I'm a wee bit of a hoarder when it comes to my hobbies (but nothing like some people - Cal Weldon, I'm looking at you ;-)) and for most of the past decade I've been rather busy with work and life. However as I've been winding down the work a bit I finally found time to build the big 2-ways I've had in mind for a while. In the spirit of using things I already have stashed away I tried to buy as little as possible - and I mostly succeeded! I recycled a pair of >30 year old cabinets I rescued a decade ago. The baffles were made of half a sheet of MDF I had lying around. Stuffing was from a half roll of fiberglass that I had leftover from a construction project. Vinyl wrap was from a 15 years ago project. I used whatever fasteners I had (to be fair, I have a lot of fasteners as I tend to buy in bulk whenever I need something). I even used leftover spray-paint (from painting my shutters) for the front baffle. You get the idea.
To be honest, It would have been a lot easier and taken a lot less time to complete had I just built new cabinets from scratch. But speed was not my aim here.
The business end of these are JBL2217s for mid-woofs, Radian 650B CDs mounted to the well know QSC 14"x10" waveguide Parts Express sold long ago. For those unfamiliar with the 2217, it's almost identical to the 2226, but with a 14" basket. The same motor is used for both, so TS parameters are almost the same. But the 2217 has a lighter cone due to its smaller size. If you like 2226s for domestic use, you'd probably like the 2217 even more. The only real rub is that JBL doesn't appear to have made very many and 2217s are very hard to find. The Radian 650B appears to be very similar to their current 1" products. It's pretty beefy and unlikely to fail in any domestic application. You can probably get a Be diaphragm for it, but my hearing no longer extends high enough for me to try. Crossover is active - I use a MiniDSP 4x10HD along with an 8 channel 125W/channel amp (a Savant 8125 - similar products are marketed by Lexicon and Crown).
The old cabinets are mahogany and built with dovetail joints. The cabinets are quite stout, but cosmetically terrible. They were built to house a 12" coaxial and 15" sub, so I had to turn them around, uusing the former back as the front and former baffle as the back. Some surgery was needed to make that work. As you can see, the corners were in bad shape and needed extensive surgery. The finish was quite bad as well. I quickly gave up on the idea of refinishing the mahogany and went with vinyl wrap (which actually looks pretty good from a couple a feet away). Cabinets are about 38" x 20" x 13", so a little under 4 cubic feet (about 100 liters). Given that these are sealed, exact volume isn't so important.
The baffles are made of 1" MDF, but those drivers weigh a ton! So added some blocking to the MDF at the attachment points for better screw holding.
I don't have much of a workshop and most of my tools are really for home construction/repair. So I had to DIY a bunch of jigs and such (remember, I'm trying not to acquire more things) and I mosly worked outside. So that slowed me down as well. Yes, that's a DIY trammel you see on my pawn-shop router to cut nice circles.
After holes were cut, I did a test fit (looked good) and then painted and clear-coat the baffles in "almost JBL blue". The exact color name is "Inked" by Behr. For reference, that ruler is 12" x 8" (it's a big cabinet).
I also added 57uF of blocking capacitor ahead of the CDs to protect them from user error. These were some film caps mounted to tags I had in the parts bin.
Finally, here they are in their natural habitat. I had to build a couple of dollys for them as they are just too heavy (about 90lbs or 40kg) to reasonably move around. A quick 850Hz/24db crossover and a little eq later they sound quite nice. Lots of slam. Plently of extension. Distorion is quite low. Needless to say they can get "call the cops" loud before distortion kicks in (I was wearing big gun muffs when measuring distortion at about 120db @ 1m and I still could have gone louder). Given that they are sealed I use a fair amount of low end boost on the 2217s, but I also have 3 subs distributed around the room (one visible inside the fireplace), so I have them rolling off at 50Hz.
My room is not great acoustically, so my frequency response measurements are a bit suspect. Over the winter I plan to build and deploy some room treatment and at least one bass trap. I'll post some response graphs once the room is improved for better measurement accuracy. I'm happy to share any information anyone would like about this project, but I doubt anyone else would replicate this given the scarcity of the drivers used.
To be honest, It would have been a lot easier and taken a lot less time to complete had I just built new cabinets from scratch. But speed was not my aim here.
The business end of these are JBL2217s for mid-woofs, Radian 650B CDs mounted to the well know QSC 14"x10" waveguide Parts Express sold long ago. For those unfamiliar with the 2217, it's almost identical to the 2226, but with a 14" basket. The same motor is used for both, so TS parameters are almost the same. But the 2217 has a lighter cone due to its smaller size. If you like 2226s for domestic use, you'd probably like the 2217 even more. The only real rub is that JBL doesn't appear to have made very many and 2217s are very hard to find. The Radian 650B appears to be very similar to their current 1" products. It's pretty beefy and unlikely to fail in any domestic application. You can probably get a Be diaphragm for it, but my hearing no longer extends high enough for me to try. Crossover is active - I use a MiniDSP 4x10HD along with an 8 channel 125W/channel amp (a Savant 8125 - similar products are marketed by Lexicon and Crown).
The old cabinets are mahogany and built with dovetail joints. The cabinets are quite stout, but cosmetically terrible. They were built to house a 12" coaxial and 15" sub, so I had to turn them around, uusing the former back as the front and former baffle as the back. Some surgery was needed to make that work. As you can see, the corners were in bad shape and needed extensive surgery. The finish was quite bad as well. I quickly gave up on the idea of refinishing the mahogany and went with vinyl wrap (which actually looks pretty good from a couple a feet away). Cabinets are about 38" x 20" x 13", so a little under 4 cubic feet (about 100 liters). Given that these are sealed, exact volume isn't so important.
The baffles are made of 1" MDF, but those drivers weigh a ton! So added some blocking to the MDF at the attachment points for better screw holding.
I don't have much of a workshop and most of my tools are really for home construction/repair. So I had to DIY a bunch of jigs and such (remember, I'm trying not to acquire more things) and I mosly worked outside. So that slowed me down as well. Yes, that's a DIY trammel you see on my pawn-shop router to cut nice circles.
After holes were cut, I did a test fit (looked good) and then painted and clear-coat the baffles in "almost JBL blue". The exact color name is "Inked" by Behr. For reference, that ruler is 12" x 8" (it's a big cabinet).
I also added 57uF of blocking capacitor ahead of the CDs to protect them from user error. These were some film caps mounted to tags I had in the parts bin.
Finally, here they are in their natural habitat. I had to build a couple of dollys for them as they are just too heavy (about 90lbs or 40kg) to reasonably move around. A quick 850Hz/24db crossover and a little eq later they sound quite nice. Lots of slam. Plently of extension. Distorion is quite low. Needless to say they can get "call the cops" loud before distortion kicks in (I was wearing big gun muffs when measuring distortion at about 120db @ 1m and I still could have gone louder). Given that they are sealed I use a fair amount of low end boost on the 2217s, but I also have 3 subs distributed around the room (one visible inside the fireplace), so I have them rolling off at 50Hz.
My room is not great acoustically, so my frequency response measurements are a bit suspect. Over the winter I plan to build and deploy some room treatment and at least one bass trap. I'll post some response graphs once the room is improved for better measurement accuracy. I'm happy to share any information anyone would like about this project, but I doubt anyone else would replicate this given the scarcity of the drivers used.
Attachments
mctavish - Nice speakers! But there appear to be some big differences. I don't recognize those woofers (they don't look like JBLs - what are they?) and the cabinet is vented. But I'm sure they're very capable.
My wife would say that they’re similar in the fact that they are huge!😂
Faitalpro 15pr400
Same waveguide as yours, with a denovo Audio DNA 360
Faitalpro 15pr400
Same waveguide as yours, with a denovo Audio DNA 360
von Ah - I had a set of 3-way OBs before (a B&C 12" coaxial on a minimal frame and a 15" mystery woofer in an "H" frame below it). They sounded great in my previous listening room, but I could never get them to behave in my current room. I never tried the 2217s in OB as I kind of gave up on the OB idea in this room. I'm glad to hear they are working well for you.
My wife used to occasionally comment on the size of my HiFi equipment, but once my last kid moved out and I converted their room to a yoga room for her the comments stopped 😉
Good driver choices. If I had to go out and buy drivers for this build, I probably would have gone for a 15" driver (most likely a JBL 2226). I almost bought a pair of DNA360s long ago. I'll be they sound great.
They were used in the JBL 4893 LF/sub.
The rest of the 489x line, used the 1400PRO 2450SL combo.
Look here for specific transducer info :
https://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?374-2217h
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Thanks Cal! That means a lot coming from a guy who has seen (and apparently owned 😉) almost everything speaker related.
Thanks Dave. And you are mostly correct about the title. The mid-woof is not horn loaded. Maybe one day I'll have a listening room big enough to accommodate that. It would be fun, but I can't imagine being able to move such a large cabinet. Maybe if I built it using carbon fiber? Hmm.... You're giving me bad ideas 😉