FR speaker in triangle cab

[toobhed]

Hi Folks,

I have several pairs of 3"-4" drivers around that didn't make the cut for good cabs (fonken and mMar flatpaks and Parts express .25 cf), so I've decided to design my own mini "triangle speaker" (kind of a microstage monitor):...a sealed triangle (basically half of an 8" x 8" cube) of 5/8" ply that will sit on my kitchens butcher-block desk-PC home up against the wall. The drivers will fire up and out at a 45 degree angle.

I have no idea how they'll turn out but I'm hoping that the speaker's tinyness will be in part offset by its placement snug on the desk back against a wall. They'll be augmented by a subwoofer placed under the desk. The drivers will be decided between fostex 103, Tang Band 4" paper, Aurasound 3.5" and Vifa 3.5". I'll post on my progress and provide plans and photos near completion......

Mario

[planet10]

Looking forward to pictures.

dave

[18Hurts]

I made some triangular speakers with 4 Tangband 3" full ranges each speaker

Gotta do something with that Logitech Z5500, right? Figured they would work well for surround sound system speakers so made a triangular shaped speaker with each Tang point at 90 degrees from each other. Since they would not handle 85 watts per channel (Onkyo receiver) I wired them for 16 ohms to cut output and see if they worked. They did work so I added two more 3" full ranges to make an 8 ohm load and handle the output of the receiver.

Did it work? Scared my wife off the couch--check. Spaced the 3" full ranges 1.6" apart to eventually tweak them with a 1" dome tweeter without faceplate. A dual D'Appolito arrangement firing at 90 degrees from each other in front and behind you using the wall as a reflective "ghost" channel or "Bose 901 center channel"

The tweeter mod will come eventually--life tends to get in the way when you have kids. For now, I have triangles with four 3" full ranges with each pair of threes firing at 90 degrees from each other. The "point" of the triangle faces you ears directly so the speaker is always off axis. Yeah, I'm sure they have lobing issues but since 50% of the output of them bounce off the back wall and the sound on the other side of the triangle is off-axis--you won't hear it.

The L/C/R speakers are the most important and I'm content with them--the surround triangles work but I'll tweak them with tweeters eventually.

Full range speakers are great to experiment with! As long as a subwoofer is in operation--3 or 4" full ranges will work very well. Still amazed how good a $20 Tangband 3" full range sounds... no wonder Logitech uses them.

[toobhed]

Well, so far I've learned that to get good wood cuts/panels for a speaker, you probably need a skill saw and skill, both of which I lack. So I tortured some plywood into horrible panels with a jigsaw only and used tons of woodfiller/putty making them airtight. This was quite depressing especially as it was after building a beautifully cut P10 mFonken flatpac (Thanks Dave!)....like going from a Bentley to a Yugo.

Thus this will become a "beta". If, this weekend, they end up sounding ok, I'll have either the lumber yard or a cabinet maker cut proper peices so that they may actually line up at the joints and I'll finish with stain and laquer. Below is what I have so far and will sand, primer and spraypaint before the acoustic evaluation....stay tuned and I'm sure you experienced carpenters and speaker builders will have a laugh at this photo.

Mario

[digits]

A few nice thick coats of hammertone spray paint hides almost anything.

[18Hurts]

The expanding Gorilla Glue stuff works well to fill in your "craftsmanship" I cut the top, side and bottom panels a bit long when I built my triangles. Once it was sealed, then I cut off the excess with the jig saw. The random orbital sander finished it up and everything was rounded off.

All my scrap was used with Gorilla Glue to internally brace each seam which sealed them off, braced the boxes and dampened standing waves inside the box. The worst side is the "bottom" and that gets covered with felt to prevent scratching the surface it sits on.

Looks good so far--when everything else fails, that is why they make grill kits