[rickcr42]

While pine is not usually considered the best choice , I say go for it man,you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.I would never use solid panels in an enclosure with a dimension larger than the largest available lumberyard panel (usually 12 " ) unless I had a 'joiner".
That is a tool that shave the sides of stoch wood to obtain a very precise surface which allows joining pieces of lumber side by side to get the desired width.This multistrip glued panel is then run through a planer to smooth the surface.That is how table tops are made.
But up to the foot wide point,why not

And by rustic finish you mean ?

When I finish wood I like to use the MinWax products.The wood stain is very easy to use,just 'rag" it on,count to 10,wipe the excess with a clean rag.After drying you can then put on a coat of polyurethane with a good china bristle (natural horsetail bristle) brush.Use longish strokes,not choppy or stop and go.I use the satin finish mostly but some like the gloss.If the temps are over 80 and the humidity is low you can sand the poly with #120 grit sandpaper or #000 steel wool,dust off the finish and then wipe with paint thinner to get the rest.
Add another coat of poly
DONE DUDE

Of coarse you can go farther with the coats and steel wool with finer grades between coats,pumice stone final coat,but really is overkill in a speaker enclosure
Now piano black lacquer is a different story ! Don;t ask man,you don't want to know

 

[Neruda]

well thanks for raining on my parade livingplasma!

 

[Onix]

Quote:

Originally posted by rickcr42 And by rustic finish you mean ?

Hola Rick. Well, rustic means that it looks old and stained. I guess I can use better wood then than pine. What do you recomend?

As for size, I can get a big panel to use, and good wood is cheap in Mexico, so pretty much everything is possible. In any case, I am thinking about doing something like this as a start:

http://users.starpower.net/je2a3/open.htm

Now, this guy is a violinist and a DIYer, so he seems to know what he's talking about.

Afterwards, I'll go for something like this:

http://condon.freewebsites.com/speakers/pop.html

And as soon as I get better, perhaps the Hawaii 5.0 or the Voigts.

So, what do you think Rick???

 

[rickcr42]

I have always liked the simplicity of open baffle loudspeakers but they do take up space and my wife would gun me and my speakers out the door if I tried to build them

the dual driver open baffle speaker is just too unconventional looking for me,but his TQWT V1 looks kinda cool,maybe with a supertweeter like V2

as far as building materials,the large open baffle I personally would use 3/4 " birch veneer plywood

The TQWT could be done in pine or a combination of pine for the sides and plwood for the front and back

the cool part of DIY is you can express your artistic taste (or lack of

) to suit yourself,why I love it sooo much

 

[skippy]

as with everything in design, it's all about trade offs. neruda's design may have bad group delay (and maybe some transient ringing), but it's all a matter of your priorities. which do you find more offensive? sloppy bass or lack thereof? (though i guess the audiophile view is that sins of omission are better).

i've been becoming more and more skeptical of full range drivers, now that i've thought about some of the tradeoffs. with a full range driver, you may not have crossovers and the associated distortion, or power hungry crossover components. and you also get a dispersion that's closer to a point source. however, full range drivers by principle of operation have much greater cone flexure and cone breakup. they're also bound to have more directional highs, and a lack of bass. exotic designs are often used to compensate for bass, but often times these designs (like voigts) shift the phase (isn't crossover phase shifts one of the reasons why people try a full ranger?), add distortion of their own, and spit the bass out of a different area (not really point source then). though a full range driver doesn't have a crossover that would decrease efficiency, dedicated drivers can be made more efficient when constrained to a smaller bandwith. i used to find the idea of a full range driver vrey seductive. now it sounds no better than using seperate drivers to me.

 

[Onix]

Ins't plywood like compressed wood chips or something?

 

[skippy]

particle board is compressed wood chips. plywood is thin layers of wood glued together.

 

[Videoshielded]

Skippy -- I read Bob Brines' article on Herb's Voigt pipes with interest, and I've come up with what I think is a successful retrofit for the design. Check out http://f18.parsimony.net/forum31999/messages/16552.htm

The frequency response is boatloads flatter than the H-5-0. I didn't build a pair, so I don't know what they really sound like in use. I'm going to stick with my H-5-0's, though. A six-foot-tall speaker is more box than I can stand to look at. Plus, I spent a lot of time making the finish on my 5.0's look good, and I can't quite work up to doing another finish job on a pair of boxes that huge. I'd be veneering and buffing paint coats from now 'till New Year's.

The H-5-0's have some weird synchronicity going that I can't figure out. The frequency response is a little ragged, but they are awesomely listenable when paired with tube gear. However, they're not the end of the road for me. The 5.0's are like little musical instruments that add their own coloration to the recording-- whereas I'm a transparency and detail fan. I'm starting on a pair of line arrays, and as soon as I have the cabinents for them built, I'm selling my Hawaii 5.0's to pay for the new drivers I'll need.

 

[Neruda]

Quote:

Originally posted by Onix Ins't plywood like compressed wood chips or something?

I'm trying to remember what that's called, but i can't. I know what you're talking about though...

 

[skippy]

video, i actually did the same thing to my voigts (except that the driver is in the same position as specified in herb's article). it made them a lot more listenable, but i still think don't think it's good enough. i did the mathcad simulation, and the model does look flatter than the original, but it's still ragged. it looks like my best course of action would be to block off the top of the pipe, choke the port, saw a new hole for the driver on a lower position, and use a baffle to cover up the other hole.

i wish i had downloaded the mathcad worksheets before i built the pipes. it would have saved me a lot of work, and i would have ended up with a better pipe.

 

[Onix]

Quote:

Originally posted by Neruda I'm trying to remember what that's called, but i can't. I know what you're talking about though...

Skippy already came up with the answer Pablo, don't worry. As for plywood, does the word triplay, or maybe treeplay, means anything for you? I think it's the local equivalent por plywood, but it appears to be so cheapo and thin.

 

[Budgie]

I am going to see if I can get a pair of 1354's measured for TS parameters this weekend. (If I can get in to see my friend. the same guy who built my line sources for me.) If it happens I will post the results in this thread, if anyone is interested.

 

[Neruda]

...or no pipe at all.

um, insert this before budgie's post

. And yeah budgie, I'd be interested.

 

[topher]

There is a material called OSB. Oriented strand
board. It looks like 1 to 2 inch wood chips
(very thin) glued together.

Also, http://www.trueaudio.com/st_lkxfm.htm
shows how to get rid of the low end phase problems
in speakers. You actually make them worse, but
since their down around 1 hertz, you don't care.

The price is you waste a lot of amp power and
have the risk of over heating your driver.

 

[Neruda]

wait, what happened? How did onix's post get put in there between Budgie's and skippy's posts? dammit, now my post makes no sense at all!