See the speakers I built?

So I've been building these speakers. Actually built them several months ago, but only recently did I get them painted up with the finishing touches and whatnot. So here you go have a look at them! They could have turned out better, but for a first project I'm pretty pleased.


I built them from a design I found online here. They are called "Needles" by the designer, a german whose online name is "Cyburgs". The driver is the Tang Band W3-871S. There is only one driver per speaker. Though the single driver is only 3 inches in diameter the whole thing manages to produce entirely respectable bass down to around 50 hz. They play loud enough to hear in other parts of the house, or to make conversation difficult in the same room, but they're limited for absolute loudness compared to most speakers. Only when I am in full headbanging fury do I wish they had a bit more volume.

The actual design calls for a notch filter to kill a driver resonance, but someone posted in the discussion thread an alternate method. Since my primary source for music for these guys is my computer, I use a convolution to accomplish the filter's job before the signal even makes it to the analog world. I would have been able to save about $30 on the build if I had skipped buying the filter parts, but the convolution filter wasn't posted until after I had put it together. I may be one of the first people to have actually run the convolution, as the guy who made the file was still waiting on parts to arrive for his build at the time.

Also, I modified the drivers in some simple ways to make 'em cooler. I used 2-part epoxy putty around the speaker basket / magnet junction for reinforcement. I used rope-caulk on the basket to damp resonance. I hot-glued felt to the inside of the stamped-steel basket to prevent high frequency reflections from the basket itself. Also, I shorted the negative terminal to to the basket and magnet assembly, though I've since heard that for bridged amplfiers (like my t-amp) the negative terminal is not ground like this mod wants, so this mod may not be helping out.

That brings me to the sound of 'em. They sound good! The old Dahlquist speakers I had been using have more authority in the bass, but overall I think I like the Needles better. A friend used to accuse the Dahlquists of not sounding very 'lively'. I was never quite sure what quality she was refering to, but the Needles portray vocals much better, leading to a better image of singers actually being present. Female vocalists in particular sound much more coherent through the Needles than they ever did with the Dahlquists. The fact that the Needles run with a single driver results in a very coherent sound. A number of different bass sounds come through in a very coherent way, without their high frequency partials being split off, pushed through some crossover phase angle, and then played by a different tweeter.

An excellent deal for the about $100 to make 'em.