Floorstanding Speaker Enclosures - First time build

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nick

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A friend showed me http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com 's website and I decided to attempt to build the Extrememon XL's (floorstanding). I mailed Tony Gee and he responded quite quickly with the full sized plans. Saturday morning I ambled off to a wood place near me and got the wood cut up (18mm MDF), had to take an entire board so I have enough wood to build another set of speakers easy just lying around. The idea was to build the enclosures and use some temporary ancient Pioneer hifi speakers I had lying around that I bought at a boot sale for R50.

A few pics, sorry for the quality they were all taken with my blackberry.

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Cheapie speaker terminals from Zakspeed

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One box semi built you an see the offcuts on the wall on the right  ;D

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Both boxes built, busy with the internal bracings

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Ports made out of 40mm 'Waste Pipe' as the Hardware store called it

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Cut the speaker holes and got horribly impatient so I dragged them in to the house to test and was quite suprised..

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After I dragged them into my house to test I discovered (after using the speakers before) that the one 6" driver was blown :( Tweeters were fine on both so I bought two cheapie 6"'s from Zakspeed (yes yes.. I know these are temporary  ;D ) Can see the original Pioneer crossover mounted just under the driver. I plan to neaten the wires later

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Fibrefill the inner bracings as per the instructions

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He then recommended using some expensive foam for the rear, top and bottom panels. I found some foam to use..

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Ready to close up and test! The bottom compartment needs to be filled with sand which I have yet to find. Need dried clean fine 'hourglass' type sand.

Right so how do they sound? Im not a proper audiophile, I own an ipod and think it sounds alright with my Sen'y HD202s.. but Im very impressed  :eek: With the fibrefill and foam in the bass is tight and punchy, the tweeters arent harsh at all. Ive played mostly Enya (not sure why I own this), Bob Marley and some Sheryl Crow through it and every CD Im noticing sounds that I havent before. They are currently being powered by my lowly Technics SU-C04 via my Philips HDMI upscaling DVD player (dont own a proper CD player, its on the list of things to get).

This weekend I got offered a Sony component system for a really good price, amp, centre, fronts and rear speakers. I figured the AV amp must have a better rated output than the ancient Technics, but I was very wrong. Sony amp has zero bass, even with bass set to +6 its harsh and brittle..? (its like this with the stock speakers too) So Ive dumped the amp in the corner and Im back to using the Technics..

One question I do have is the crossover is currently just cutting the sound for the tweeters, would it sound a whole whack better with something cutting the tops off for the 6"?

Comments/Insults/Suggestions welcome  :D

 
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