charting progress on my DIY subwoofer.

[speekergeek]

As a few of you know i have been building a sub lately and having a bit of a hard time. but i thought i would put my progress up here for comments and suggestions and what-not.

It all started with my wife moaning about the 5' sonotube subwoofer in our front room, although she called it the big ugly tube. anyways, we moved so i tore the amp and speaker out of it and decided after a lot of deliberation, to try my hand at a passive radiator. i have built everything (almost) but a PR box. I had a couple of 15" MTX's around that i thought i could use, so off i went!

I decided to go with 2 layers of 3/4" mdf for extra strength. the picture here is the humble begining of the inside layer.

 

[speekergeek]

i had all the pieces pre-cut by the lumber yard because i only have a jigsaw and if you have ever tried to make a speaker box with a jigsaw then you know why i didn't. making the cutouts was easy cuz the inside box isn't as critical as the outside box.
here is the completed inner box.

 

[speekergeek]

here is my little baby Isabella on the inner box. 😀

 

[speekergeek]

here is the bracing on the top of the box, plenty enough i hope. 🙂

 

[speekergeek]

bottom bracing, i went kind of crazy and covered the entire inside with 2 layers of peel and seal roofing stuff. 🙄 hope it works well, as of this point the box weighs about 60lbs.

 

[speekergeek]

skip a few days ahead..... I had my first experience with routing, here's a tip for you people, DON'T USE A ROUTER IN A SMALL CLOSED GARAGE!!! I didn't really notice too much because i was pretty loaded, but the dust (evident the next day, it was everywhere) was thick in the air. I routed the speaker cutouts a bit too shallow but it is too late to go back now, i returned the router already. did it all free hand, without any guide but a pencil. all the sanding was done by hand, even the little edge on the top of the box in the picture. it is almost ready for painting, a few more hours of sanding and wood filler oughta do it. I tried tuning the PR's but they kept throwing in the towel. so i have ordered two stryke audio 15" PR's weighted at 1050grams. I think it looks better than anything i have built before and i am quite proud, just thought i would share it. More updates to come!

 

[michael]

might i ask what driver your puttign in the box? looks great by the way, cant wait to see it up and running 😀
Im currently building my new subwoofer as well, might post my pics up pretty soon.

 

[speekergeek]

I have a dayton 15" DVC model. I am planning on upgrading eventually to a tempest some day, and from there..... the mighty Timult and a 1k watt amp!!! muhaaaahAAAAAA. but yeah, for now it is just a dayton dvc 15"er.

 

[michael]

how do the daytons sound? i have not heard much as i live in australia and we have limited driver ranges around, though ALOT of diyers are from australia😀

 

[speekergeek]

they sound loud! in the previous enclosure i had the gain turned barely up at all and during movies and stuff it was just too much, i turned the subwoofer control on my reciever down to -6db and it was perfect. bass quality is kind of hard for me to judge, i guess it depends on the enclosure, but overall i would say that they are excellent. kelticwizard informed me that my dayton may be a tempest clone, once apon a time eminence owned dayton or something like that. they look similar, but i don't think the dayton has an extended pole piece(bumped back plate? same thing?)...if you look at the bottom of woofers/subs with an extended pole piece, there is a raised area around the venting in the pole piece. the dayton doesn't have this bump. anyways, if i had my druthers, next time i would have bought a tempest/tumult(US$400!).
I can't wait to hear them in the new enclosure, i hope it sounds good. i tried to do a freq response graph and there was a huge dip in it at about 60hz. but we'll see if it changes with the new PR's. I wan't to feel the tyrannosaurus stomping around in the living room!