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I was intending to keep this project secret until I was completely finished because I didn't want people making too many assumptions about it. But I suppose I'm at a point now where I can at least start sharing my thoughts on the matter, and you all can watch it progress.
So here it is, a speaker guys have been clamoring for since before I even started this hobby: a true "monkey coffin" party speaker. I have avoided doing one of these speakers all these years for a few reasons. See, my childhood was made up of "monkey coffin" speakers from the 70s and 80s. But I don't really mean that in a good way. Like, most of the speakers I grew up with, while heavy and imposing-looking, didn't actually sound that great. Often the highs were rolled WAY off due to use of cone tweeters, the bass was either muddy or boxy, and never actually extended all that deep, and there was almost no imaging or soundstage to speak of. Also, once HTIB and svelte high-end speakers hit the market, these sort of "big box party speaker" was considered just plain ugly by the general public.
But maybe nostalgia finally comes all the way around eventually. When I saw that JBL is selling new L100s with a whopper of a price tag it occurred to me that maybe people really do honestly enjoy a good monkey coffin to chill out to their tunes.
So I spent a lot of time last winter studying and pondering some of the more famous of these sort of big rectangular speakers: the aforementioned L100, the Yamaha NS-1000, Harbeth, Acoustic Research, etc. I thought about what kind of things I could do with current drivers, and how to make them sound the way I wanted them to sound.
I ended up wanting to base it around a 12" woofer (in this case, technically a "subwoofer"), and some sort of standard 1" dome tweeter along the lines of the standard Vifas and Seas we've all grown to love over the last 25 or so years. The mid has been the puzzler. I'm still debating this one. Initially I wanted a 5" mid to keep the aesthetic, but there just aren't many 5" mids that can keep up with a 12" woofer. So I currently have a DC130-4 in there, and it's working good; but I'm keeping my options open.
Because yeah, this guy's not done yet. But rather than just live inside my head, I thought I'd share my thoughts as I work.
More to come...
So here it is, a speaker guys have been clamoring for since before I even started this hobby: a true "monkey coffin" party speaker. I have avoided doing one of these speakers all these years for a few reasons. See, my childhood was made up of "monkey coffin" speakers from the 70s and 80s. But I don't really mean that in a good way. Like, most of the speakers I grew up with, while heavy and imposing-looking, didn't actually sound that great. Often the highs were rolled WAY off due to use of cone tweeters, the bass was either muddy or boxy, and never actually extended all that deep, and there was almost no imaging or soundstage to speak of. Also, once HTIB and svelte high-end speakers hit the market, these sort of "big box party speaker" was considered just plain ugly by the general public.
But maybe nostalgia finally comes all the way around eventually. When I saw that JBL is selling new L100s with a whopper of a price tag it occurred to me that maybe people really do honestly enjoy a good monkey coffin to chill out to their tunes.
So I spent a lot of time last winter studying and pondering some of the more famous of these sort of big rectangular speakers: the aforementioned L100, the Yamaha NS-1000, Harbeth, Acoustic Research, etc. I thought about what kind of things I could do with current drivers, and how to make them sound the way I wanted them to sound.
I ended up wanting to base it around a 12" woofer (in this case, technically a "subwoofer"), and some sort of standard 1" dome tweeter along the lines of the standard Vifas and Seas we've all grown to love over the last 25 or so years. The mid has been the puzzler. I'm still debating this one. Initially I wanted a 5" mid to keep the aesthetic, but there just aren't many 5" mids that can keep up with a 12" woofer. So I currently have a DC130-4 in there, and it's working good; but I'm keeping my options open.
Because yeah, this guy's not done yet. But rather than just live inside my head, I thought I'd share my thoughts as I work.
More to come...
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