Another RoadKill speaker project

diyAudio Member
Joined 2007
I picked up these boxes a few months ago and just got around to seeing if I had any drivers to fit the holes.
Turns out I do.
I have some cheap "Dick Smith" 200mm woofers that fit the woofer holes perfectly and the Jaycar 4inch fits the midrange hole well but then I started thinking about some party speakers for my daughter.
The midrange compartment in these cheap boxes is way too large for a 4" driver that is happy in a couple of litres and I looked around for something that would sound good in an 11 litre box and what came to mind was Paul Carmodys Tarkus and the cheap Peerless paper cone.
Which brings me to the tweeter. I have a heap of cheap 70mm HTinaBox drivers here and these are reasonably robust and won't need padding down but I can't find a rear cup to fit such a tiny driver.
Any suggestions for a quick and simple compartment that will glue securely to MDF?
If I am using the Peerless down to a couple of hundred Hertz the tiny full range will need its own half litre compartment
 
Tweeters are really crap and one is open circuit anyway, just like the woofers in one box were.
The boxes themselves are OK and woodwork and box making has always been my weak point
 

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Plenty of cardboard tubes from let's say packaging tape.
Or PVC pipe of the right diameter, all this sealed with plywood circle and Liquid nails.
But even better Alnico cone tweeters from old Kawai organs, sealed, therefore don't need an enclosure added.
Bonus - actually sound very good.
And organs are usually found free on G/Tree.

Or maybe I misunderstood you and you need an enclosure for your mid driver. Then PVC tubes stuffed with felt and poly insulation are a great choice.
 
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OK Neither will fit via the 90mm cut-out for the small midrange, I think that this will be on hold until I get the bigger, cheap driver and make a bigger hole.
It's only for making noise for parties so a tweeter may not even be needed but there is a hole there. Maybe I should block the hole with a glued in plate and find a cheap but robust HF unit from somewhere and router out a new hole After Christmas naturally
I also tried the Akai sealed back cone tweeter I have, sounds awful with the 3uF cap it comes with
 
Actually I may have just found the answer.
In my stash on the shelf I have a pair of older generic silk dome tweeters from Jaycar. Pete may be familiar with them from around 2000, CT-2010
Much bigger magnet and the steel is three times the thickness but the assembly fits the plastic faceplate for these boxes and as a bonus the ferro-fluid hasn't dried out.
I am now tempted to play further with these and core drill the pole piece and fit a cup of some sort to the rear and try and lower the resonance from 1200
 
I've not taken pictures as few people on the forum are really interested in the sort of tinkering I do. But I played around making a hybrid of the old Jaycar tweeter and the plastic body of the cheap unit. Found a foam dome to sit over the small depression in the Jaycars pole piece and after re-assembly it actually plays music, not just makes noise. I can't make the preferred midrange fit as there is only 155mm between hole cut-outs so I may as well use that little driver I'm familiar with and use the 100mm hole already there. The Jaycar mid is reasonable and I still have a few left

And these days my hearing cuts out above 15k anyway even with the new hearing aids

Won't be anywhere near High quality but it will do for parties.

For a cheap speaker the box quality exceeds the quality of the drivers used, they really are bad but I got them free from the side of the road and had a good long conversation with the feller putting them out into the bargain and got the amplifier too. So the daughter has karaoke capability too, the Chinese market loves that stuff I guess
 
Forgive me please people but I've been dithering.
Neither of the little drivers can keep up with two of those woofers in parallel.
Turns out tho that the rebate for the 4" is the right size for either the little Peerless or the Sansui 135mm.
The Sansui from the old HT centre speakers are 4R and quite hot and no bass to speak of. Not sure what is going on there as they look the same as the surround set in 8R but these are shielded. SWMBO commented that they had no bass and were shrill.
Still no measuring gear but I am trying to get some.
Anyway as the Peerless are saleable if I need cash I am going to try and use the 135mm Sansui drivers from the SHT-65 set
Sticker reads 5P68 but Google has been no help
DCR is 3.6Ohms and X-Max is about 3mm and like most of these drivers a VC of ~25mm
 

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here's my current Roadkill project: couple of High Qts 8" woofers in closed box (hate High Qts drivers), brand unknown but part code starts with 'SQ', LG mid & cone tweeter, first order (tightarse) series xover, surprisingly, sounds remarkably good with no tweaking. I'm going to add a rear firing wideranger to see how that sounds.
Note on Jaycar Bipolars: measured a some I had on hand to match them, 10uF was 12, 22uF was 29; 68uF was 74...:-( these are recent purchases or brand new. For the same $ you can get better quality from Speakerbug....
 

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here's my current Roadkill project: couple of High Qts 8" woofers in closed box (hate High Qts drivers), brand unknown but part code starts with 'SQ', LG mid & cone tweeter, first order (tightarse) series xover, surprisingly, sounds remarkably good with no tweaking. I'm going to add a rear firing wideranger to see how that sounds.
Note on Jaycar Bipolars: measured a some I had on hand to match them, 10uF was 12, 22uF was 29; 68uF was 74...:-( these are recent purchases or brand new. For the same $ you can get better quality from Speakerbug....


The last time I was in Jaycar they expected me to provide the CAT. NO (catalogue number) for each of the components I bought there, and there were dozens of them. So I waited for the salesperson to do just that, for another 20 odd minutes.

Customer service seems to be a thing of the past with them it seems.
With regards to Speakerbug , excellent service and pricing, thumbs up to Nigel (business owner).


C.M
 
G'day Moondog, yeah probably, the motivation for this one was to create space in my shed, it just happened that a previous build of mine which I gave to a mate has been wrecked by a curious child. He declined my offer of a machete, so I thought I'd use these drivers in a replacement build. Main use will be home theatre, mate also has some hearing loss, so need to tweak for that
 
Glued in a reinforcing hardwood batten on the front baffle after cutting the bigger hole with a wonky jigsaw and trial fitted the drivers.
I'll use the Jaycar catalogue XO on the tweeter, which is 3.3uF and 0.47mH, supposedly 4k, which if the impedance is 6R the same as its DCR [ 5.6] seems about right and it worked on the box these came from. I'll cut the mid about there too as that was where the Sansui XO was.
I guess that means a bandpass around 400Hz but I'll make it lower if I have enough cheap parts in the bins.
All I can remember about the cheap woofers is that the Fs is 40Hz and the Qts is 0.47 so these will be a leaky sealed box
 

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Spent yesterday listening to mine, really like them, no super low bass, but solid mids & low mids, Jazz sounds superb on them. Got lucky with the sensitivities, they match really well, no padding resistors reqd. Xover points ~360Hz & 3Khz. Tweeters are slightly hot on axis due to the 12mm cone they're behind, in an ideal world would be moved back a few cm, but I'll live with it. Don't think I'm going to bother with the rear-firing drivers, They sound 'finished' as is...