experienced builders

[cawz1000]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I built a guitar cab and now I'm building A pair of the ZDT3.5. Honestly I have never heard any speakers costing more than $1000.00, even in the stores. I have no Idea what to expect, but hopefully they will sound good. I just know I've always been dissapointed about the way what I have had sounds. I have owned some of the more affordable Klipsch bookshelves and now I have som B&W 303s. I got a Yamaha V1800 for my HT and I wanted some great sound to go with it so that's when I started looking at these forums. I would like to hear from a few of the experienced guys here on the forum on a couple different things.

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?
2. What was your biggest faiure building and what was your biggest success.
3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the begining that you know now?
4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

I'm sure there are some great stories out there and I'd really be interested in hearing them.

[Todd G.]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I built a guitar cab and now I'm building A pair of the ZDT3.5. Honestly I have never heard any speakers costing more than $1000.00, even in the stores. I have no Idea what to expect, but hopefully they will sound good. I just know I've always been dissapointed about the way what I have had sounds. I have owned some of the more affordable Klipsch bookshelves and now I have som B&W 303s. I got a Yamaha V1800 for my HT and I wanted some great sound to go with it so that's when I started looking at these forums. I would like to hear from a few of the experienced guys here on the forum on a couple different things.

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?

I read all the books, but this forum really pulled everything together for me.

2. What was your biggest failure building and what was your biggest success.

Haven't really had any failures. I built proven designs until I could walk on my own. Biggest success?.......Not my design, but the Eros and Veritas are exceptional speakers that I don't plan to sell any time soon, and any number of line array systems I've built have met or exceeded my expectations.

3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the beginning that you know now?

Hmmmmm....I'm still learning so it's difficult to bring that degree of perspective to things yet.

4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

Wanting, no, NEEDING, with every fiber of my being, better speakers than I could afford to buy.

I'm sure there are some great stories out there and I'd really be interested in hearing them.

BTW, you've picked a great project to start with. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[johnastockman]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I built a guitar cab and now I'm building A pair of the ZDT3.5. Honestly I have never heard any speakers costing more than $1000.00, even in the stores. I have no Idea what to expect, but hopefully they will sound good. I just know I've always been dissapointed about the way what I have had sounds. I have owned some of the more affordable Klipsch bookshelves and now I have som B&W 303s. I got a Yamaha V1800 for my HT and I wanted some great sound to go with it so that's when I started looking at these forums. I would like to hear from a few of the experienced guys here on the forum on a couple different things.

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?
2. What was your biggest faiure building and what was your biggest success.
3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the begining that you know now?
4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

I'm sure there are some great stories out there and I'd really be interested in hearing them.

Boy, I could fill a lot of bandwidth with my experiences, which go back to the early '70s when I attended the first informal classes held by the two founders of Speakerlab in Seattle. If you want, I have some of the info in my blog on my personal page:

http://techtalk.parts-express.com/blog.php?b=8

I'll try to go into more detail and the specific ?'s, but the weather is pretty nice today and I'm gonna go put some miles on my new motorcycle before it gets too late. I'll check back in later...

John A.

[nikbrewer]

Rule 1: Wood is cheap, if you want to try to build it, do it, if it doesent work try again

Rule 2: You do this for fun. Sure you might spend 10 hours working on 10$ worth of wood just to ruin it at the end, but remeber, this is supposed to be fun

[Æ]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I built a guitar cab and now I'm building A pair of the ZDT3.5. Honestly I have never heard any speakers costing more than $1000.00, even in the stores. I have no Idea what to expect, but hopefully they will sound good. I just know I've always been disappointed about the way what I have had sounds. I have owned some of the more affordable Klipsch bookshelves and now I have some B&W 303s. I got a Yamaha V1800 for my HT and I wanted some great sound to go with it so that's when I started looking at these forums. I would like to hear from a few of the experienced guys here on the forum on a couple different things.

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?
2. What was your biggest failure building and what was your biggest success.
3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the beginning that you know now?
4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

I'm sure there are some great stories out there and I'd really be interested in hearing them.

When I started building loudspeakers there was no internet.
I read books. First were those by David Weems, Radio Shack stuff.
Later I moved up to SPEAKER BUILDER magazine. The "The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook" by Vance Dickason. "High Performance Loudspeakers" by Martin Colloms. "Advanced Speaker Systems" by Ray Alden.
I also had opportunity to read some of the JAES reprints from long ago.

Many years ago I became an audiophile, but I couldn't afford anything "High End" and what I could afford I couldn't stand to listen to.
I once worked briefly at Morse Electrophonic and observed how quickly they could turn vinyl covered particle board into loudspeakers. No real challenge to cut out and assemble a box or two. Or so I thought.

[Max_Andrews]

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?

Mainly looking at a lot of other people's posted designs I guess, especially Roman's and zaphs. The best way to learn about crossovers is to start simulating them in either PCD or speaker workshop, you can see what each piece does and get familiar with all the frustrations it involves. If you REALLY want to get good at crossovers, try designing a three way crossover. Another thing that helped me was posting a whole bunch of mockups for various designs here that I never actually built. I got a lot of great feedback from the members here and through this advice learned much of the general knowledge you need (CTC spacing, lobing of various crossovers, comb filtering, power handling, dispersion, diffraction, resonance of boxes etc.).

2. What was your biggest failure building and what was your biggest success.

After my first project, which was a successful podzuma like thing, I got a hot head and went "all out" to build an "even better" one for my friend. We spent hours on it and although it ended up looking fine, it sounded AWFUL. Didn't have nay idea how to tune the box properly. Used a stock crossover. Poorly chose each driver based on its own specs and not how well that would work together, ignored the issue of breakup nodes, etc. We sunk a lot of money into it as well. I thought it would turn out much better because my first project was such a success. Well I just got lucky with the first project - that doesn't happen often. If you spend the time to fully model a design it will rarely sound "bad," but there may be other issues that don;t work out as you have planned. The only sure way to fail is to rush through the design process and have a higher opinion of your skills than that which is true.

3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the begining that you know now?

TIME. Doing a good job on anything requires lots of TIME and EFFORT. The design stage is important, but until you make some sawdust and have at it nothing ever gets done. For anything that you may learn here to make any real sense you've got to apply it and hear it for yourself. Also, I wish I had known exactly what tools I needed, and that the iron-on veneer method is a lot easier and more stable than the contact cement method (seriously!).

4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

I was working at a summer camp in the mountains, and it always struck me that during our off time we were listening to these piece of crap wal mart boomboxes and what was coming out of them wasn't even remotely related to music. I knew about part express because I had followed a link here from an engadget (or similar) post on Hivi speakers, and parts express was a US retailer for them. THis was why I had PE bookmarked. Well I came back to the site and just started browsing around, and as fate would have it the featured project at the time was the podzuma system - exactly what I wanted! I decided to modify the design though, as I wanted it to be smaller. So I basically cut it in half and use two woofers instead of four, and some less powerful tweeters with the dayton pre-made 5k crossover, that just happened to work beautifully. So while the podzuma project by far was the inspiration, my finished product was something quite different but by change blew me away with sound quality. Everyone who heard it was impressed. And then I got to thinking - if this can thing can sound good for this little amount of money, I wonder what else I could build? And I've been hooked ever since!

[DougP]

I am fairly new to this hobby. I built a guitar cab and now I'm building A pair of the ZDT3.5. Honestly I have never heard any speakers costing more than $1000.00, even in the stores. I have no Idea what to expect, but hopefully they will sound good. I just know I've always been dissapointed about the way what I have had sounds. I have owned some of the more affordable Klipsch bookshelves and now I have som B&W 303s. I got a Yamaha V1800 for my HT and I wanted some great sound to go with it so that's when I started looking at these forums. I would like to hear from a few of the experienced guys here on the forum on a couple different things.

1. When you started out what sort of resources did you use to learn about building boxes, designing crossovers etc...?
2. What was your biggest faiure building and what was your biggest success.
3. What are a few things you wish you knew in the begining that you know now?
4. What got you interested in building your own speakers in the first place?

I'm sure there are some great stories out there and I'd really be interested in hearing them.

I haven't heard the ZDT3 yet but that will change this weekend. Given that it is a Zaph design I would expect it to sound good if you build it per the instructions.

1) Boxes, easy I used to build houses for a living. Finishing boxes I'm still working on that. I still can't design a crossover but I'm working on that part too.

2) My biggest failure was my first design back when I thought I knew a lot more than I really did. I call those speakers the "Train Wreck" they now reside in the land fill. The success part is the enjoyment I get out of the hobby.

3) Off the shelf crossovers su-ck and take your time and make it just the way you want it.

4) A friend of mine was talking about how he was designing this great speaker and I was in the market for a new stereo. He pointed me to this website and the rest is my addiction.

Doug

[cawz1000]

"the podzuma project by far was the inspiration, my finished product was something quite different but by change blew me away with sound quality. Everyone who heard it was impressed. And then I got to thinking - if this can thing can sound good for this little amount of money, I wonder what else I could build? And I've been hooked ever since!"

That podzuma is an interesting Idea I was looking into that as well.
Thanks for the advice about the iron on veneer adhesive I'll have to try that instead of the contact cement.

[johnastockman]

"the podzuma project by far was the inspiration, my finished product was something quite different but by change blew me away with sound quality. Everyone who heard it was impressed. And then I got to thinking - if this can thing can sound good for this little amount of money, I wonder what else I could build? And I've been hooked ever since!"

That podzuma is an interesting Idea I was looking into that as well.
Thanks for the advice about the iron on veneer adhesive I'll have to try that instead of the contact cement.

You could also use PSA veneer, "pressure sensitive adhesive". Most of the woodworking retailers and web-sites have it. I got some from Rockler and used it on the Azurites I built a few years back:



Here's a close-up of the veneer and edge:



The adhesive is VERY strong. No contact cement. Just make sure the surface is clean, clean before you apply it. I used a J-roller to apply the "pressure", but you could also use a "veneer smoothing blade", which IIRC, some places recommend over the roller. I was skeptical at first, never having used it before, but I would definitely use it again.

John A.