Steve Deckert
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It brought back memories to paint these black again this past Sunday evening. Black was their original color in the early 1990's when I first made them. This is that original pair, a half a dozen enemas later. These have been my reference speaker since I made them. I've never been without them, they've always been hooked up, and are never moved. ; ). I've had them in 4 different rooms prior to this one, and have never heard them sound better. The imaging is so razor pin point sharp and there is just no distortion whatsoever. Presence is elevated but nicely balanced by the absolute scale of the bass. The only speaker that has actually ever hit harder than these is the Silver 10 in the Lii Audio Reference cabinets, but it's a much larger driver with better efficiency in an equally large cabinet and has lower response.
This horn was originally designed for 4 - 5.25 inch full-range drivers per side. Located deep inside the throat of the horn. The horn bent the low frequencies and with only a single bend was able to reflect the mids out to 4500 Hz where a small compression tweeter was used. It had the tightest bass of any speaker I've heard to date. Sadly the last thing you want in most rooms is a perfectly hemispherical wavefront from 30Hz ~ 4500Hz. Oh, it's great with just one cabinet, but as soon as you add the second one you create a perfect standing wave down the center of the room, the size of the room. The effect is zero bass heard inside the house.
To fix that bitter sweet success that made it impossible to listen to music in my at the time square room, I removed the internal drivers leaving the holes as ports and mounted a single 6 inch driver in the front. This would make the horn only work on low frequencies below about 120 Hz. The rest coming from the driver well off the floor ensure the standard come filter effect that most speakers have. There would be bass somewhere in the room, that's for sure.
So that's a bit of background. Sadly I've never been able to find a wood worker willing to tackle these because they have four compound radius angles that would make getting the joinery perfect for hardwood or veneer nearly impossible for anything less than the price of a car.
Many in the DIY community have conquered a pair the same way I did, BONDO and paint which makes it affordable.
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