The end of the journey

I have now come to the end of the journey. I came home from school just after lunch today so I decided to start immediately with finishing the speakers. I grabbed my new Koss Porta Pro headphones and connected them to my phone so I could have some music in my ears when working, because I knew it would take some time.

Two hours later both cabinets were sanded nicely. I started with a 40's paper to get all surfaces level with eachother. Then I used a 180's paper to do the fine sanding of all joints and panels. It was a very dusty enviroment so I didn't bring my camera and I used a mask over my mouth and nose. I used compressed air to blow away most of the dust.

Old vs new cabinet

Time for a food and toilet break before continuing. Now it was time to solder cables to the terminals.

It was a bit tricky and I had to use gloves quite often because it was too hot to hold. But in the end it turned out nice.

I decided to put some solder between the flat thing and the nut, becase they were a bit loose and it felt wrong leaving them loose. A bit of solder worked well for holding it in place.

Mounting time. I could have drilled the holes a bit larger, I hade to use a fair amount of force for the screws.

When the terminals were mounted it was time to make sure the driver had contact with the brace. It did, and I didn't have to use any of the round things that Ingvar supplied.

I have no idea what it is, Ingvar just said "don't eat them".

When I had made sure that the drivers fit nice to the brace it was time to solder cables to the drivers. It was a bit tricky and gloves were needed but after a while I made it.

Time to mount the drivers. Again, the holes could have been bigger because I had to use A LOT of force for the screws. But I let it take its time, I didn't want to mess up now and destroy the drivers. Each screw took about a minute and my hands were sore afterwards. As I finished one speaker I hooked it up playing with the old Zachry speakers I've been using lately. Woah, what a difference in sound quality! But there was no time for listening to that, it was time to finish the other speaker and get both up and running.

Right channel speaker. The bright spot in the upper right corner is just a reflection from the window or something.

Left channel speaker, photo taken with flash.

I haven't heard the Mar-Kel70 for a while so I have kind of forgotten how the sounded like, and I haven't run them full-range for almost a year I think, maybe even more. But I tried running these full-range and I think there's less bass, as Dave said it would be. But the cabinets vibrate much less and the drivers move a lot less than before as well. It seems like the cabinet dampens the cone movements a bit better.


And last but not least, I'd like to thank some people who made this possible.

• David Dlugos at Planet10-hifi, for providing drivers, plans, inspiration and lots of help throughout the years.
• Ingvar Ahlberg at Halland Audio Design and Manovi, for selling me cheap CNC-cut plywood, providing damping material and other cool stuff.
• "Loj" at Olskogen Trävittra, for doing the 45-degree cuts for me. I would never have been able to do it myself.
• My dad, for help with glueing, thinking, transport and of course providing me with all the tools I have used.
• Daniel Nyström who lives further down the street, for letting me borrow his soldering equipment.
• Several other members of the diyaudio community, you know who you are ;)