Frankenstein becomes cindarella..I hope!

[terry j]

hi all, long time reader and occasional contributor.

Of the many types of thread here, some of the most enjoyable are the construction threads, hopefully with lot's of pictures.

So with that intro, hopefully this will be an enjoyable thread to those of a similar mindset.

I was simply going to take pics along the way and then do a summary at the end, mainly because I can see this being quite a long build for one reason or another. But have had a change of heart, by chronicling it as I go it will help maintain the enthusiasm and keep me going. And I will be able to tap into the collective brains here if I hit problems.

First off, can someone point me to a 'how to' so I can include the photos in the thread? I think I've loaded a picture or two in my time, but it is usually the small picture at the bottom of the post that gets clicked on and pops up in a new window. There are evidently more savvy people here than me, and they manage to include the full size phot within the body of the thread, and whats more there are often more than one photo in the post itself.

I dunno how to do that, so help would be very much appreciated. Until I know how to do that I'll keep snapping the pics and insert them once I know how.

The speakers. I run 18 inch PHL bass units with a 6.5 PHL mid and a cabbasse tweeter. They are controlled with the deqx unit, so are tri-amped. When I get time, and if it's of interest, I'll post model numbers later.

They are currently in a rough set of boxes that have been the 'cut and shut' champs! Have had/tried a few different combos of drivers, the real constant is the 18s. So the current boxes bear the scars of bogging up and changing the position of the drivers etc. Want to change the angle of the box? no probs, nail a few bits of pine to the box and voila! So you can get a mental picture of what they might look like.

They were jokingly referred to once as the 'frankenspeaker', and like a lot of things the tag has stuck and they have ever since been affectionately referred to as the franks.

I hope that they end up as cindarella, or the beautiful swan after the ugly duckling.

The biggest problem in making a nice box??

Just HOW in the hell do you incorporate an 18 inch driver in the box and have it look nice??? The reams of paper that has been sacrificed in that pursuit!! Anyway, one fine day of doodling and I finally had something that looked halfway decent. Is it the best? doubt it, but hey I took it heh heh.

I have made a start, and so far it's actually looking great, even if I say so myself.

I would love to share it with you all, I hope you get some pleasure from it and indeed there may be a few things that some may get from it that will help them at some later stage.

And to be able to share it properly, I need to learn how to embed the pics within the post.

Thanks for looking, and shall wait for some cleverer minds than mine to explain the above trick.

see ya.

[NanoFrog]

Pictures!

[Aengus]

A couple of random images to see if I can figure out how to do it...

<edit> OK, that didn't work. I too await a more knowledgeable response.

[CLS]

To post pics...

1. register onto a free picture hosting site, like
http://photobucket.com/
(there are many others, of course)

2. upload your pics there

3. copy the link address of the particular pic you need and paste in the post in between "[img][/img]" syntax.

Here is an example:

[terry j]

thanks for trying Aengus, you must be in the same boat as me.

Anyway, we may have a winner!! Cheers CLS.

OK, in appreciation of your efforts, we will now try your little theory, and see if it works.



And when I said frankenstein, you thought I was talking about my speakers didn't you!! heh heh maybe now you're sorry for helping??

One last thing to try, I now unveil to a wider audience

drum rollllll tah dah!~ the frankenspeakers




well, that went reasonably well for a first go, I couldn't seem to crop/edit them in photobucket, might try and edit them on the computer before I upload them. anyway, we seem to be off and running, thanks ever so much for your help.

Funny really, I have grown so used to them that I am almost fond of the looks, kinda cute really. I know, I know, a look only a mother could love. Heard it all before y'know?

They even say it about my speakers!

From memory, the 18s are the 8030s, the mids 1660 and the tweeter is the dom 40. the memory is a bit vague as I've had them for a few years now. I used to run a apair of 4 inch focals in d'appolito with the cabbasse, till I blew them up one day.

The replacement mid had to be of reasonable power handling I decided, and went for the 1660. As you can see, the box shows scars of many iterations, indeed the 'panel' holding the cabbasse I can see used to be the one that I tried the RAALs in, just make out the square shape. Just underneath you can see where I filled in the section trhat held the original focals. That also explains the tilt on the speakers (provided by only the best sounding 1*2 pine legs)..the focals and cabbasse originally were vertical, and when I put the PHLs in I just put them on a centre line with the bass unit, but had to then tilt the box to put the mid and tweeter vertical.

It will be kinda sad to see these boxes retired, but like a phoenix from the ashes a true beauty will emerge.

one last tip if you will, how do I resize the pictures so that they fit nicely on the screen (well, maybe only my screen) so that I don't need to use the scroll bar at the bottom?

I hope the thread will be as interesting to some as it is to me to build them.

cheers

[obiwan]

Gawd, I'd forgotten how big those 18 inch drivers looked. Who says we were joking when they were dubbed Frankenspeakers?

[56oval]

You could atleast fixed up that red eye .
Keep the pic's coming Terry are the drivers going to be the same
any new additions .

Cheers

[terry j]

I think I worked out the 'sizing' issue, we'll see.

I notice one of my pictures changed size, but not the other.

OK, the big prob was making a hulking big driver in a box look half way decent.

After much mucking about, the elevation looked like this.



Alright alright, best I could do m'k?

Went ahead and made a little model of it to get an idea if I was on the right track



I don't want to bore too many people with details, but there were a lot of lost hours trying to work out how to build the bloody thing. I mean it's all well and good having a 'fancy' design if it can't be built.

I have had the franks for a while now, and they have had a few drivers in them for evaluation, so as a result they have stayed 'ugly' all that time. It never bothered me in the slightest, indeed they have their own 'beauty' heh heh, but I can imagine that some may have thought that looks don't matter at all. Not really, but if I was going to the trouble of making nice ones then you can rest assured that they would be nice!

The easiest way I could imagine to build these was in laminated form, stacked layers of MDF.

My first tendency was to somehow laminate strips of nice wood (was thinking american walnut) around each layer, and once they were all stacked then somehow 'smooth off the steps', as each ascending layer would have been offset from the lower-as the front profile changes. (Was even contemplating getting reaaal fancy and iinserting a very thin brass shim between each layer of wood). That would have entailed building a steam unit to bend the strip of wood to follow the mdf layer, and meant that the rear corners needed to be rounded sufficiently enough to bend the steamed wood around the radius.

The rounded back radius on the model reflects that thinking.

Another alternative would be to veneer the box. That of course has it's own set of problems, one of which being that if I had the grain running vertically at the back, as it folded around the curve the grain would tilt. OK, so I could have cut the veneer in strips running vertically, wedge like if you will. I was reasonably sure I could have done that well enough, bit of a pain but do-able.

I went off the veneer idea because the biggest problem I foresaw was the horizontal joint between the veneers at each change of the front profile represented by the black lines you can see on the model.

I could see how I could easily make the basic shape ( I will give the formula later, by way of a simple geometric layout) and indeed had worked out a simple 'foolproof' jig method on manufacture, but was always getting stuck on the finish.

Dunno how it happened, but one day I had the brainwave of building the boxes in 'parts', sections. From the front profile you can see that it is three sections, each sitting on top of the other. The finished box will be one piece, but by doing it in sections I realised it allowed me to veneer it after all. The horizontal joint problem would be solved by smoothing the veneer to each section horizontally, and then stacking the sections together. No more the need to get that horizontal joint perfect on the completed box, it could be done as we went.

This will become clearer when I post more photos, but now that I was veneering it (no longer adding strips of wood to the mdf layers) I then did not need to have the rounded back corners, I could finish to a sharp corner. That is much more pleasing aesthetically, and was always my preferred option.

As I say, it will become clearer when the photos get uploaded.

I have learnt a few tricks that I really hope will be of use to others, look forward to sharing that with you all.

[doogyscoot]

Looks like a worthwhile endeavour!

I must say that I kind of like the runt enclosure being use now...
Makes me think of this...


Had you thought of having a non wood finish?
If you were building a stepped cross section translam out of MDF you could possibly use filler to smooth the steps together then give it a nice finish?

[Lyle]

Wow , Reading with interest , The 6.5" mid always sounded far to big to me till I saw it in the Picture above the 18" driver.