Insipred by this thread. I've wanted to build a pair of Overnight Sensations for a while since I heard about them on a thread here. Then I heard about these, which fit my budget, my small house, and (probably) my amplifier better.
And now I shall drag 'n drop images...
Gluing. I don't have fancy corner clamps. I should get some.
Post-sanding. This is when I realized I should get better clamps. And take more care when clamping. Flattening out the inconsistencies took longer than expected.
After a guide coat + primer...
Just finished up the crossovers. This was easier, yet harder than expected. Super easy to solder and layout. Difficult to twist them together and get them to fit the template.
And that's as far as I've made it.
RossD
MegaDork
1/24/18 8:40 p.m.
Fun. I love DIY audio stuff.
I built some 4" full range fostex in some bass reflex cabinets based off of the design in their datasheets.
Awesome! I can't wait to get your listening impressions. They took a few hours to loosen up
And I'm glad my project spurred you on. I've always wanted to build the overnight sensations too.
I think your cabinets look good, even without corner clamps.
Sanded with 220
Sanded with 320. Low spot on the top :(. This is from me being too aggressive with the air sander, fixing the misalignment created from my gluing/fixturing.
Finished up with the 320 this morning. My coworker (who has been teaching me how to properly primer/sand/finish/etc.) is going to paint them for me tomorrow. Probably won't have them fully assembled until early next week.
I admittedly went *way* overkill on the finish for these. I probably could've knocked the rough edges off and hit them with a can of spray paint, but I chose to use it as a learning opportunity and go for a top-notch build.
I really like that you are going all out on the finish. I'm dying to see/read what you did, and how.
Well, here is what I've done so far, step by step
- Glued it all together
- Sanded it down with the air sander/orbital using 150 grit. This was to even out all the glued joints. This is where I messed up and created the dip on the top.
- My coworker put on a heavy coat of primer, then a guide coat.
- Did a quick block-sanding of that using 150, only to knock the major stuff down
- Finished up that with 220
- Put another guide coat on
- Block sanded it with 320
- And now its being painted
I'm going with a off-white satin (just random paint leftover in the cabinet at work), so a lot of the sanding was overkill. With the way I did the finish, I could go with a high gloss and it would still look great though. I chose not to just because its higher maintenance and probably wouldn't look as good in my living room where I may end up putting these.
Corner clamps are expensive. This is what I do on 90 corner glueing and it works very well.
DrBoost
MegaDork
1/29/18 11:20 a.m.
I like it! I'm glad your documenting this here.
I like that corner clamp hack... but that wouldn't work if the parts didn't intersect at a 45deg angle, right?
Question for Dr. Boost: What guage wire should I use inside the speaker (crossover to woofer,tweeter, and input)? I grabbed some 12ga at work, at its way overkill, to the point where soldering the 3 negative connections @ the crossover is going to be a big mess. Am I right in thinking that any wire that is larger in diameter than the actual crossover component wires is plenty large? In that case 16 or even 20 might be just fine?
I grabbed what I had on hand, I'm guessing it was 16 ga? I think you're right, anything larger than the crossover wires should be fine.
That's one area that makes me crack up about "audiophiles", they spend cubic dollars on speaker wire so they have these battery cables connected to their speaker cabinets. If you open those cabinets, you see a bunch of 16-20 ga wire.
Cool. I used 18ga, which is slightly larger than the crossover wires, so it should be fine.
Testing to make sure my crossover works before gluing it in:
.
Crossover installed, waiting for Gorilla Glue to work its magic:
How they sit at the moment:
Hopefully I will be able to put the finishing touches on tomorrow. I'm excited.
Dunno , might sound pretty sh***y if you didn't use 99.9 silver hookup wire. /sarc
However, I have been surprised to note that my speakers sound better when they are more rigid, including the connection to the floor or bookcase. Which includes not using felt pads on the bottom. You could experiment with blue tacky.
Are you using the port?
Any challenges?
I can't wait to get your listening impression. For me, they sounded decidedly better after abkut 10 hours of break-in.
Haven't installed the port yet. The gorilla glue holding in the crossover did not cure remotely as fast as I thought it would. I brought them into the house from the garage (more humid, a bit warmer) to speed things up, and I also took a paint brush and added some water to a few of the lower spots to make the uncured glue expand a bit more. I'm keeping an eye on it, hopefully it be good to go later tonight or tomorrow morning.
Sorry I'm so slow :( I don't get a lot of time to work with these, and I'm overly cautious. If I don't have these completed by Friday night, something has gone horribly wrong.
I chose to solder the connections, mainly because I didn't have spade terminals around, but also because I don't like them anyway.
These posts are not the greatest - very little finger clearance in the pocket, but they get the job done.
I didn't have any black panhead screws. I made a run to Home Depot just for screws. Leaving the house for something so minor is very unusual for me, but I wanted to get this done. I found some stainless panheads and just painted them. Not perfect, but not terrible.
Buttoned up:
In their temporary home:
I've only listened to them for about 2 minutes so far, but they sound pretty nice. Tomorrow is a garage day for me, so I'll get a lot of listening time in. Excited. That said, I'm no audiophile - these are my first real speakers, and I own zero music, so the bar is pretty low for me :)
Nice work. I made my own set using some old MB quart component speakers from a past car. I am still impressed with how they sound.
One of these days I want to try one of these kits
I had one of those Onkyo receivers for a while. It's a really nice budget piece.
They look nice.
Did you round over the top corners, or did they change the kit?
DrBoost said:
They look nice.
Did you round over the top corners, or did they change the kit?
I missed this post. I rounded them. I'm still wondering if I should have done the bottom corners as well.
