My dear sister gave me a gift certificate to an exotic wood shop for my birthday.

I looked at what they had to offer and then ordered up some spalted tamarind planks.

After a few days of consternation of how to use this these planks, motivation hit me this morning and wood was cut.

I have a pair of 4" coaxial drivers ordered along with crossover stuff, due to be dumped off by UPS tomorrow. Hopefully they slow to under 40 MPH to make this delivery.

We shall see if I can make this stuff work and hopefully I can build something to show off this fancy wood.

Just dry fitted up here, I wanted to see if my print numbers came together on the wood correctly.

I just finished up my little coaxial speakers.
The spalted tamarind is a pretty good working wood and it, to at least my eye, looks nice.

The little 4" Dayton coaxial drivers sound pretty good on my desk and also out in my room on stands powered by my Torii.

They are by no means bass monsters, but they aren't pathetic down low.
I tuned the box to 60 Hz and that seems to be a good match to the drivers.

So now some glamor shots:













Things might be a little out of control around my house.



Once again I find myself a little overstocked on speakers.

Love, love, love the ‘Spalted Donnie’s’ !!!  I have to wonder how many times you’ve been contacted about making speakers for someone???

That is quite an impressive array of speakers. And I agree with James, that there is certainly room for more!

Very best,

Geno

It is finally getting warm enough to work out in my garage. It has been a long nap filled winter.

Some black walnut and birdseye maple has been ordered up from the wood place.
I also ordered up a "kit" from Madisound that has some of my favorite Silver Flute 8" drivers with a Seas tweeter. It also has a crossover included in the deal.

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/speaker-kits/w2089-leap-design-special-w20...

We shall see what kind of mess I can make of this.

There are several ideas rattling around my brain on how to improve the sound of the box. Time will tell.

Beautiful!

Speakers are finished, at least for today.

They are playing right now, sounding not too shabby.
Time will tell how well they sound.

In my room



In some sun

I've started yet another speaker project, this one with a twist.

Every time I fire up Google on my computer I notice a little tab that says search AI mode, so the other day I clicked on it, I was asked what I wanted to do, so I typed in that I wanted to design a speaker.

It asked what drivers I wanted to use.

Well there were some Dayton Audio PS220-8 speakers that Dank had given me a few years back that I had put in some "Bigger are Better" cabinets that were in my brothers shed languishing because his Wife didn't want those monstrosities in "Her" house. So I swiped them back!

Well I then typed those drivers into the program.

I also had a pair of Hi-Vi SD1.1-A tweeters from some long forgotten project and have always wanted to try out a rear firing tweeter in something, so I added it to the list of what I wanted to use.

Boom, a few seconds later AI had worked its magic.

I had a recommended cubic foot box size, port lengths, crossover recommendations for the tweeter and reviews for the drivers.

Well a week or two later I am in the throes of building a "Rustic" Alder wood speaker to the AI outline.

Everything is cut and glued up, lots of sanding has happened, the alder has been epoxied up where there were cracks and knot holes, plus everything else that goes on when you build a speaker.

I'm actually pretty close to putting finishes on, just as soon as I tie up a lot of loose ends.

Below is the first one through sanding and such, the second one is almost there, but has a few little things to fix up.



After finish, a little more internal damping and some electrical to finish up.

ZenithZero,

So far the speakers have sounded ok.
I usually assemble speakers and try them out, then dissemble them to do the finish work.
In listening to them they were definitely "tilted towards the top end". Enough that I stuck a powered subwoofer in the chain to pull the bottom up to match the top.
I do feel that the rear firing tweeter added a little space and sparkle to the soundfield, but I haven't listened to them with the tweeters unhooked. Later on I will try that.

Last night I put some color on the solid wood, today they have been drying in the sunlight.
Tomorrow I will seal up the MDF with some shellac and then prime for paint.

I haven't decided what color to paint them, I might go with a flat color as my polyurethane for the wood is in a flat sheen. Something different.

A couple of action shots:

In my room testing while the glue dries.

 

A shot of the back so you can see where the tweeter is mounted.



And the fronts with some color added to them.



The reason I added color is because when I put clear on the Alder, it turned as yellow as pine, not a look I wanted.

ZenithZero,

I am slowly hacking my way through this project.
It has been kinda hot around here lately, but the promised cool down began today.

I used a mixture of boiled linseed oil and some walnut flavored Danish Oil to color the wood, 4 coats worth.

I let it dry a few days then taped it off, primed the MDF and then painted it with Rust-Oleum flat rusty metal paint.
The look I was going for is flat red primer. So far it is more like semi-gloss brown with a touch of red. It does go nicely with the wood though.

Today I ripped off the tape and then taped off what I had painted to start the flat poly. I'm liking what I'm seeing after 3 coats, probably get 3 more coats on tomorrow.

With any luck Saturday will see me sanding the clear flat and then hitting it with the buffer to flatten and smooth the finish, then final assembly.

Action photos:















I may get a wild hair and try to use the flat clear over the painted parts, maybe.

Well the "Brown Notes" are as done as they are going to be.

I'll stick with my initial impressions of the sound of these speakers, so much upper treble that it makes the bass disappear.
For now I'll just drag my 8" Deathbox in from the garage to boost up the bottom end and start reading up on Baffle Step Compensation. Maybe a quasi crossover can tame this bear.

The rust primer color for the MDF looks OK I guess, the brown kinda goes with the Alder wood.
Speaking of the Alder, it worked pretty good, and I got a chance to learn about using Epoxy as a filler instead of just a glue.
The finish was a nice flat clear until I started sanding it level. Once I start the process I can't seem to stop until things are done up in a high polish.
My intentions were good, my follow through was a bit overzealous.

Action photos:











Next up, hell if I know, maybe a sound bar for a friend, not really interesting to me, but something to keep me from working on my Manifesto!

*Found the 8" Deathbox on the previous pages.

MM,

My favorite speaker? The next one!

There are a few that I listen to mostly though.

First would be my desk speakers, just because I like to sit at my desk and listen to music while doing computer stuff. They get a lot of hours of play.




Then there would be my "Garage Rockers", they also get played a lot when I'm messing around in my garage.
I have used most of the same drivers in different cabinets for close to 15 years now.
They are the black ones with the MTM configuration.



I also have a pair of CSS Criton's that I play music to go to sleep to every night.






For my main system, my favorites are my Troels Gravesen designed SBA-761's





Now I will admit that I change speakers around a lot, mostly when I finish building something new, but what I have listed are played the most.

I had ai do a little digging to see if anything was still available about these speakers. It (in addition to giving me a nice write-up)

https://meniscusaudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Continuum-Writeup.pdf   — Continuum design write-up (rationale, voicing, crossover concept)

https://meniscusaudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Continuum-CAD-Box.pdf?utm_s...
ource=chatgpt.com   — Continuum/Continuum II CAD cabinet drawing (dimensions, cut-outs, materials)

https://meniscus.lightningbasehosted.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Kairos-a...  — Kairos/Continuum three-way woofer module design

https://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1976-29.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com   — BBC LS3/5A original research/design report (1976) me the following links: