My Latest Subwoofer - with pictures

[soundNERD]

I had just built a sub for a person I know and I still had quite a bit of the sheet of MDF left, plus I had an 8" sub lyign around and my soldering iron begging to do something.

So I wound up building a subwoofer thats completely different for me. Instead of blasting power out, its there just to add a little bass. Obviously, I used a sealed box because depth and sound quality were much more important than bass output.

The driver is a nice looking 8" driver. It's not a high power sub or anything, but it's perfect for my application. (I pulled it out of a sub I got for a buck at a garage sale with a dead amp). It's powered by an amp built around an LM2876. I originally was trying to use LM3886, but I only had non-isolated chips and I blew up 2 chips because of that (the aluminum plate is grounded). I found I had some isolated LM2876 chips and I looked them up on the internet. I orignally seen they were only 40W and was about to look for a different chip. But then I realized that was 40W into 8-ohm, and the 3886 is only 50W into 8-ohm. So I could deal with the slight reduction of power. On top of that, it's pin and schematic compatable with the LM3886, so all I had to do was pull out the 3886 and solder the 2876 into it's place. Now my amp works perfectly!

The box is not completely done yet, but for the most part it is. I've got to add the other side's (not visible in the pics) trim and stain the box. I'll add more pics when its done.

I have it working perfectly now, though. The sound is very accurate and detailed. I hooked it up to my older JBL 10W x 2 computer speakers, since they had a sub out and could use the bass boost. The system sounds great now.

Here are the pics, what do you guys think?

[soundNERD]

Picture 2 - the amp

[soundNERD]

Picture 3 - the sub driver

[simon5]

Nice job!

[mazeroth]

Stellar box!

[69stingray]

Looks Great.

[soundNERD]

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

I can't wait until I get this box finished and stained. I wish I had some cherry wood lying around as I did with this oak, because I really like the red stain color manufacturers like B&W use. I'm sure I could never get that color with oak. I do have some black stain, but I'd really like something that stands out more. Any reccomended stain colors to use that will look nice?

Thanks,
Mike

[David Gatti]

Lovely work SoundNerd.