X-Overs
What's up Grim!
It would be easier to say that there is no trick to building a crossover, let alone selecting parts & design, but there are some techniques.
I think the easiest thing for you right now is point to point wiring on a pref board. You need to get an understanding of schematics first. You can do that by just looking at other people's designs and placement if they have pictures.
Second, if you don't have soldering experience, you need to get some. You can probably get tips all over the internet by doing searches on Google, Yahoo, ect...
If you have never used a soldering iron, be careful!! Touching the tip is extremely unforgiving. It is a guarenteed burn if you touch anything other than the handle.
You may get away with not having to solder by twisting the leads of the parts, but I don't highly recommend it.
The only problem I can think of off the top of my head is when placing coils on a board with limited space, you need to orient them so that there is little or no interference between them. If you are looking at a coil that's laying flat and need to place another right next to it, you'll need to place the second coil sitting on it's end like a wheel crashing into the 1st coil. This has shown to produce the least interference.
You can build a crossover basically how it's drawn. You just need to know what the symbols mean. Look up 6db slop, 12db slop, 18db slop, 24 db slop crossovers, ect.
Also, you need to consider how close you place resistors to other elements on your board. e.g., I had a friend who has a set of Infinity RS-5's. He noticed smoke coming out of a port. What happened was a resistor was too close to a coil and the coils covering began to burn. He took them back to get repaired and it happened again. Finally he wised up and called me. I put in new resistors, but lifted them off the board some and away from anything. I had never heard of anything like that before but it's true.
Check out these sites
http://w1.864.telia.com/~u86404449/
http://www.speakerbuilding.com/
Good Luck!!
Vince
[Edited by vdi_nenna on 02-21-2001 at 05:16 PM]