Latest update on Menhir I DIY speakers

[elfranche]

Greetings people,

I recently finished fitting my DIY speakers with new drivers.
I use them for music, gaming and movies.

Project details HERE:
http://www.stormpages.com/elfranche/

cheers,
Elfranche

[Rodny Alvarez]

Excellent work!!!

[BoomieMCT]

Beautiful work! I can't quite tell how you got that curve - did you build it stepped and smooth out the outside? What did you use to do that?

Do you have a FR? What drivers did you use?

[elfranche]

Greetings BoomieMCT,

Hover the thumbnails in the details section, and the picture number should pop up.
-About the curve: click thumbnail #59 and #13
-About the drivers: see #2, #4, #6 and #11.

Sadly, I do not have a FR, lacking the right equipment at this time (sensitive microphone).

[JCD]

Umm... wow. :holycow::holycow:

That is some amazing woodworking skills! Truly amazing and humbling.

Was this a design you came up with? Or was it some design out there? The scan-speak drivers are definitely the cat's meow from everything I've heard.

Also, given your investment in these beauties, I think an investment in a test mic (e.g., Behring ECM8000) is in order.

Once again though -- WOW!

JCD

[no. 5]

Those are the best looking DIY speakers I have seen!

It's cool to see that good looking curves can be done in DIY.

[elfranche]

Thanks alot!

The looks alone were inspired by the Opera Sauvage speaker by Gershman Acoustics, a picture of it is featured on my page, slide #13. I changed the look a bit and had to adapt its fabrication to my own needs and limits. The opera speaker is made from 18 sheets of 1" MDF laminated together. The sheets are made by CNC machines. For these reasons, I had to find other ways to achieve a similar shape, although if I had to do a rebuild from scratch, I would certainly use a ball-bearing flush trim-bit on a powerful router and copy some 40 slices from a template, and laminate them myself. This method makes it ridiculously easy to achieve a consistent curve, and many different materials could be laminated together with ease.

I even had some plans ready for such a design:
http://www.stormpages.com/elfranche/photos/plan_r.html

The downside of this method is, it would require about 1,000 lbs of raw MDF, and the amounts of dust and trimmings would fill a pickup truck.

[Sonnie]

I agree... those are no doubt the best looking DIY speakers I've seen... awesome... That is some serious artistic work...

[Anthony]

Some advice for people who may want to take a similar approach to speaker cabinet construction:

You may want to talk with a couple of cabinet making shops with CNC capability. They can take your plans and have the machine rough out those cuts in no time. Cost usually isn't too bad (usually an hourly rate + materials). The price of CNC wood work tooling has come down a lot and many shops are happy to take on projects like this.

Who knows, if they can get the MDF cheaper and if you figure time and router bit costs, it might even save money or at least break even.

Just a thought.

Great looking design!