Homemade Bookshelf Speakers
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 5:17 pm
I decided to build some bookshelf size speakers from some drivers I had laying around from my old Explorer install. I wanted to do something different from a standard cube shaped design so I went out and sourced some dead ash wood from my property to use as enclosures. I love the look of natural wood products and wanted to incorporate that rustic design into my cabinets. The drivers are Seas L12RCY/P 4.5" aluminum woofers for low end duties and Seas 27TFFNC/G 1" silk dome tweeters for everything above.
I went to the nice folks at Madisound who designed me a crossover, and gave me cabinet volume and port size/length. Luckily the L12 woofer doesn't require a large air space so my enclosure size was relatively small at .13 ft^3. One of the reasons I used it as a car audio driver was because of its low fs and small air space requirements.
I mounted the drivers to an ABS front baffle and flush mounted it to the ash enclosure. I used acrylic for the bottom/base plate which allows you to look inside the enclosure and see the guts. I used furniture feet for adjustable feet for my speakers so I can tilt them up on axis when placed on my desktop. I really like all of the imperfections and character in wood, so I left them wherever I could. You can see the bore marks from the Emerald Ash Borer insect that bores just below the bark and kills the tree. It gives them cool looking patterns/designs.
Overall the sound is good. The Seas woofers have a nasty peak at around the 5khz mark due to the aluminum cones, but Marisound designed a notch filter to smooth out the response. The teeeters are a little bright on axis, but not too harsh. The bass is what you'd expect out of a 4.5" woofer. They're not going to shake the room, but kick drums and bass guitar sound very good and accurate. Anything below 45hz-50hz really rolls off, but most of my music doesn't have a lot of low notes.
I went to the nice folks at Madisound who designed me a crossover, and gave me cabinet volume and port size/length. Luckily the L12 woofer doesn't require a large air space so my enclosure size was relatively small at .13 ft^3. One of the reasons I used it as a car audio driver was because of its low fs and small air space requirements.
I mounted the drivers to an ABS front baffle and flush mounted it to the ash enclosure. I used acrylic for the bottom/base plate which allows you to look inside the enclosure and see the guts. I used furniture feet for adjustable feet for my speakers so I can tilt them up on axis when placed on my desktop. I really like all of the imperfections and character in wood, so I left them wherever I could. You can see the bore marks from the Emerald Ash Borer insect that bores just below the bark and kills the tree. It gives them cool looking patterns/designs.
Overall the sound is good. The Seas woofers have a nasty peak at around the 5khz mark due to the aluminum cones, but Marisound designed a notch filter to smooth out the response. The teeeters are a little bright on axis, but not too harsh. The bass is what you'd expect out of a 4.5" woofer. They're not going to shake the room, but kick drums and bass guitar sound very good and accurate. Anything below 45hz-50hz really rolls off, but most of my music doesn't have a lot of low notes.