Father-Daughter Speaker Build

My daughter has shown an interest in speakers and home theater. I told her that if she could keep her room tidy for an unspecified amount of time then we'd get her some speakers. Well, she did it for a few months and continues to keep it tidy!!    

Time for dad to make good. We could have gone to goodwill and got a crappy shelf system for $25. We could have gone with new department store speakers, but that goes against the very fiber of my being because of the terribly quality you find. Also, I wanted/needed to be grassroots about this. I also wanted to do something together besides being consumers.   

Enter Parts-Express, or as I call it, the wallet vacuum. Not because it's expensive, but they have soo much good stuff it's hard not to spend a ton of money there. Think Rock Auto, but for the audio enthusiast.    

We decided on what the call the C-Note bookshelf speakers. They cost one C-note, no coincidence      

Here's the kit as delivered and unboxed:     

The components are very nice quality, Dayton Audio 5" drivers for mid-bass, and nice Dayton tweeters for the high-end. I was pleasently surprised to find wave-guide tweeters. Nice touch at this price.   

There are also ports included, adjustable.   

You only have to supply speaker wire and whatever binding clips you want to use. They have nice posts for $7 per pair. So for $114 you're ready to start building.  Oh, and it's a knock-down kit, all the wood comes pre-cut with the holes for the drivers and the port already cut.

Using the instructions, I taught her how to read a diagram. She took to it quite well!  Here she is soldering the crossover components on the bottom board for the cabinet.    

Top, bottom, one side, and the rear panel are glued up. You can see the crossover on the bottom board.     

And the work progresses:   

She decided on a white wood vinyl paper. Looks quite good.   

More pics

Listening impressions to come.

The Dayton stuff is great value.  She'll get years of good service from those.

Unless she gets the bug and starts building her own!

Love it!

Awesome! Dont show her how neat tube amps glow. 

Is there any real reason to build your own cabinets at that price point? I do so love building boxes.

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Because knowing you, you'd probably do some sort of ridiculous thing and make stuff that makes Bowers stuff look like trash. Maybe build a set of maggies?

I love it when I can get my kids to do that stuff.  My youngest son makes his own guitar and XLR cables, resulting in better quality at lower prices every time...

Make sure your daughter washes her hands thoroughly after soldering!  You and I are old geezers who don't care about heavy metal poisoning, but she's still got developing brains cells, so make sure she keeps it that way.

Thanks for introducing me to parts express.

My wallet will hate you soon

Well, we've connected them to the theater in place of the Maggies and I thought they sounded very good, but lacking in the low-end much more than I expected. Then I realized that I have the L/R and surround channels crossed over at 100 hZ.    

So I brought them upstairs and connected them to the amp I bought for her room (more on that later) and WOW!!  These sound much, much better than any $100 pair of speakers have a right to.  They don't go down low enough to rattle your fillings out, but they are only 5" mid-woofs. They are crisp, clean, and actually filled my theater very well, with good imaging. I think those waveguide tweeters have something to do with that.    

Heck, I think these would do VERY well in a 5.1 or 7.1 HT setup.   

So, since this is my daughter and she doesn't need to have 100 WPC cranking out teeny-bopper music, and I don't want to spend too much, I went with this Kinter amp. It's a whopping 18 WPC, but that's enough to really wake these up.     

All-in-all, I had a blast with my daughter, she learned some stuff, and she has some very good speakers that she can have with her for decades to come.  

I love when kids want to build things and learn how they work. To much of our society has no idea how all the gadgets in their life actually work. 

Stampie said:

I love when kids want to build things and learn how they work. To much of our society has no idea how all the gadgets in their life actually work. 

That's why I try to build things with my kids. Next up: telescope build with onw if my sons!

Nice speakers, and that amp is intriguing...it runs on 12 volts so it could be easily used for car audio as well.

I used a very similar amp as part of an ultralight sound system in my Swift Gt

So Dr., do you make house calls?  My children desperately need your help

I'll be interested to learn how they sound.  I've seen those kits many times an wondered.

I find myself exhibiting the same behavior at Parts Express as I do at Harbor Freight- buying way more stuff than I went there for.  They even sell tube amp parts...

They sound bright and airy, with very good imaging.  Naturally, they could use a subwoofer if you want to feel it in your chest, but that's only if you want thump. I haven't tested them to see how low they go though. They come with an adjustable port so you can tune them. 

Just a little update. They are broken in and sound even better. They go lower than you would expect with such a modest driver. In fact, they're currently sitting in the living room waiting for me to hang them on her wall. I've taken to listening to these over me Celestian monitors I built into The Resto-mod simply because they sound so surprisingly good.   

This has me really wanting to build more kits from PE. 

Is there a good guide/comparison for the PE kits?  I've always wanted to build a set of Overnight Sensations, but there are a ton of other choices and I wonder if one would be better for me.

Not that I could find. 

Look/ask on PE techtalk

I've been building full range projects lately, some of which you can find there or DIY audio. The Nola Brio trio's are really easy, and far greater than the sum of their parts. Probably the best cheap and easy project I've ever seen.

It's a great time for DIY .

The diysound group stuff is great too for bigger home theater speakers.  I built a pair for my garage... Total overkill!

So I got a set of these for xmas.  First question, more to follow:

Is it advisable to make the crossover removable?  If so, tips on how to do that?  The sinking the components into gorilla glue (per P.E. Video) does not seem repair friendly.  I see you hot glued the crossover in... is it easy to remove via the woofer hole later?  I don't want these speakers to end up in the trash if something breaks.  Part of the lure of DIY is that I can also repair it instead of filling the landfill with another 20lbs of consumer E36 M3.