So I’ve been enjoying the fruits of my labors for quite some time now, by holding on to these speakers I built for my brother. Last weekend we worked out dates for me to come visit him in NYC and deliver the speakers, so they’ll soon have a new home. I’m excited to give them to their rightful owner…. but I would be totally lying if I didn’t admit that I’ll be very sad to see them go as well! These Scanspeak tweeters are detailed and exquisite as can be. I’m probably going to have to build something to replace them because I know I’m gonna miss these so bad when they’re gone! Plus, they’re GREEN. I mean, how often do you see green speakers? Shown above is a view from the backside; I mounted the terminals vertically, with positive on top. That will make it easier to figure out which is which in a dark corner of a room. I also offset them to one side so they’d be easier to reach. Since this is my third major speaker design, I took a metal-ink marker and wrote “JB mk.III” and LEFT, to denote that the L-pads should face the listener (so you can always check their setting with a glance)
Anyway, they turned out pretty kickass, and the last thing I need to do to them before they’re ready for a plane ride is to take some PVC pipe adhesive and cement the flared ports so they cannot come apart. Since you cut them to your own desired length, they need to be glued together before they’re “finished”. As you can see in the below picture, looking through the woofer opening and into the cabinet, the adhesive sort of melts the plastic a little; when I wiped the excess away, it left a little grungy residue behind. These are the little secrets that only the speakerbuilder will ever know.
I also thought it’d be nice to post an image of the crossovers mounted inside the cabinet. As you can see, I’ve got some sheets of foam about 1.5-2″ thick that go over the walls of the cabinet to dampen the internal reflections. I took a small piece of that and put it underneath the wooden backplate of the crossover before screwing it down into the bottom of the cabinet, so that it should never rattle when the volume gets bumping. For anyone who’s curious, these crossovers are pre-built ones made by Parts Express, and have a 12dB slope at a frequency of 2.5kHz. Obviously you can get better materials (more $$$) and go nuts on crossovers, but I believe the money is better spent on quality drivers; plus these things were on sale at the time and it was too hard to pass them up for $25 a pop. Bam, done.
Tags: analog life, general nerdery, hi-fidelity, loudspeakers, Music, niche hobbies
I will definitely miss this speakers. They capture subtle sounds. Last night I had a dream that you had packed them up and that the other speakers were really awful by comparison (even though they are decent).