets is that they are dead simple to construct, and the calculations for the volume are well published. They are also very tolerant of mistakes in dimension.

I suspect that some of today's big pipe designs might be the analog of the sealed cabs of my teenage years.

Yes, you should just stick with your plan. Build something, anything, and enjoy it. There will be other projects down the road which will be better, likely much better. This is just your first project.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
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Jeschke's voigt was a pre-cursor ro the BIB. They are simple, if big, build. They really prefer to be in corners. Jeschke's voigt, not being mass loaded, suffers from a fair amount of bass/mid ripple (as does the BIB if not corner loaded.

I'd suggest a Metronome, or if thta looks to daunting a build, one can use the Met to derive a Mass Loaded Voigt. Mass loading goes a long way towards killing the ripple inherent in a pipe.

I'd suggest the El70. It's cheap, sounds good, and produces bass unexpected of its size. They are fairly tolerant of low budget electronics too. The drivers are available from Bob @ CSS in Abbotsford.

dave
 
To this day i love the look of the VP i built... it's actually a Straight Pipe designed by bob brines...

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Which driver did you have in mind for your build? After building a fair number of speakers over the years, i'd build another VP for sure. They just look so elegant and sound so good. I really don't care if they don't eek out the greatest bass extension. They are classic speakers. One day i expect to build another pair, pop them into corners and enjoy their elegant proportions and musicality.
 
Happy birthday, chris661!

Russell K, I second the BiB as a good type of design (if you have corners you can use). The Jeschke will have no bass (but potentially great midrange and imaging). But no bass to speak of. A Voigt-style design could be calculated for a specific driver (and for some drivers, it maybe have been done already).
 
from my own experience ( afew early experiments with different type of loading) i would say that for simplicity sealed/closed box or open baffle are the easiest, with regular ported/vented being the next easiest in terms of quick simple design to suit your particular driver.

whilst i havent tried building a BiB or voigt Pipe ( im building a reverse taper TL atm) the construction shouldnt be alot more difficult that the others above, BUT the design i believe, is a little more involved.

for simplicity of build and sound quality/ bass extension, i would suggest either sealed or ported alignments, they offer a quick solution, and a good compromise between the qualities you seem to be looking to obtain.

of course theres no reason why your couldnt do a tapered pipe of either type, or mass loaded TL.
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
a reverse taper

What is a reverse taper?

A TL is typically tapered* (as per Baily) or straight. A reverse taper would imply a voigt pipe (please note that voigt has no h in it)

dave

*(in reality a taper can go either way, decreasing or increasing taper would make more sense, but only if defined from a particular end, convention is from the closed end, again makes sense only in the context of a quarter wave line)
 
Happy birthday (wow, lots of ppl who is getting older today!)

Well, i'm 16 (16 and one month to be exact) and i built my Mar-Kel70 last summer when i was 15 and i really really like them. You can't really describe the bass with words, you have to hear it to believe what these small drivers can do. Midrange is really good aswell and the highs are nothing to complain about. In a larger cabinet i think one pair of EL70 should do well ;)

By the way, i power my speakers with a Harman Kardon HK3490 stereo-amplifier. Might sell it next week though.
 

ra7

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Joined 2009
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I built some voigt pipes couple of years ago. I still use them to test various full rangers. They are the folded variety, which means the tapered line is folded back to reduce height and obtain homely proportions. The folded version has an additional benefit of bracing. The fold braces the cabinet really well and you a get very clear midrange.

They are a truly great cabinet design. Work with most drivers reasonably well. They do go low if the driver can go low. For example, with the Jordan JX92s, there is bass down at 40 Hz. There is some ripple, but you minimize it out by stuffing the line with some polyfiber.

Highly recommended for a first build.
 
Happy birthday (wow, lots of ppl who is getting older today!)

Well, i'm 16 (16 and one month to be exact) and i built my Mar-Kel70 last summer when i was 15 and i really really like them. You can't really describe the bass with words, you have to hear it to believe what these small drivers can do. Midrange is really good aswell and the highs are nothing to complain about. In a larger cabinet i think one pair of EL70 should do well ;)

By the way, i power my speakers with a Harman Kardon HK3490 stereo-amplifier. Might sell it next week though.


all of us celebrate the end of "a year" every day, but trust me though when I say that it feels like more than a day at a time at the end of 6 decades :rolleyes:


by the way, you've fit in nicely to this band of crazy audio-nauts :)

yup - those little EL70s are quite the sleeper in the MarKels, but if you really want to be gob-smacked at their low frequency performance, you gotta try a horn like the Maeshowe,

maeshowe-2x-3D.gif



or perhaps they'd work in an ML-Voigt like the Beltane.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
 
all of us celebrate the end of "a year" every day, but trust me though when I say that it feels like more than a day at a time at the end of 6 decades :rolleyes:


by the way, you've fit in nicely to this band of crazy audio-nauts :)

yup - those little EL70s are quite the sleeper in the MarKels, but if you really want to be gob-smacked at their low frequency performance, you gotta try a horn like the Maeshowe,

maeshowe-2x-3D.gif



or perhaps they'd work in an ML-Voigt like the Beltane.

An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.

Yes, i can imagine that they could deliver really really good bass in a much larger enclosure.
 
Hi Russell, here is a 'rough' proportion to look at.

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The 127e are 4.5" drivers. They are in a Straight Pipe that's smaller than the Voigt Pipe.

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I took the drivers out and will replace them with something larger one day. The sound was very good probably because the cabinets are forgiving. If i built the traditional Voigt Pipes i'd use 8" drivers... The Straight Pipes may end up with my older Fostex 168s (6.5") eventually.