Show me your DIY Speakers !

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Show me your DIY Speakers !

Postby SteveH » Wed Apr 25, 2007 10:54 am

All,
I know we've had some speaker threads before; but this time I am interested in seeing some of your own DIY speakers. After looking at some of the beautiful amps you all can make - Im sure that the speakers will be eye-candy as well.

Thanks,
Steve
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Postby WA4SWJ » Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:43 pm

Steve,

Here's mine.

http://www.diytube.com/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=17

These are Zaph Audio's L18 design. I built them about a year ago and have been extremely happy with them.

Regards,
Last edited by WA4SWJ on Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby WA4SWJ » Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:44 pm

Aww rats - it didn't work.

Pilot error.

Click on Album above and look for the picture.
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Postby WA4SWJ » Wed Apr 25, 2007 12:52 pm

OK - at least the link works now.

I'm building another set of speakers Zaph designed for me and I'm about 50% completed with them. I might be able to post pictures in a week or so. I'm really interested in speaker building but I am not a speaker designer. I can highly recommend Zaph's designs though. Very thorough engineering with no BS and John is an excellent designer. I'm also going to build his BAMTM speakers as well. After that I'm going to stop. Speakers take up even more space than amplifiers! And, I'm not sure how to get speakers that sound much better than these without selling a car or something.

Regards,
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Postby sorenj07 » Wed Apr 25, 2007 3:51 pm

Congrats on the speakers, they look pretty sweet. I'm researching them now..
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Postby WA4SWJ » Wed Apr 25, 2007 3:56 pm

Soren,

Go here:

http://www.zaphaudio.com

Move down the page and click on the Seas L18 link and all the info is there. I built them right from the Web page. I had to buy some tools though, including a router. I don't have a wood shop. There are also a number of other designs on Zaph's page and a ton of technical discussion. The info John provides is a huge gift to our community in my humble opinion.

Enjoy!

Edit: BTW - they cost about $600 in parts plus tools that can be used again plus stands.
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Postby jeffdavison » Wed Apr 25, 2007 8:38 pm

Hre's a shot of my modded original Advent speakers that are powered by my overachiever ST70:


http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p280 ... utside.jpg
http://s130.photobucket.com/albums/p280 ... overed.jpg

Drivers are Accuton 7" woofs and Raven 2.0 ribbon tweets. The pair are bookmatched with the left channel with the opposite tweeter offset.

Also the subs are Scan Speaks 9" Revalators with a passive radiator on the back side. crossed over with a modded Dahlquist LP-1 crossover and (sorry) a Parasound HC1000 sand based amp @ around 90 hz. System is 3db down at 24hz. Everything gels quite nicely from top to bottom.

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Postby WA4SWJ » Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:06 am

Jeff,

Those look great! Love those rolling tubes on the floor. Or it is tube rolling?

:)
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Postby Dmason » Thu Apr 26, 2007 5:21 am

Easy, proven design, and fantastic horns for tube amps

www.zillaspeak.com/bib.asp

I have built these for several Fostex drivers, and soon a pair of HempTone 4.5 inchers. This horn design loads the vertical, propagating bass along the ceiling, where there are no obstructions. This gives an enormous soundstage, with lower register presentation indistinguishable from open baffle dipole sound. Almost unbelievable amounts of bass relative to driver size. No room modes. No crossovers needed. Fabulous with tube amps.

Click on logos for expertly calc'd loads for various drivers. A+++
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These sound a lot better than they look

Postby EWBrown » Thu Apr 26, 2007 6:43 am

I had posted these a while ago, under another topic, but they bear a replay, even though they're not things of beauty.

These are an unusual 1950s design by John Karlson and Wayne Green (of 73 Ham Radio Magazine infamy) and with better (and more modern) drivers, they sound fantastic, and are extremely efficient. The cabinet's internal design goes against all "conventional wisdom".

Image

and a peek inside with the grille removed:

Image

The 12 inch driver is a Pyle Professional PYM1298, from Parts Express, which is a re-branded and lower cost Eminence Kappa-12. Efficiency is very high, at least 98 dB SPL. THe horn is a vintage Altec Lansing 811B, with 806-8A compression driver and N801-8A dividing network (their name for a crossover). I had bought these new back in 1973.

The one major flaw with the original Karlson design, using a full-range or coaxial speaker, was that the response above 1KHz could be harsh and "shouty". Placing the HF driver on top eliminates the problem.

The best part was, some one else did all the "dog work" for me about 40 or 50 years ago, and I "adopted" these for free at the local town dump's swap area. The original UTAH FR speakers were absolutely shot, and it took me about a year of dithering around before I finally took the plunge and fixed them up. There are other views of the insides of the cabs elsewhere on this site, under "Old Speaker Design".

/ed B in NH
Last edited by EWBrown on Sat Apr 06, 2013 9:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby SteveH » Thu Apr 26, 2007 7:12 am

Very cool stuff guys ! I am impressed. Hopefully sometime soon I will get a chance to buildup some speakers; although I suppose I should give my Bozaks a good listening to first (once I get the amp under control). It seems like a very kind individual is going to let me 'borrow' some EV drivers - perhaps I will make matching speakers for my amp ? I purchased some matching veneer when I bought the lumber for my amp....

Thanks again.
Steve
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Postby evsentry3 » Thu Apr 26, 2007 12:25 pm

I made some Open Baffle kind of speakers....very, very loosely based upon the JE Labs design.

Image

I didn't want to lock into any specific drivers and had several different sized drivers on hand, so I attacked the problem with a quick change mount design. I made two different cutout sizes on the baffles, that also were laided back a bit and wings racked back at differing angles. They will accommodate up to a 12" driver in the bottom and a 7" diameter in the top.


Image

If anybody wants to know how to make a lot of sawdust with a router, contact me and I'll let you know how to accomplish it!!

I can change what the driver complement is with a quarter turn mount kind of change out. I'm currently playing with one of the digital crossovers that allows me to experiment with crossover points and particularly with the Lowthers, allow me to select some eq. If I should find a magic combo, I can then build a hardware crossover of higher quality.

Have a great day!!

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Postby evsentry3 » Thu Apr 26, 2007 1:46 pm

OK...and here is very different style of homebrew build. I just helped in the build and eventually came to own them too.

The design is by Rex Baldock of England some years ago. Pretty interesting and cost effective to build. Loads the driver to produce very nice bass from a limited size. In this case it uses an 8" driver and gets down to 40hz very nicely!

[img]http://www.diytube.com/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=20

This was the first attempt. Much greater effort in the top than in the column, which is the original Baldock design. But the top, even with some felt applied had the sound too contained and just didn't seem to work. So one day in a fit of gotta-try-something, I went to the wood cut off junk box and put together a very simple 45 degree reflector...and low and behold it really worked!!

[/img]http://www.diytube.com/phpBB2/album_pic.php?pic_id=21

Its shown here, loaded with a little University 308 driver that works very nicely! The 308 was taller though and did require adding some top rings to give it enough spacing for mounting clearance.

The design primarily consists of the outer tube, a shorter internal tube and then the spacing from the floor acting as loading for low frequencies.
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Bookshelf

Postby jduffy » Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:37 am

FE103 in a bookshelf. Takes awhile to break them in but once they do, it's amazing what they are capable of. Cello and strings, crazy.

Not meant for hip-hop though.

Image
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Postby Pyre » Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:22 am

I just so happened to have finished my first set of many (hopefully) DIY Speakers. I bought the JRM curved electrostatic panels and power supply kits about a year ago and just got around to finishing them. I needed a table saw to finish them and found one at the Re-Use-It center for 30 bucks. I can now build all the speakers I want. Generally Electrostats need 75+ SS watts to get them singing but they sound pretty amazing hooked to a 35 watt tube amp. The highs and mids are amazingly clear and airy. I have a self powered sub to do the lows that I wired into my Aikido based preamp. I would like to improve the sub a bit more by building some separate dipole subs.

The girlfriend was not at home so I set up stuff in the living room for testing.

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