My first curved cabinet build

[mattsk8]

I was at Meniscus Audio a while ago and was contemplating a build for my shop when Chad played their HO-10 build for me. I was impressed and he made me a good deal on it since he already had a pair built. After I used them for about 3 ish months I decided they were a bit too bright, plus they lacked the deeper bass I wanted so I decided to move on (that's when I built my Blues MTM/TL). But, my dad absolutely loved these speakers so I decided to make some new, curved cabinets for his cottage using his Chris Craft Launch 22 speed boat as my inspiration; here's what I came up with...

First I made the frames. These are about 23" tall, and if I was going to do this again I'd have added another brace. I don't think they're at all weak or that the cabinets will resonate, but it would've made the build easier.


Then I wrapped the cabinets in layers of 1/8" baltic birch that I clamped with frames I made. The first layer was applied to the frame with PL construction adhesive, the rest of the layers were glued using rolled on TiteBond original woodglue.


The best method I found for trimming the excess off the sides of the cabinets was to first jigsaw it fairly close (with the jigsaw base set at the angle of the cabinet), then finish sand it. I tried the router method but it wanted to chew the wood up dangerously bad.


I glued a 1/4" thick piece of MDF to the top and bottom to hide the endgrain from the BB, as well as pinning some pieces to the backs to give the rear baffle a recessed look. I also clamped/glued teak to the front baffle, as well as bondo'd the dips or waves in the sides of the curved Baltic birch that were there after clamping the panels.

[Mike220]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Nice work so far. It seems dificult to decide how much curve you want to add to the sides. The jig is a great way to make sure you have even pressure and the wood doesnt crack.

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

(Since I'm only allowed 5 attachments...)
Finished pics...



I think I'm going to make some different grills later. My original plan was to make grills with teak frames, but I ran out of teak and wanted to get these to my dad for Christmas. Here's a (blurry) pic of the grills I made, that's a Chris Craft emblem in the middle; but IMO the grills are just kinda there, I think some teak framed grills would pull these together better...


A couple things... If I'm honest I didn't hear any difference at all going from the square cabinets to the curved ones; only saying that because people say curved cabinets sound better, but I didn't hear that difference at all. Also, I think a more appropriate name for the HO-10 might be the rebels (at least as far as I go). I've always said I'm not a fan of pro-audio drivers and these use an Eminence 10", plus a compression tweeter, but these don't necessarily fit that mold the way I expected them to. Plus, in audiophile land eq's are fairly faux pas these days. I have an eq in my garage/shop (mainly for the spectrum analyzer :p), and if I bump them down a teeny bit starting at a very mellow bump at 8khz, sloped down about 5db down at 16khz; then pull them up about 7db at 30hz, then about 3.5 db at 60hz these things sound absolutely amazing!!

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Nice work so far. It seems dificult to decide how much curve you want to add to the sides. The jig is a great way to make sure you have even pressure and the wood doesnt crack.

Thanks Mike. Actually, using the 1/8" BB I wasn't at all nervous about it cracking, and that's a pretty heavy curve; the wood clamped on fairly well. I did have issues with my clamps and my side panels sliding off while I was trying to clamp the first pieces, but after that I made some "stops" for the front of my clamping frames that eliminated that issue. I actually wonder if I could get away with using 1/4" BB, but I played with some of that and if I went that thick cracking might be an issue (plus you'd need to build some very solid clamp frames if you used 1/4", toward the end my clamps were about done clamping )

I don't know if I'll make curved cabinets this way again, it's a ton of work and there were a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong (thankfully it didn't go wrong!). I've been talking with Craig K and we've been bouncing ideas back and forth for some translam cabinets, and I might go that route for my 3 way build.

[Mike220]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Yes! Im gonna translam some of the cArreras im starting soon.

[nicholas_23]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Nice build , I like the looks of the cabs.
P.S. is that a Jason Jessee deck in the back ground?!?!

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Nice build , I like the looks of the cabs.
P.S. is that a Jason Jessee deck in the back ground?!?!

Thanks. I have a lot of decks, but no Jessee. I think the one you're looking at is a Hosoi reissue that I cut down to be like a zip-zinger style deck (narrow with wider trucks); something we did one night for the heck of it.

Here's one that'll make you sick... About 7 years ago, shortly after we bought the house we're in the neighbor kid is out playing on an original (not reissue) Santa Cruz Corey O'brien deck. I told my neighbor I'd take his son to a skateshop and buy him whatever deck he wanted new if he'd let me have that one; but he said he wanted to hold on to it cuz his uncle gave it to him. Over the years it's gotten completely destroyed from getting left in the rain, and the kid doesn't even really ride it. It was still practically in new condition when I first saw it :(

[kenmcculloch]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

hey Matt, that is a great build. I used a of the same steps in building my curved speakers except I used two layers of 3/4" bendable plywood ($30 where I live) which is very easy to nail to the inner braces after apply PL premium adhesive. really don't have to clamp it since the PL fills any gaps. I put some dollar tree rubber drawer liner in between the two layers with Titebond which dampens it well.

Keep up the good work!

[bkeane1259]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Bada$$ man. You crank out really good looking projects rather quickly. Thanks for reminding me just how slow and lazy I am.

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Bada$$ man. You crank out really good looking projects rather quickly. Thanks for reminding me just how slow and lazy I am.

Thanks Bryan. Although I wouldn't necessarily say "crank out", I started those back in May [emoji14]. I also finally helped my son get the TM done yesterday that him and I have been dinking with since he got those buyout Peerless woofers from that guy at InDIYana last spring. He's happy with those, I'll post pics later. He'll be proudly demoing them at our next get together.

Just one more small CSS kit to wrap up, then I can start my 3 way build .

[philthien]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Boy those came out beautiful, I'm sure your dad is thrilled!

[andykriech]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Really nice looking, but the grills cover all the teak and that is a shame.
As a suggestion, cut down the grills to just below the driver and put a curve on the lower edge similar to the side curve to show the teak.
You could put the emblem on the teak below the grill and above the port or more towards the top of the grill, but you need to show more wood.

Just my opinion, but the wood makes it for me.
Great work.
Andy.

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

Really nice looking, but the grills cover all the teak and that is a shame.
As a suggestion, cut down the grills to just below the driver and put a curve on the lower edge similar to the side curve to show the teak.
You could put the emblem on the teak below the grill and above the port or more towards the top of the grill, but you need to show more wood.

Just my opinion, but the wood makes it for me.
Great work.
Andy.

Thanks and we have similar taste for sure. My plan is to (eventually) make teak frames, then put a grill that sits inside the teak frame that basically goes just to the bottom of the woofer, then another grill that just covers the port (possibly a minor radius on the bottom of the woofer grill and also one on top of the port grill, but not sure yet). I would put the Chris Craft emblem on the speaker itself, between the port and the woofer and you'd see it through the opening between the port grill and the woofer grill.

[JasonP]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

That beautiful baffle... and you put a grill on it. You heathen! :o

[mattsk8]

Re: My first curved cabinet build

That beautiful baffle... and you put a grill on it. You heathen! :o

Lol, my mom pretty much said the same thing . But, I built a pair of Statements a few years back for my dad, and I have a couple younger nephews that like to "poke around" (the TangBand mids in his Statements suffered greatly!). So I decided to avoid that scenario on this build right away.