Finished Towers

The towers are finally done--well as of a couple of months ago actually, but this is the final description and photos of the finished product.  Once we had all of the wiring done and the sound dampening foam installed, we cut the hardboard for the front, top and back and nailed it on.  We puttied and sanded each box and moved to the next crucial step of painting.  After taping the oak sides and trim off, we applied three coats of spray primer and then finished with three coats of semi-gloss black spray paint.  Next, we put two coats of stain--we ran into a slight problem here, due to how cold it was in the garage, it was taking a very long time to dry.  We ended up moving the speakers into the house and put a small space heater on them to aid in drying.  Once they were ready, the got three to four coats of spray polyurethane clear coat.  Josh chose a semi-gloss and I sprayed mine with a full gloss.
           Now it was time to wire the speakers and mount them in place.  After a little few minor adjustments, everything was in place.  We installed the terminal and four rubber feet and they were done.  Now the real test came when we finally fired em up.  First off, they sound amazing.  With the four Dayton 6 1/2" drivers running these speakers produce quite a bit of bass.  The Tang Band bullet mid ranges produces warm tones, and the HiVi tweeters hits crisp highs (I really like this tweeter, it adds the perfect amount of  treble to a bass overloaded system).  Overall I am really pleased with the results, they sound good with music as well as movies which was exactly the intent.

Tower Speakers

     We have started to finish our speakers that began years ago, but ended up sitting in the garage as partially assembled boxes for a long time.  Now that we have a little time to spare and some funds, we are finally finishing what we started.  However, what we thought would be a fairly quick project has turned into a slow, but steady project with a few hiccups here and there.  We initially had a design planned, but changed our idea to something different that would help reduce the amount of cutting and gluing.  We had to experiment with the router, but once we figured out a system, it worked out perfectly, especially cutting out the speaker holes.  So for what time we have been able to put into them, we have the box's sanded down, and all of the holes cut.  The next step will be installing the sound dampening foam, the crossover and all the wiring.

A long time in the making

Speaker building has become a favorite hobby of mine, designing, building and listening to custom-built speakers has been a cool way to express my love of music art and construction.  It began years ago as a teenager when for one reason or another I became fascinated with the idea of designing and building subwoofer box's for home theater use.  My first project was a box I built in 8th or 9th grade wood shop class.  I based the design on one I had found on the internet and used the same driver for it as well.  It turned out great actually for my age and experience level.  But since then I have re-designed another, much smaller box for the same subwoofer which also turned out nicely ( I even put my initials in gold letters at the bottom) but what I didn't do as well was the port width and length.  In effect, when a very low note or sound is played through the sub, the massive amount of air that the driver pumps out ends up being pushed out of the ports so quickly that it sounds like a windstorm.  I had even used a computer design software to determine most of the specs, but at some point there was something not quite right.  Anyway, Josh and I have worked on each project together, carefully planning and drawing out the designs. 
          We built a sealed subwoofer box for our friend Justin which housed a 15" sub that hit the midrange tones incredibly i.e. fire, explosions etc.  But it lacked on the low end a bit.  Note: each of these subwoofer's has been built without a plate amp or a low-pass filter, so although they have sounded great in theater systems, in my opinion haven't been up to their full potential without their own power source.  Josh's sub was built to fit two 12" subwoofers in a compact sized box while still maintaining enough volume to get a good kick.  Needless to say, it does just that; hits loud and hard, the only problem that we ran into was the fact that the magnets on the subs were so freakin' big that they hit each other inside the box.  We did however find a fix for that problem--I think anything can be fixed with caulk, L-brackets, and duct tape.  From here we set our sights on an even bigger, more complex project of designing and building full-sized home theater tower speakers.