Tony Gee's Low Budget Speaker - Build Thread

[mrevie]

Hi all,

My name's Steve and I'm a uni student living in Townsville, Australia. I've only very recently discovered the wonders of loudspeaker building and have just started my first project. I decided to go with someone else's design first up - Tony Gee's Low Budget Speaker. It's a simple two way MTM, which uses affordable easy to implement drivers and a none too complex crossover. Perfect for my first time!The drivers are from the German company Monacor and I've elected to use fairly nice components in the crossover (Mundorf Supreme caps and copper foil coils). I have to say, Tony Gee's website is amazing. He has put so much effort into each and every one of his designs, not to mention his extensive capacitor test database. So a big thanks to Tony for letting me use his design!

I was planning on waiting until the project is complete before starting a build thread, but I'm far too impatient for that. At his point in time, one box is complete (but raw) and the other will be done in the next day or so. From here, I need to decide on how I want to finish them. The current front runner is a Jarrah veneer. I would have preferred an Ebony veneer, but at AUD220 per m2, I think I'll pass.

Here's the progress so far: (I'll update as things progress)

Panels fresh from the saw:


Assembly begins


Crossover components and circle cutting jig arrive!


Completed crossovers


Routed the driver cutouts


Completing the assembly of the first box and starting to damp the second


Completed first box (Front, raw)


Completed first box (Back, raw)




I just realised I don't have any photos of the actual drivers, I'll be sure to take some and post them.

Thanks!

Steve.

[Iain McNeill]

Very nice job!

Is that a 45° bevel you put on the front baffle? Never done any veneering myself but isn't that going to be tricky to veneer?

Keep us posted and take your time. Don't rush it!

[raypalmer]

I was ----> <----- this close to building these the other day. But I couldn't source the Monacors in Canada and the shipping+brokerages would have doubled the price.

Please continue the posting though, I love build threads.

[planet10]

Originally posted by Iain McNeill
Is that a 45° bevel you put on the front baffle? Never done any veneering myself but isn't that going to be tricky to veneer?

Chris does it all the time -- all the Fonken have 45 degree bevels. Depending on the veneer you can either fold the piece on the baffle or run separate strips.

dave

[mrevie]

I had a fair bit of difficulty sourcing the drivers as well, as they weren't able to be air mailed out of the EU. Eventually, I found a shop that was able to send them to me via sea relatively cheaply (http://www.lautsprechershop.de). The Australian Monacor suppliers quote for the drivers without shipping was more expensive than what I got them for with shipping from Germany.

Using a real wood veneer, it shouldn't bee too difficult to just use a thin strip to do the bevels. Without them the boxes look a little chunky. They're a little bit wider than Tony's design because I ended up using 25mm thick MDF as I couldn't find the 22mm variety anywhere.

[kimbo]

Mrevie, I'm possibly a bit premature with this post, but just wanted to let you know that I used iron-on jarah veneer and the job came up really well. The red tones in the wood look great.

However there were two problems
1. By the time I went back and bought several packets of veneer, it added a fair bit to the cost of what started out as a budget speaker....but hey, it looks good so what the heck
2. After about a year the mdf appeared to shrink just a little in thickness. This meant that if you get the light just right, you can see the plugs for the screws (not a problem for you) and along the edge where one panel butts against the other you can see a raised line the width of the pannel. Perhaps I should have sealed them inside and out before veneering.

There are some images about halfway through this post....

Speaker Cabinet Finishes

Never the less, the jarah with a matt finish looks really good and was pretty easy to do....easier than gloss and better looking IMHO. The Veneer was easy to use too, including getting it to form around the 20mm radius on the front baffle.

Good luck!

[mrevie]

After getting some prices for veneers and looking at a few different finishes on speakers. I've decided to finish them in high gloss black. Complete random change of finish, I know. Hopefully it will turn out well. Lots of sanding.

[tinitus]

Those Monacor woofers are said to be really very nice

I wont call this "low budget" at all

It might very well be the best ever made by Tony Gee

And hurray, at last he is doing a proper paralel filter
And it even have a nice zobel on tweeter

This will have my honets attention
You may be in fore something special here
If Tony Gee has done his work right, this may beat the socks off the rest of whats out there

[raypalmer]

Originally posted by tinitus

I wont call this "low budget" at all

I've got to agree with you. My last pair of speakers cost me about 130CAD including varnish, stain and thinning agents. The ones I'm working on now won't touch 200 either.


THAT'S low budget.

[mrevie]

Hehe. Well looking at the parts that go into Tony's other projects, I dare say it's low budget for him.