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I have completed a set of finalists. These are not your standard finalists. I had to make some changes to them since I did not use the exact drivers required. Any changes made will have the necessary adjustments notated. Unfortunately, I do not have the room for them anywhere in my house so I will leave the listening impressions for a later date. This is my build story.
All wood cut and ready to go.
Here is the biggest mistake I made, i.e. DO NOT DO THIS! I ended up gluing together the ends of the mid tube before making sure that all of the parts fit together perfectly. When I finally got around to the dry fitting and glue up I noticed that the mid tunnel was about 1/4 inch too long for the enclosure. This made the resulting build a headache because now I had a slight bow to my enclosure. I power sanded one end of the tube assembly to shave it down. But since it was done by hand and not on a belt sander the result was uneven. I ended up clamping the box as best as I could and sealing everywhere I could reach. I just wish it would have gone smoother without all the trouble and cussing....grr.
Now the biggest change to the original design was the woofer. I already owned a set of the RS28s and a pair of RS225's. That is a major reason I chose this design in the first place. The difference between my tweets and the fs ones are very minimal. However, my woofers are the discontinued shielded type. That dictated a larger enclosure of 50 liters compared to the smaller 35 liter box. Keeping the baffle width and depth the same for response purposes meant adding an additional 11" of height. So I made the decision on creating floor standing finalists with the tweet at seated ear height. That left me with an empty space at the bottom of the enclosure which I decided to house the crossover and optional rear plug.
I was very happy that my inner baffle holes and the mid tube lined up perfectly.
I made the decision of gluing the inner baffle separate from the outer baffle. This allowed me to get a good fit from my poor planning of the mid tunnel earlier. However, it also provided me with some stomach ulcers worrying if my routed outer baffle would line up with my inner baffle exactly. Whew, it did.
For the rear mid tube hole I ended up using a flush trim bit on my router to make sure that it was perfect.
Of course, if you primarily only listen to industrial music you could leave the rear mid opening like below. I understand that it will bring out the harmonic frequencies prevalent in that type of music. ha, ha
With that empty space at the bottom of the enclosure I decided to build hinged doors to access that space. I purchased the PE mounting plate for my speakers and decided to inset the plate into the door. That meant building a jig and using another flush trim router bit to carve out the space for the plate.
Here is how I decided to layout the crossover. The only change I made to the actual board from my mock drawing is I added the switch resister to the top of the board. I did not like that resistor being attached to the back plate.
I wanted the rear of the speakers just gloss black. So I bought some black enamel paint. After a primer and 6 coats of paint I STILL wasn't getting the results I wanted. That is when I broke down and bought a HVLP Earlex spray station. Why I didn't buy this earlier I will never know. This thing kicks butt! Only two coats with the sprayer and it looked good.
I wanted to make my finished speakers seem like they were taken from expensive automobile interior. So I thought it would be a good idea if each driver were surrounded in a brushed aluminum trim ring like some car speedometers and tachs. I bought some 1/8" thick and 1/2" wide aluminum bar stock and cold formed it into some jigs I made that were the exact outer diameter of each driver. Then I took the mostly circle rings to a friends shop where we welded, scraped, sanded, and polished each ring to exact size to fit around each driver.
The problem with this idea is that the 1/2" trim rings are the exact same thickness as the original 1/2" outer baffle thickness. So instead I opted for a standard 3/4" thick outer baffle. The real tricky part was routing the different depths for the drivers and rings. The rings, when flush with the driver face, extend below each driver mounting plate. So I needed to route not only the perfect driver cutout and depth but also an additional outer ring deeper than the driver faceplate. After practicing on a bunch of scrap with some special router bits I bought just for this cut alone, everything turned out well.
Keeping with the car interior theme I decided to use some leather along the bottom of the speaker to resemble hand stitched leather seats. Borrowing my mothers sewing machine and some funny looks from the women at JoAnn Fabrics yielded the necessary materials. After another afternoon swearing at myself I ended up with the lower coverings.
Now for the pièce de résistance if you will. In keeping with my theme I decided to take a bold leap and purchase the following below:
40 square feet of real carbon fiber! I figured if that stuff is good enough for automotive trim, F1 frames, and the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner then it is good enough for my speakers. The one bad thing working with the stuff that I purchased was that it already had a piano clear finish on one side that can/will scratch very, very, VERY easily. That meant as soon as I applied each side I had to cover it up so I could run the router with a flush trim bit without scratching anything.
Finally, I wanted a visual transition piece from the carbon fiber to the lower leather. I was just going to add an aluminum strip between the two. However, after looking at how the strip would have just laid on top and not looked professional I swallowed real hard, hoped that I wouldn't ruin the hundreds of dollars of carbon fiber already glued on the speaker and routed a dado around the speaker. That allowed the trim strip to become flush with the face and sides of the enclosure and look sleek. I was sooooo glad that it worked out well.
So after all of that I placed the crossovers inside the empty space, hooked everything up, and set them up in my garage for an afternoon to help them break in. I only have 2-3 hours on them so far so I will reserve my listening impressions until I can properly set them up inside and have a good listen. However, that didn't stop me from relaxing after my 3 month building journey to enjoy the fruits of my labors with some tasty 21 year old sipping rum and a great cigar!
I have completed a set of finalists. These are not your standard finalists. I had to make some changes to them since I did not use the exact drivers required. Any changes made will have the necessary adjustments notated. Unfortunately, I do not have the room for them anywhere in my house so I will leave the listening impressions for a later date. This is my build story.
All wood cut and ready to go.
Here is the biggest mistake I made, i.e. DO NOT DO THIS! I ended up gluing together the ends of the mid tube before making sure that all of the parts fit together perfectly. When I finally got around to the dry fitting and glue up I noticed that the mid tunnel was about 1/4 inch too long for the enclosure. This made the resulting build a headache because now I had a slight bow to my enclosure. I power sanded one end of the tube assembly to shave it down. But since it was done by hand and not on a belt sander the result was uneven. I ended up clamping the box as best as I could and sealing everywhere I could reach. I just wish it would have gone smoother without all the trouble and cussing....grr.
Now the biggest change to the original design was the woofer. I already owned a set of the RS28s and a pair of RS225's. That is a major reason I chose this design in the first place. The difference between my tweets and the fs ones are very minimal. However, my woofers are the discontinued shielded type. That dictated a larger enclosure of 50 liters compared to the smaller 35 liter box. Keeping the baffle width and depth the same for response purposes meant adding an additional 11" of height. So I made the decision on creating floor standing finalists with the tweet at seated ear height. That left me with an empty space at the bottom of the enclosure which I decided to house the crossover and optional rear plug.
I was very happy that my inner baffle holes and the mid tube lined up perfectly.
I made the decision of gluing the inner baffle separate from the outer baffle. This allowed me to get a good fit from my poor planning of the mid tunnel earlier. However, it also provided me with some stomach ulcers worrying if my routed outer baffle would line up with my inner baffle exactly. Whew, it did.
For the rear mid tube hole I ended up using a flush trim bit on my router to make sure that it was perfect.
Of course, if you primarily only listen to industrial music you could leave the rear mid opening like below. I understand that it will bring out the harmonic frequencies prevalent in that type of music. ha, ha
With that empty space at the bottom of the enclosure I decided to build hinged doors to access that space. I purchased the PE mounting plate for my speakers and decided to inset the plate into the door. That meant building a jig and using another flush trim router bit to carve out the space for the plate.
Here is how I decided to layout the crossover. The only change I made to the actual board from my mock drawing is I added the switch resister to the top of the board. I did not like that resistor being attached to the back plate.
I wanted the rear of the speakers just gloss black. So I bought some black enamel paint. After a primer and 6 coats of paint I STILL wasn't getting the results I wanted. That is when I broke down and bought a HVLP Earlex spray station. Why I didn't buy this earlier I will never know. This thing kicks butt! Only two coats with the sprayer and it looked good.
I wanted to make my finished speakers seem like they were taken from expensive automobile interior. So I thought it would be a good idea if each driver were surrounded in a brushed aluminum trim ring like some car speedometers and tachs. I bought some 1/8" thick and 1/2" wide aluminum bar stock and cold formed it into some jigs I made that were the exact outer diameter of each driver. Then I took the mostly circle rings to a friends shop where we welded, scraped, sanded, and polished each ring to exact size to fit around each driver.
The problem with this idea is that the 1/2" trim rings are the exact same thickness as the original 1/2" outer baffle thickness. So instead I opted for a standard 3/4" thick outer baffle. The real tricky part was routing the different depths for the drivers and rings. The rings, when flush with the driver face, extend below each driver mounting plate. So I needed to route not only the perfect driver cutout and depth but also an additional outer ring deeper than the driver faceplate. After practicing on a bunch of scrap with some special router bits I bought just for this cut alone, everything turned out well.
Keeping with the car interior theme I decided to use some leather along the bottom of the speaker to resemble hand stitched leather seats. Borrowing my mothers sewing machine and some funny looks from the women at JoAnn Fabrics yielded the necessary materials. After another afternoon swearing at myself I ended up with the lower coverings.
Now for the pièce de résistance if you will. In keeping with my theme I decided to take a bold leap and purchase the following below:
40 square feet of real carbon fiber! I figured if that stuff is good enough for automotive trim, F1 frames, and the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner then it is good enough for my speakers. The one bad thing working with the stuff that I purchased was that it already had a piano clear finish on one side that can/will scratch very, very, VERY easily. That meant as soon as I applied each side I had to cover it up so I could run the router with a flush trim bit without scratching anything.
Finally, I wanted a visual transition piece from the carbon fiber to the lower leather. I was just going to add an aluminum strip between the two. However, after looking at how the strip would have just laid on top and not looked professional I swallowed real hard, hoped that I wouldn't ruin the hundreds of dollars of carbon fiber already glued on the speaker and routed a dado around the speaker. That allowed the trim strip to become flush with the face and sides of the enclosure and look sleek. I was sooooo glad that it worked out well.
So after all of that I placed the crossovers inside the empty space, hooked everything up, and set them up in my garage for an afternoon to help them break in. I only have 2-3 hours on them so far so I will reserve my listening impressions until I can properly set them up inside and have a good listen. However, that didn't stop me from relaxing after my 3 month building journey to enjoy the fruits of my labors with some tasty 21 year old sipping rum and a great cigar!
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