Reusing old speaker cabinets. Good or bad choice?

[maurycy]

Hi,

I am fairly new to this forum. For the last few days I have been browsing, searching and following some threads. I have no knowledge of electronics but I can solder kits or items with PCB and good manual javascript:smilie('')
smile Well, I know what resistor and capacitor are but that's about it.

In my closet I have old bookshelf speaker cabinets. They were custom made by speaker company in NJ. I only have cabinets with built-in crossovers (permanently glued into the back of the speaker). Speaker design is two-way ported. There were speakers in the cabinets but the woofer roted so the previous owner disassembled the speakers. I know that tweaters were Seas H310 6 Ohm and that woofers were 6.5". That's all I know. I have no idea what are the parameters for the crossover or the woofer. Even tweeter would have to be matched as the Seas H310 is no longer available.

So my question is:
Would it be worth to try to get matching tweeter/woofer combination that will fit the boxes or am I getting into a lot of trouble here?

I do not want to spend a lot of money on this project. I know that I could get a $150 bookshelf speaker kit from Parts Express. That's not an option for me. If you guys think that reusing my old cabinets is duable project and can show me where to start, I would appreciate. If not, the cabinets are going to dumpster.

Attached are pictures of the cabinets.

Thanks,
Alex

[sreten]

Hi,

should not be difficult to put any of the myriad 6.5" midbass /
1" tweeter designs into that cabinet - try here to start with :

http://www.speakerbuilder.net/web_files/default.htm

/sreten.

[Nemophyle]

hello

my advice is, use them !

you have to calculate what the box volume is, then to chose a driver that might work well with this volume or smaller (provided you can remove volume but you can't add)

the only drawback i see from your pictures is that there is no countersinking for the drivers . This is good because it means you can throw in almost any woof ot tweet but this is bad because of diffraction from the faceplate. You could adress this if you have a router, or choose a design that works without driver countersinking.

Another way to flush mount drivers is to screw the drivers normally and to add a layer of 5mm MDF or Plywood with the shapes of the drivers front cut in it. But it would waste the beautifull veneer

there are lots of designs that could be good for what you need. this one is particularly interresting IMHO :

The Cryolite Monitor