Diy supercabs still worth it?

[fdeck]

To make an analogy, speakers are round for the same reason that pipes are round, because the forces are all symmetrical. It turns a three dimensional design problem into a two dimensional one.

However, the heating ducts in a northern house are rectangular because the stresses are a lot lower, and making them with flat faces allows them to be fit into the building structure more easily, and made on site with cheaper materials. I think that also applies to speakers, more or less. To make a round speaker cab, I'd have to start with some pre-made tubular section, which would cost more than chunking out pieces of plywood from the home improvement store.

I'm still making DIY speakers. They're much smaller and lower performance than the "supercabs," but are tailored to my use. And I already have the tools. My approach is to bide my time and check out new arrivals on the driver market to see if anything is worth building into a cab based on my needs. This is how I ended up with the DeltaLite 2512-ii more than a decade ago.

 

[Prana Ferox]

What are/were the DIY 'supercab' designs?

Wood sheetstock generally comes in rectangular shapes with all right angles, and it's just way easier and more efficient to cut it into other rectangular shapes with right angles. Wedges and trapezoids are a little more work but not unduly so. When you start getting into curves and complex facets, you end up with a lot more labor, a lot more waste, or both.

View attachment 4209293

Disappointed no one claimed these flopped because they could only play square waves

 

[ardgedee]

Good questions... because radial forces are symmetrical and uniform around the axis. With a square, the radius to the surround is different so the moment arm is different and the forces (and pressures) are not uniform.

As I recall, Sony was touting a honeycomb-like aluminum structure for the driver surface of their APM speakers which allowed them to remain rigid without needing extra weight or a conical structure. Although some of the woofers were built with a cluster of motors...

...and I don't know whether that's a clever way to take advantage of a flat driver surface or a desperate attempt to compensate for problems inherent to a flat driver surface.

Either way, the surrounds were definitely a problem and allegedly many were tearing themselves up after less than a decade of use. The design might be worth revisiting now that we've had forty years of improvements in metals and synthetics but I suspect that nonconical/nonspherical speakers like this are overengineering a barely-existent problem. (I'm saying this while listening to music on electrostatic headphones, don't judge me. )

 

[6thplanet]

Car audio went the square path a while ago. In the quest for more SPL for a given space, Kicker L series happened. They've seemed to figure it out.

 

[fdeck]

What are/were the DIY 'supercab' designs?

Wood sheetstock generally comes in rectangular shapes with all right angles, and it's just way easier and more efficient to cut it into other rectangular shapes with right angles. Wedges and trapezoids are a little more work but not unduly so. When you start getting into curves and complex facets, you end up with a lot more labor, a lot more waste, or both.



Disappointed no one claimed these flopped because they could only play square waves

I'm thinking in particular of the Greenboy / fEarFul designs. Maybe because they're the ones that arrived around then time when a new crop of high performance lightweight drivers came out, that had very impressive specs but were not exorbitant. What struck me as a non expert was that Greenboy sweated a lot of details to make his designs have fairly high fidelity and rugged but lightweight construction.

The other maker to watch, predating Greenboy by quite some time, was Bill Fitzmaurice, who was providing designs for some fairly advanced horn loaded cabs. Both were TB'ers for a while.

And since I was not in the market for anything super powerful, I wasn't watching the commercial market for those kinds of cabs, so I don't know what was really being made.

 

[bherman]

View attachment 4208955
My main hobby is building home speakers, so for me this is just fun.

There's plenty of proven designs out there. Good luck with your project.

Beautiful looking speakers!

 

[GreyBeard]

If you have the tools, time, and know how, building your own cabinet is fun. Bill Fitzmaurice sells plans for his Simplexx line of cabinets which are relatively easy to build. I built a single 15 about 5 yrs ago and it is my goto cab these days. I know he has plans for a 2x12 cab and it wouldn't be very hard to double up the single 15 cab to make a 2x15.

 

[SgtHulka]

With the prices of cabs these days, if you have a little know how and the motivation, you can save a LOT of money and have a kick ass cab for it. Used market still the best bet though. It's the one bass related thing of the 3 main, (bass, amp, and cab) that I worry the least about buying used. If it works it works.

 

[808State]

Diy means you pick the driver and you pick the finish.
And have options for the cabinet alignment.

So it leaves more options.

Some diy... ends up being uglier and more expensive.

Then again depending on the builders needs and skills.

In theory You can pick up incredible high performance drivers
and build a cabinet with a aesthetic you want.

 

[Bassgeige]

If you have the tools, time, and know how, building your own cabinet is fun. Bill Fitzmaurice sells plans for his Simplexx line of cabinets which are relatively easy to build. I built a single 15 about 5 yrs ago and it is my goto cab these days. I know he has plans for a 2x12 cab and it wouldn't be very hard to double up the single 15 cab to make a 2x15.

There are plans for reflex cabs all over the internet. Why would anyone pay for them?

 

[GreyBeard]

There are plans for reflex cabs all over the internet. Why would anyone pay for them?

Because they can

 

[JimChjones]

There are plans for reflex cabs all over the internet. Why would anyone pay for them?

'Cos you get what you pay for? I know nothing about BFM plans, but there's a tad more to a really good set of plans than volume and port length. It's all very well for those of us who are comfortable wood butchers, but for someone who is coming completely new to fabricating things then a detailed set of construction plans for whatever it is are a great confidence booster.

 

[pie_man_25]

'Cos you get what you pay for? I know nothing about BFM plans, but there's a tad more to a really good set of plans than volume and port length. It's all very well for those of us who are comfortable wood butchers, but for someone who is coming completely new to fabricating things then a detailed set of construction plans for whatever it is are a great confidence booster.

Tbh, I always figured the construction of reflex cabs to be so simple that it hardly warranted instruction. But I come from a family of tradesmen, so to me a box with a few round holes in it is kinda mundane. Thanks for making me recognize that it's not so intuitive to plenty of people.

At any rate, I figured that the real devil is the act of design, and the simplex line is kind of bfm shrugging his shoulders and saying, "you want a basic tuned box? Here you go, I don't see why you'd need me to help you with that, though." And in fairness, there are some design considerations he put in there that I just plain wouldn't have thought about. The bracing is kinda wonky IMO but the triangular ports in the corners is a good idea.

In a nutshell, you get what you pay for - bfm is an accomplished engineer in his own right, and he has other designs that are more effective/efficient, but the simplex is about as easy to build as they come and it comes with his stamp of approval that "this will work". For I think 20USD that's a gosh darn bargain compared to a complete stranger who just puts its up there for anybody to see - that might work or maybe not. Some people will pay for that assurance.


TL;DR you're right but also design work is hard and free plans might not give some people much confidence. I need to work on brevity.

 

[Roxbororob]

BFM plans are an absolute bargain. All of the plans have solid engineering behind them and are very well documented and presented.

 

[Michedelic]

Hi Andy,
I’m going to ask you a crazy question since I’ve never heard it explained before.
Why are the actual speakers round ?
Can they be made square or triangulated ?
Thank you.

Urm, because this worked out so well...not...

 

[agedhorse]

IIRC, the JA-4001 driver came out of the Yamaha hi-fi side of their company (branded "natural sound") during a time when that industry was focusing on unique, novel designs that would differentiate themselves from the competition. Some got quite creative, but most of the visually unique designs didn't bring any meaningful benefits and most had glaring weaknesses. The marketplace has an effective way to weed these weaknesses out so that they don't survive.

The Fender Bantam Bass amp was a Fender CBS product, pretty mediocre all around (though the amp itself was decidedly classic Fender) and thus short lived. CBS, being a "giant" company at the time attracted collaborative interest with other companies and suppliers, Yamaha being one of them. The Rhodes piano was another though they did market the Rhodes bass keyboard pre-CBS through a joint venture. During the CBS era, Rhodes became a CBS company. The Chroma line of synths is another, after CBS acquired ARP, along with the one marketed as a Rhodes electronic piano. I was visiting Fender in So. CA for an auction and watched a row of discontinued Chromas keyboards being crushed by being run over by a tractor... kind of sickening.

 

[Rockbobmel]

Cutting edge for that time.

Or "ripped edge" as in [] surrounds= impossible repair.........

 

[open.eadg]

"Diy supercabs still worth it?" I'd say it depends on what you have in mind.

When I built my fEARful 15/6 in 2011, it was a project that literally cost me less than HALF the price of a decent bass cab, and had an outstanding cost-to-performance ratio. Since then (at least here in Hungary) the price of the Eminence Kappalite 3015LF has doubled, same with the 18 Sound midrange driver, so I would definitely not go DIY now.

But if money is not an issue for the OP, sure, why not?

 

[GreyBeard]

There are plans for reflex cabs all over the internet. Why would anyone pay for them?

The BFM plans not only give you the schematics, he gives you step by step direction with pictures on how to cut and assemble the cabs. Well worth the price.

 

[agedhorse]

The BFM plans not only give you the schematics, he gives you step by step direction with pictures on how to cut and assemble the cabs. Well worth the price.

They are also free from the many errors that free internet plans are riddled with.