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Show us your DIY speaker projects!

looking for utah tweeters for the big ones, the small ones are all utah, both are still in the experimental stage...
 

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Here are some speakers that I recently finished. And I must add that I was inspired by the econowave thread, and got lots of great advice from a number of you good folks.

I used Selenium D210Ti drivers with JBL waveguides and Dayton Classic 10" woofers. I've got a little tweaking to do, but I am quite happy with them. My 45 wpc vintage sony receiver more than powers them to quite loud sound levels. Very cleanly I might add. :guitar:

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Hey Woofman-
NICE WORK! I did my EW's in JBL Decade cabs and they came out sounding good as well.
DC
 
Thank you!

The one with the two 6.5" bass drivers, those drivers were from Parts Express, one of their $10 or less specials. Big magnets, doped paper cones, I have two 4 ohms wired in series. The tweeters are some old Mission units. I used BassBox to design the cabinets to suit the woofers, I used four small ports because they fitted easily on the baffle.

These speakers are still under development, I used an old Pioneer crossover from a 3 way speaker, so naturally there's a big hole where the midrange should be. I'm trying to find some specs on the tweeter so I can use a crossover design program to design a better crossover.

The big monster ones wrapped in black vinyl I made over 20 years ago. At first, there was only one, sitting in the back of my old Mini Cooper with four 8" Audax woofers in it. Since it was a little too "obvious" to any passing thief, I took it out, and sold the woofers to a friend. Left with a big cabinet, I removed and replaced the baffle, and put in all SEAS drivers, the tweeter and 8" bass through a SEAS crossover, the 10" bass through a car audio subwoofer crossover. I only made one to see what they sounded like, when I heard how good it sounded, I made the other to make a pair. They made the journey across the Atlantic when I moved from London to New Jersey in 2000. A few years ago, the foam surrounds on the original 8" woofers rotted away, so I replaced them with some 8" Mission bass units with polypropylene cones (which are also made by SEAS).

The subwoofer, I made using a 12" Infinity 1220w car sub. I chose it because it has like a +-12mm xMax parameter. Plus it was "buy one get one free" for $80 at Circuit City a while ago. I used a 250w subwoofer amp from Parts Express.
 
Where are you located, Lee? Perhaps someone near you has a woofer tester and can get you an impedance sweep of your tweeters to get you started. Might be a bit more difficult to find someone with mic and RTA but you never know.
 
I posted this over on the Ewave thread but I will post it here as well for those
of you who don't like to wander into that neighborhood...

My all(mostly) diy system, 2A3 amp, 12B4a pre and my new Ewaves!

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I posted this over on the Ewave thread but I will post it here as well for those
of you who don't like to wander into that neighborhood...

My all(mostly) diy system, 2A3 amp, 12B4a pre and my new Ewaves!

img0398nb9.jpg

WHOA . . . thats a SWEET flea power system Vaughn . . .
 
my hi-end homemade speakers

Here are pics of 3 sets of speakers I made.
The 6 inch woofer and the bullet tweeter punch out a clear 100 watt, as loud as you want it and so real. I've had B&W's some 100 watt Cerwin Vegas, nothing even comes close to it in clarity and loudness, you can listen to anything on these ones. They have a solid oak front mounted on a solid steel box. Each one is heavier than two car batteries.
The next ones are 8 inch woofers, bullet tweeter, and audiosphere medium and at the rear of the boxes a massive Braun tweeter. Inside are the biggest Braun crossovers I've ever known to exist made by Braun probably in the late 70's. The boxes are solid teak, they still need to be sealed. These things punch 150 clean watts. They are very heavy as well. The neatness in either of these speakers is close to perfection for the size of speakers they are, a 98 out of 100.
The next ones are pressboard boxes, carrying a 12 inch high end woofers, Braun tweeters, and very high-end old midranges. These things can punch 250 to 300 watts no problem, good for blues or reggae, or any African drum section.
I normally use one of my Marantz's or Nikko Alpha series or any high end amp weighing 60-70 pounds. In my knowledge these ones compare to the Warfedale E70's, maybe even the E90's which I've never heard. I believe in very loud and clean sound at any volume range. No distortion here.
 

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Here is a small project I just completed. The drivers are out of an old set of Minimus 7's that I found in a box spring mattress (long story). The cabs where all beat up and rusty. But they sounded great. My daughter who is 15 needed some speakers so I decided to build these for her.
The cab is made out of 3/4 MDF and the baffle is solid Purpleheart wood just under 3/4". Stock, the tweeter has a large rectangular plastic plate that it mounts to. I did away with that. I hated to cover up all that beautiful wood with plastic so I drilled a hole for the tweeter using a forstner bit on the press, rounded it over with a 3/8 roundover bit then went around back and carved out a space for the tweeter to sit then drilled 3 holes right where they are on the stock plastic plate to secure it. This turned out better than I hoped. The crossover is based on a mod that a gentleman sells on ebay. I just used larger gauge Iron core inductors on both the woofer and tweeter. They sound awesome on there own but I will be building my daughter a sub woofer to complement these. I will also be trying the crossover mod done buy some of the guys here recently on AK ( kudos Zilch!!!). Please Click on the thumbnail below and then click on "other images buy this user"


 
New Wine in Old Bottles

EconoWave conversion of KLH-17's.
BEFORE:
KLH17s.jpg

AFTER:
Zilch17s.jpg


This conversion uses the Selenium D210Ti compression driver with a Dayton 7x7" elliptical waveguide and a Dayton Classic 10" woofer. There is a custom variation of the EconoWaveGuide crossover made specifically for this combination. (Thanks, Zilch.)

Still have to fix up some grilles, as the old ones won't fit anymore. I was looking at the kits from PE, but I think I can build from scratch and come out OK. The sound is amazingly better than it was. The low and high ends are both filled out. Mids are clearer. I'm hearing things I didn't even know was in the music. Going through my entire library, listening as if for the first time. It's exciting.

My "How I Did It" thread with bill of materials and instructions is located HERE and has links to many other threads that influenced the makeover.
 
My hivi 3" full range

Sheoak boxes and a 41Hz amp 25w per channel.
Reasonable sound for computer speakers.

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The link to the boxes is me as I milled the timber and made them.
If you want the link to the original inspiration for them it's: http://www.zaphaudio.com/audio-speaker18.html
I sloped the sides because I felt like a change.
Ive made several sets of these speakers.
They are very good value for money.
The amp is from Jan at www.41hz.com There is a very helpful forum at this site too.
It is an amp6 and the easiest to make.
If you are going to use a battery ie car or small lead acid then get the amp6basic as it has no rectifier on board.
The amp6 is if you want to use an ac or dc input and cant decide which, however the toroids are a fiddle to make.
Nice amps though.
Try searching http://www.stereo.net.au/forums/index.php for tripath amps theres a lot of conflicting info but I can tell you that they are very good value.
 
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Some have maybe seen my DIY horn set-up but if you haven't, here ya go.

I really can't call these completely DIY because I utilized an existing bass horn in the Frazier Dixielander, but they are pretty much DIY from there on up.

Frazier Dixielander bass horn with 350Hz Edgarhorn round tractrix and JBL 2441 2" compression drivers. The HF is the Fostex T90A. The 1st order 3-way crossovers are obvious DIY :D


I thought that I would add it to the list of DIY speakers in this thread. Mainly, because it came about with help from some great AK'ers that lent their expertise and advice. Thanks guys :thmbsp:

RC
 

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