Hi everyone!
I am looking to build new speakers.
Here are the constraints:
Room is 8mx5m, it's the living room. couch and speakers are opposite so, around 6m from the listening position, and 5m apart.
I like speakers from the past in terms of look (jbl 43xx, altec 816, Onken cabinets, etc...) and I'm not afraid of apparent horns.
If possible, I would like to avoid modern column/pencil speakers (I'd just bought KEF R7 and that's not the plan), and no stands.
WAF is a concern, so we settled on a size which should not exceed 90x50x45 (HxWxD) cm, which is roughly the space occupied today by my bookshelves&stand. That's a respectable 200l.
I have a minidsp shd, and ncore nc400, high efficiency is not needed. Bi amping is the plan with active crossover and dirac.
Looking for something that don't require exceptional woodworking skills, I live in an apartment and don't have access easily to a place where I can saw, and I don't know how to use these tools anyway. So I can probably manage one or two big holes in the front, and simple vents (onken style) but that's about it.
I have looked a lot around, and the amount of information is a bit overwhelming, so I'm looking for a bit of help finding plans which more or less fits the bill above.
Thanks!
I am looking to build new speakers.
Here are the constraints:
Room is 8mx5m, it's the living room. couch and speakers are opposite so, around 6m from the listening position, and 5m apart.
I like speakers from the past in terms of look (jbl 43xx, altec 816, Onken cabinets, etc...) and I'm not afraid of apparent horns.
If possible, I would like to avoid modern column/pencil speakers (I'd just bought KEF R7 and that's not the plan), and no stands.
WAF is a concern, so we settled on a size which should not exceed 90x50x45 (HxWxD) cm, which is roughly the space occupied today by my bookshelves&stand. That's a respectable 200l.
I have a minidsp shd, and ncore nc400, high efficiency is not needed. Bi amping is the plan with active crossover and dirac.
Looking for something that don't require exceptional woodworking skills, I live in an apartment and don't have access easily to a place where I can saw, and I don't know how to use these tools anyway. So I can probably manage one or two big holes in the front, and simple vents (onken style) but that's about it.
I have looked a lot around, and the amount of information is a bit overwhelming, so I'm looking for a bit of help finding plans which more or less fits the bill above.
Thanks!
My woodworking skills are rather poor, but I have a $40 sabre saw I bought 30 years ago. They are probably about $90 now. If you don't do any sawing, you are limited to a kit in a standard size. Sawing is not hard, you need a shelf, safety glasses, and a square or level to draw a straight line. Plus a tape measure. You can saw in the parking lot of the home store if you buy a battery saw. People do it all the time. For a stand, I see partical board shelf units and bathroom organizers out for garbage pickup all the time. The one I picked up is 29"x29"x16". Used furniture has caught the peeling veneer disease, and are ugly, but hold up something very well for sawing. Home Depot sells 3/4" full thickness (not 21/32") high grade plywood in 2'x4', and 1/2" and 1" MDF also in 2'X4'. I carry them home tied to my bicycle, I don't drive a car anymore. I buy US made or Swiss saw blades.
Cutting the round hole is a problem to me, I haven't found a way to draw a 14" circle yet. I may buy a bar of aluminum and drill two holes in it 7" apart, then nail the center to the wood and draw the perimeter with a sharpie. If in US speaker kits come from parts-express.com but outside this continent you are stuck with expensive kits with high markup. See this thread for a list of those. Advice on a kit? The P-E kits are rather small, and won't be suitable for bass response below 60 hz. I am an organist & pianist, and have a lot of source material down to 27 hz, which is why I am going to build instead of buy a kit. Also my costs may be 10% of a kit, especially those troels "cadillacs" everybody seems to lust after.
I bought David Weems "designing building and testing your own speaker system" off ebay for $12. The plans in there are small and bassless bookshelf types, but he has the equations to build a cabinet that will produce bass in 2'x4' ply material. My cabinet is going to be 24"x24" front and back since the 3/4" plywood would resist woofer shaking pretty well. Then my depth will be 29" to get the volume (=VAS) high enough for significant bass. If you're going to put the tweeter in the cabinet, you need a taller front. My tweeters are 19"x13", salvage from blown up Peavey PA speakers off ebay. I'm basically trying to copy a set of Peavey SP2-XT that had too much fleamarket value and were stolen. My speakers will be ugly, with tweeters on stands separate from the bass cabinet. I'm putting the whole thing 6' high since the woofers will have some voice frequency content, and they have to project over an organ sitting at that end of the room. The SP2-XT were that high and produced a good image all over the whole room and projected significant high frequency content through the dining room and into the kitchen 30' away.
One tip I saw in a long long thread, varnish the wood before sawing to prevent splinters from pulling out. I'm going to use box tape after that. Smaller tooth blades pull less big splinters, but are slow.
You'll need a drill motor for pilot holes for the screws. Real steel drills in US come from mcmaster fastenal and wwgrainger. the drills at the home store are thinned out to be the lowest price, and fracture frequently. Drills from *****, I don't play with toys. ****ese mystery metal has some steel content, also frequently copper, aluminum, and lead from the scrap cars they melt it out of. Won't hold an edge even in wood. "titanium" drills from the import shops have a millionth of an inch of titanium coating to sell better. They don't work better.
Enjoy this creative craft in future.
Cutting the round hole is a problem to me, I haven't found a way to draw a 14" circle yet. I may buy a bar of aluminum and drill two holes in it 7" apart, then nail the center to the wood and draw the perimeter with a sharpie. If in US speaker kits come from parts-express.com but outside this continent you are stuck with expensive kits with high markup. See this thread for a list of those. Advice on a kit? The P-E kits are rather small, and won't be suitable for bass response below 60 hz. I am an organist & pianist, and have a lot of source material down to 27 hz, which is why I am going to build instead of buy a kit. Also my costs may be 10% of a kit, especially those troels "cadillacs" everybody seems to lust after.
I bought David Weems "designing building and testing your own speaker system" off ebay for $12. The plans in there are small and bassless bookshelf types, but he has the equations to build a cabinet that will produce bass in 2'x4' ply material. My cabinet is going to be 24"x24" front and back since the 3/4" plywood would resist woofer shaking pretty well. Then my depth will be 29" to get the volume (=VAS) high enough for significant bass. If you're going to put the tweeter in the cabinet, you need a taller front. My tweeters are 19"x13", salvage from blown up Peavey PA speakers off ebay. I'm basically trying to copy a set of Peavey SP2-XT that had too much fleamarket value and were stolen. My speakers will be ugly, with tweeters on stands separate from the bass cabinet. I'm putting the whole thing 6' high since the woofers will have some voice frequency content, and they have to project over an organ sitting at that end of the room. The SP2-XT were that high and produced a good image all over the whole room and projected significant high frequency content through the dining room and into the kitchen 30' away.
One tip I saw in a long long thread, varnish the wood before sawing to prevent splinters from pulling out. I'm going to use box tape after that. Smaller tooth blades pull less big splinters, but are slow.
You'll need a drill motor for pilot holes for the screws. Real steel drills in US come from mcmaster fastenal and wwgrainger. the drills at the home store are thinned out to be the lowest price, and fracture frequently. Drills from *****, I don't play with toys. ****ese mystery metal has some steel content, also frequently copper, aluminum, and lead from the scrap cars they melt it out of. Won't hold an edge even in wood. "titanium" drills from the import shops have a millionth of an inch of titanium coating to sell better. They don't work better.
Enjoy this creative craft in future.
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Suggest you look at Parts Express for their knock down kits that come with pre-cut MDF cabinets. All you have to do is buy some clamps and glue and put them together.
In a few cases they only include the front baffle with holes already cut out for the drivers. And that's the hard part. You just need to get some rectangular pieces for the sides, top and back.
There are some kits by very well known designers such as Paul Carmody and Jeff Bagby. I would be more inclined to choose one of those first rather than a kit by an unknown designer. But you might find something else there that you like better and that would still be a good way to go.
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I approve of the earlier suggestions (look at kits).
If you want to go your own way, you could start with a semi-finished box.
a) buy something new from a PA supplier, like this Australian example:
etone PROFESSIONAL SOUND
You could add a HF horn to those ET215 boxes without needing a lot of woodworking skill. Paint the front black, put a good veneer on the sides, and you'd have a visually decent speaker.
People have been making dual 15" + horn boxes since forever, so there would be plenty of systems you could copy ideas from. That is: you could find an existing project with similar box volume, copy the driver selection, port length etc, then use your DSP for final tweaking.
b) buy a pair of damaged vintage speakers (lots go cheaply because they have blown tweeters, or mids with rotted foam) and re-purpose them.
There are quite a lot of vintage speakers around that are cosmetically similar to JBL 43xx series speakers.
See what is available near you - there might be something which would be easy to rebuild.
Putting a new skin on an existing box is much easier than building from scratch.
If you want to go your own way, you could start with a semi-finished box.
a) buy something new from a PA supplier, like this Australian example:
etone PROFESSIONAL SOUND
You could add a HF horn to those ET215 boxes without needing a lot of woodworking skill. Paint the front black, put a good veneer on the sides, and you'd have a visually decent speaker.
People have been making dual 15" + horn boxes since forever, so there would be plenty of systems you could copy ideas from. That is: you could find an existing project with similar box volume, copy the driver selection, port length etc, then use your DSP for final tweaking.
b) buy a pair of damaged vintage speakers (lots go cheaply because they have blown tweeters, or mids with rotted foam) and re-purpose them.
There are quite a lot of vintage speakers around that are cosmetically similar to JBL 43xx series speakers.
See what is available near you - there might be something which would be easy to rebuild.
Putting a new skin on an existing box is much easier than building from scratch.
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Thank you all for your recommendations!
I can saw planks. What I meant by woodworking skill, is that I don't have access to fancy cnc and I would probably not able to craft complicated folded horn design, or rounded, chamfer, etc...
Getting 6 rectangular shapes out of a big mdf or plywood panel is ok 😱
Moreover, I can probably get access to a "community managed" workshop in paris with plenty of space and tools available.
I live in paris, France.
budget is around 1000 euros.
I can saw planks. What I meant by woodworking skill, is that I don't have access to fancy cnc and I would probably not able to craft complicated folded horn design, or rounded, chamfer, etc...
Getting 6 rectangular shapes out of a big mdf or plywood panel is ok 😱
Moreover, I can probably get access to a "community managed" workshop in paris with plenty of space and tools available.
I live in paris, France.
budget is around 1000 euros.
Check out Troels Graversen's website. Lots of kit designs to choose from in your price range and shipped from Jantzen in Europe
Also look at the four main kit suppliers in the US, Meniscus Audio, Madisound, Parts Express, and diysoundgroup, although you will probably encounter higher shipping costs from here.
And yes, it can be somewhat overwhelming, but you are really the best one to narrow it down. A lot of people here have their own favorites, but that doesn't mean those will necessarily be the best fit for you.
Keep in mind that a very big part of what you hear is your room, and how it's furnished, as well your listening location. Finding a perfect answer is not easy, and you might have to try several different things. Perhaps start with some of the lower costs kits to find out what type works best for you, and they move up to a higher quality version of that same type later on.
Also look at the four main kit suppliers in the US, Meniscus Audio, Madisound, Parts Express, and diysoundgroup, although you will probably encounter higher shipping costs from here.
And yes, it can be somewhat overwhelming, but you are really the best one to narrow it down. A lot of people here have their own favorites, but that doesn't mean those will necessarily be the best fit for you.
Keep in mind that a very big part of what you hear is your room, and how it's furnished, as well your listening location. Finding a perfect answer is not easy, and you might have to try several different things. Perhaps start with some of the lower costs kits to find out what type works best for you, and they move up to a higher quality version of that same type later on.
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Super!
I buy my horns. Mount them on the surface, no chamfers required. woofer will be on surface. A wood strip frame covered in burlap will screen woofer from dirt/fingers & hide the projection of the woofer.
My friend the organ builder doesn't glue panels together to make pipe chests. He saws boxes out of hardwood, then screws them together with wood screws, 1 1/2" to 1 3/4" long usually. Requires a pilot drill about the shaft size, and a centerpoint to bury the head. MDF doesn't take wood screws well. I'm going to use 1 1/2" 10-24 machine screws which I drill & tap into the MDF as if it were metal or plastic. I have both taper & bottoming taps. I may buy a right angle clamp to hold panels straight while I predrill & tap. I will overlap ply joints, possibly use wood glue as a sealant, not a structural component. If I were European I would use 5 mm machine screws. I'm not going to bury flat straight the screwheads, I'm going for ugly/industrial design. I'm using allen or torx button head screws. I'm using jute batt inside. Port will be 3 1/2" ID toilet flange, about right diameter & length for 25 hz box @ <100 w. No internal braces, except maybe pine blocks in corners.
My 2 way 15" Delta-Pro 15a+Peavey RX22 6 db/octave passive crossover (1000 hz) is looking to be about $369 not including tooling.
I buy my horns. Mount them on the surface, no chamfers required. woofer will be on surface. A wood strip frame covered in burlap will screen woofer from dirt/fingers & hide the projection of the woofer.
My friend the organ builder doesn't glue panels together to make pipe chests. He saws boxes out of hardwood, then screws them together with wood screws, 1 1/2" to 1 3/4" long usually. Requires a pilot drill about the shaft size, and a centerpoint to bury the head. MDF doesn't take wood screws well. I'm going to use 1 1/2" 10-24 machine screws which I drill & tap into the MDF as if it were metal or plastic. I have both taper & bottoming taps. I may buy a right angle clamp to hold panels straight while I predrill & tap. I will overlap ply joints, possibly use wood glue as a sealant, not a structural component. If I were European I would use 5 mm machine screws. I'm not going to bury flat straight the screwheads, I'm going for ugly/industrial design. I'm using allen or torx button head screws. I'm using jute batt inside. Port will be 3 1/2" ID toilet flange, about right diameter & length for 25 hz box @ <100 w. No internal braces, except maybe pine blocks in corners.
My 2 way 15" Delta-Pro 15a+Peavey RX22 6 db/octave passive crossover (1000 hz) is looking to be about $369 not including tooling.
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The kind of speakers you want are out of fashion, so no kits will be made for it (as it's not profitable). Some designs are out there altough. Or you can find a local carpenter who can do the woodwork for you (they will do it if you provide plans). And i don't have a wood workshop neighter, but use cnc services to let my wood be cut, and assemble and finish at home, sometimes in the garden, sometimes in a space (a big corridor) where i have space and that i can clean easely (as there is not much standing there). In Belgium we have several CNC cutting workshops that do small orders also, often connected to a wood supplier. I guess in France it won't be that much different. It will cost a bit, but not that much.
Today I scrolled 24 Pages of dome tweeter @ touthautparleur dot com.
OP should take 1-2 days to decide which is the right one for the duty
Today in another thread in Multi-Way somebody suggested design by some James belonging to some pinkfish forum 😕🙄
The design is rather common...😛 2way bookshelf and... surprise ...freestanding!
I didn't scroll the 24 Pages of that thread but DSP and Active was nominated...
I stress the bookshelf vs freestanding concept, that makes sense to me..
OP should take 1-2 days to decide which is the right one for the duty
Today in another thread in Multi-Way somebody suggested design by some James belonging to some pinkfish forum 😕🙄
The design is rather common...😛 2way bookshelf and... surprise ...freestanding!
I didn't scroll the 24 Pages of that thread but DSP and Active was nominated...
I stress the bookshelf vs freestanding concept, that makes sense to me..
I suggested it because the guy wanted to use the 15W8530K01 in a sealed design, and doesn't know how to design crossovers himself. I don't know of any other published designs that use that particular driver, so my suggestion seems reasonable to me. It's also been built by a number of people, some of which are extremely happy with their new speakers.
"The kind of speakers you want are out of fashion, so no kits will be made for it"
Heaps of vintage options available though, many selling on ebay for about $100 - which is roughly how much you'd pay for the plywood in the boxes.
e.g. if you get an old 3-way box which has blown tweeters, and replace the mid + tweet openings with a horn cutout, you will have most of the build done.
"In Belgium we have several CNC cutting workshops that do small orders also, often connected to a wood supplier."
Same thing where I live - and even without CNC, just getting your panels precut saves heaps of time, and gets a very precise result, relative to hand tools.
Heaps of vintage options available though, many selling on ebay for about $100 - which is roughly how much you'd pay for the plywood in the boxes.
e.g. if you get an old 3-way box which has blown tweeters, and replace the mid + tweet openings with a horn cutout, you will have most of the build done.
"In Belgium we have several CNC cutting workshops that do small orders also, often connected to a wood supplier."
Same thing where I live - and even without CNC, just getting your panels precut saves heaps of time, and gets a very precise result, relative to hand tools.
That's not really true. Troels Gravesen has lots of kit designs with wide and shorter fronts that the OP prefers over the tall, skinny look. And they fit well into his 90h x 50w x 45d cm maximum requirements.
The SBA 941 and Faital 3WC are just two examples of the many wide baffle designs Troels offers.
These are all high end designs with quality drivers that are reported by many to have excellent sound.
And these are all readily available as kits through Jantzen Audio throughout Europe.
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Since you write that your listening distance will be quite big (correct?) I'd suggest speakers with quite some (controlled) directivity. So a horn or waveguide system (or even a cardioid or OB speaker) could be beneficial.
For the classic looks: have a peek at the Asathor design, there's a thread here and the developer is quite active too. If you have some more budget, there is the Calpamos design, done by Tony Gee, who is quite well respected over here (I think lot of his designs make more sense than Troels' actually).
For the classic looks: have a peek at the Asathor design, there's a thread here and the developer is quite active too. If you have some more budget, there is the Calpamos design, done by Tony Gee, who is quite well respected over here (I think lot of his designs make more sense than Troels' actually).
Thank you, I have already perused M. Gravesen offering, and indeed the 3WC looked like something that would fit. However, woodworking involved in the innards of the speaker looked out my league with all these holes and complicated angles.
have you seen erins measurements? they are a joke compared to what they claim to do.
Erin's Audio Corner
That's true. Troels cabinet designs are rather complicated, particularly the internal bracing. He uses a lot of braces with multiple holes in them. Maybe you could get help from a local woodworker or cabinet shop. Some people go that route to build DIY speakers. Obviously there is a cost for it, but it might still be reasonable depending on what you can find.
Thanks! No, just that they exist and that some folks are very pleased with at least some of them.