need advice on 2 way/ 3 way towers

[shallenn]

im thinking about building some towers. to put a long story short, i bought some sony towers w/ dual 8" woofers from best buy. im not happy with them as far as qualty goes. they would be great for partys<-----loud and plenty of bass. the other day i listened to some mid to high end polk towers and some angstrom<--spelling?
speakers. the imaging was great. i was considering a 2 or 3 way with some hi-vi f6's and some hi-vi tn25 tweeters or something like that. my main goal is quality of sound that is comparable if not better than the brands i stated, but i want good bass response without using a seperate sub enclosure. and i still like to listen to my music very loud. any suggestions as to wether i should go with 2 way or 3 way? driver brand names? and this is probably a dumb question but how hard is it to build a couple of towers that sound as good as mid/high end polk or angstrom?
thanks alot!! shallenn

[realtree71]

Not sure how much money you want to spend so I'll assume "on the cheap". Some will cringe at this but replace your sony's with different driverss, tweeters, and cross overs. Vifa makes a decent speaker for a good price that will kick those sonys to pieces. Madinsound, Meniscus, etc makes really good crossovers for cheap.

Measure the hole sizes in you cabnets, guesstimate the internal volume size of your boxes and call one of the speaker suppliers and they'll help you through it. I've had great luck with Meniscus.

You'll be hooked on speaker building after you see what you can do by yourself. Oh by the way the speakers will sound like those that cost $$$$$$$.

I bet you could upgrade you sonys for about $200.

good luck have fun

[roland]

I would agree with previous advice - I built a tower using ViFA PW17W's and D26 tweeter - mid range is very well defined and bass extension is quite good in vented enclosure, about -3db at 35Hz.

Make sure you get the Xover right, somewhere about 3000Hz and 2 order worked well for me.

Great with voice, pianos etc..

[shallenn]

well, i took a look at the thor tl speakers and thought they looked good. and even though i havnt built a tl im hooked on them. im looking to spend about 200 not including the enclosure. and will probably build my own xover. keep the sugestions coming though!
shallenn

[Brett]

Hi Shallen,
The Thor's might be outside your budget. I lifted these prices off the <a href="http://www.madisound.com">Madisound</a> website last week in a response on another thread. Crossovers and cabinets would be extra.

Thor
*T25CF 002 = $149.00 ea
*W18E-001 = $143.80 ea

The Vifa PW17 and D26 rowland mentions can be used to make a very fine speaker. And they are affordable drive units too. If you go down that route, be sure to look into bracing the cabinet internally, and get one of the free enclosure design programs off the web, plug in the Vifa T/S parameters and set the port size correctly. Vance Dickasons Loudspeaker cookbook would be worth a look at to get a better understanding of some of the basic concepts. Knowledge is the power to make the best decisions.

Good luck and have lots of fun.