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man, time flies. In September of 2009, Madisound offered a "Recession Buster Reference" speaker kit that used Revelator 5.5" woofers and SB Acoustics SB29 tweeters. When I bought this kit, my son was 3 months old. That fall, I got the cabinets built, stained, and clearcoated. For some inexplicable reason, I decided to use brush-on Poly instead of spraying it with automotive clear like I should have done. I sanded, and sanded, and sanded, then went through, re-brushed, sanded, sanded, etc. Eventually I got preoccupied with other things, and next thing I know, it's been 11 years. I finally decided that enough was enough, and I got back to work on them. I sanded, and sanded, and sanded, then re-cleared with spray-on poly. Once that fully cured, I sanded, and sanded, and sanded...
I started at 1k, then 1500, 2000, then 2500. I think this pic was while I was still at 1000 grit:
Once I made it through all the grits, that mind-numbing boredom paid off. It only took me about 20 minutes per speaker to buff them with rubbing compound:
After the rubbing compound, I did it again with swirl remover, which really added a lot of depth:
I had to paint the front baffles, and I wanted a matte gray. What I went with was actually a "cast iron" paint from Napa, but despite the odd purpose, it gave exactly the color that I was after:
One hurdle that I'd never considered was fitting the crossover into the enclosure. The enclosure was built to the original design specifications, but I also added bracing between the stiffening baffles that prevented me from being able to stand up the crossovers along the back wall of the enclosures. Oops.
Before:
After an encounter with my chop saw:
After I installed them into the enclosure with large amounts of hot glue, I realized that I never soldered the driver wires to the crossovers, and I also soldered the input to the woofer filter to the wrong terminal. Doing the solder work with these installed was NOT easy.
Finally I was able to install the drivers (temporarily) to do a function check! After all of this effort, the woofers are all cut up and both tweeters are pushed in!
Everything checked out, and I spent just a couple minutes listening to them. Initial impressions are very positive, though there were a couple things that I keyed in on... somewhat diffused imaging, and an apparent lack of bass, perhaps from a crossover that doesn't employ a full 6dB of baffle step. It was just a real quick listen, and at this point I didn't have any of the stuffing materials in the cabinets yet, so hopefully once I really get these finished, some of those concerns won't be an issue any longer.
I'm getting very close to finishing these, and I'm getting very anxious. Hopefully this week I'll get them put back together for good. I still need to finish the grills, but at least I can be using them while I do that.
It feels really good to be so close to completion after starting these things 11 years ago.
I started at 1k, then 1500, 2000, then 2500. I think this pic was while I was still at 1000 grit:
Once I made it through all the grits, that mind-numbing boredom paid off. It only took me about 20 minutes per speaker to buff them with rubbing compound:
After the rubbing compound, I did it again with swirl remover, which really added a lot of depth:
I had to paint the front baffles, and I wanted a matte gray. What I went with was actually a "cast iron" paint from Napa, but despite the odd purpose, it gave exactly the color that I was after:
One hurdle that I'd never considered was fitting the crossover into the enclosure. The enclosure was built to the original design specifications, but I also added bracing between the stiffening baffles that prevented me from being able to stand up the crossovers along the back wall of the enclosures. Oops.
Before:
After an encounter with my chop saw:
After I installed them into the enclosure with large amounts of hot glue, I realized that I never soldered the driver wires to the crossovers, and I also soldered the input to the woofer filter to the wrong terminal. Doing the solder work with these installed was NOT easy.
Finally I was able to install the drivers (temporarily) to do a function check! After all of this effort, the woofers are all cut up and both tweeters are pushed in!
Everything checked out, and I spent just a couple minutes listening to them. Initial impressions are very positive, though there were a couple things that I keyed in on... somewhat diffused imaging, and an apparent lack of bass, perhaps from a crossover that doesn't employ a full 6dB of baffle step. It was just a real quick listen, and at this point I didn't have any of the stuffing materials in the cabinets yet, so hopefully once I really get these finished, some of those concerns won't be an issue any longer.
I'm getting very close to finishing these, and I'm getting very anxious. Hopefully this week I'll get them put back together for good. I still need to finish the grills, but at least I can be using them while I do that.
It feels really good to be so close to completion after starting these things 11 years ago.
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