Another sub build

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Mongoose

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Couple of weeks ago I got a 12" driver from a fellow forumite. Turns out it was a replacement driver for a Mission MS800 active subwoofer. A few weeks later I stumbled upon the plate amp for that exact same active sub, also on the forum. How is that!

Now this was supposed to be very close to the original MS800 design, but that damn front curves/arches on the front panel had me baffled.

Anyway, this damn build was plagued from the get go. Incorrect sizes, not selecting the proper this and that with Bassbox Pro, etc etc. As it is, I have two almost complete boxes standing outside in the rain. Well, I finally thought I had it sorted, double checked everything and sent my measurements to a "friend" to have the panels cut, in 30mm MDF nogal. I was so confidant things were spot on. Got the panels back the next day, it came back with 2mm extra on two of the panels FFS. And again, in Bassbox pro I selected inside dimensions instead of outside dimensions. This little stupid mistake now gave me an extra +- 20 liters of box space. Besides the overlap. Do you guys have any idea what it is like to hand sand 30mm mdf along the length of a panel? IT FN SUCKS MAN! My little Bosch orbital sander (not to confuse it with the random orbital sander) had no clue what it was doing. So what to do with 6 panels of 30mm mdf  :thinking: :thinking:

Well, I was not going to let this go to waste. Not a ^%$#. I tinkered a bit more and managed to get from -6db to a -3db @ 35hz with the extra 20 liters of space I now had. Anyway, forked out a bit of cash and bought a Bosch random orbital sander to hopefully assist me getting rid of that 2mm overlap. JUSSES! That little 220w sander is a damn miracle thingy mebob man. It took off that overlap so quickly! Not to mention getting rid of any other imperfections, and smoothing out the front panel and all the other edges to the T. Thanx Bosch! First pic shows my DIY circle cutting jig, 2 x 8mm thread bar or is it 6mm thread bar? Eish, but you guys get the picture. It works a dream.

I had almost zero space to build this, so most of the work was done out of the back of my bakkie. On one of the pics you can see one of the failed boxes. Back to the current build. Front and bottom panels were sprayed with Duram 88 bakkie liner, waterbased product so cleans easily. The amount of water in it does not require any edge sealing on the mdf. The rest of the 4 panels are covered in cherry wood veneer. The veneer I applied first, then trimmed it with a flush trim bit, taped up the edges with masking tape and then sprayed on the bakkie liner with my compressor. What I was led to believe is, more air, finer finish. I beg to differ, that vooken gun that comes with the bakkie liner bottles, spews out this stuff like a volcano. So work quickly. The feet, you can imagine where I got this from :) They wont last long, to much movement will cause them to buckle :) Two 50mm pvc down firing ports, 90mm in length and then flared one end with that other router bit thingy :) at a later stage I will redo the whole thing and pay more attention to what is going on lol. So this is what I ended up with, I'm pretty impressed with the sound of it all. It certainly outperforms the last sub I built. This thing is a damn beast! It aint going anywhere! After the first few seconds of Total Recall at above moderate volume, I had to got out and strap my wendy house down with ropes and  :cr@p:

These builds are suppose to be fun, and a learning experience. Most people wont attempt a build at all, but I would seriously suggest you try it. If you make a mistake, so what. The most you will loose is a couple of bob and some time. But what you will learn is so much more  :) and hopefully have so much pleasure out of it. Provided its done correctly. With time, and projects lining up under the belt, the look and sound will improve. So here is my royal COCK UP that I love listening to :)

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