Redneck sonosub Tempest-X

[Jodean]

Here we go....got the tempest x today and it shocked me when i opened the box. Ive never seen a sub with 1 1/2" surround!!! Pictures dont do justice you have to see one of these in person!!

Tempest cone


Tempest basket


redneck ports (6" pvc pipe found at one of our jobsites)


redneck sonotube (bought damaged ends tube for a discount)


redneck mdf (went to our cabinet supplier and got free scraps)


redneck straight edge (afflack brochure makes great circular square lines)


cutting the sonotube (use tape to hold the saw guard up)

[Jodean]

This probrably aint going to be one of those "i started today and will be done tomorrow" type builds. I havent found any of the router bits yet and plan on veneering it eventually with some cherry looking veneer with mdf black endcaps.

Will post more pics as i get more done

Some specs:

Sonotube is 18" diameter, 1/4" wall, and 5'3" tall ( 223 L )

(EDIT: please note this is too small for a tempest X, i had originally followed another sonosub build and used its dimensions, but he was using the old tempest and i never modeled the tempest X ) If using a tempest x.....you should be able to do this with a 24" tube ( 475 L ) and all other dimesions can remain the same.

mdf is 3/4" with misc veneer on it already (free mdf)

pvc is 6" diameter and also 1/4" wall, going for 36" for now giving a tuning of 15.2hz

Joe

[Canadian_Dude]

So what are those monster tires in the BG for?

[Jodean]

Canadian_Dude wrote:

So what are those monster tires in the BG for?

Oh those are my little 36 13.50 15's for rock crawling....my big mudder 38.5" tires are on my 99 wrangler for now.

[Jodean]

Routering is started. I thought the best way to do it would be use the 1/4" bit i had but that proved to be very hard work and the bit broke after about a foot of cutting. I then went back to my $20 set i bought some 7 years ago and pulled out the 1/2" bit. This cut way better and hardly strained the router.

[Jodean]

I found the only circle jig in town at sears. I asked them if it fit any router and of course he said yes. Turns out it only fit one sears router and thats it. So i dug out my router accesories and found that i had plates to mount it to my Ryobi bt3000 wood cutting sytem (really cool table saw, i have the extension rails, air flotation table, router/jigsaw mount, rear extension which im using in the pics, and put the whole thing on rollers.) I first put the mount plate on the router then i noticed that the jigsaw plate that came in the kit would bolt onto the router plate. Two slots were about 3" long and the other two were only 1/2" long so i turned our drill press into a cnc machine and elongated the 1/2" slot for more adjustment. A drill press with drill bits does a horrible job acting as a cnc machine and i got a very ulgy slot but it works.





I drilled holes in certain places on the jigsaw plate that i used for positioning the dowl (screw driver) and then used the slots for final adjustment. For the smaller holes i had to actually drill holes in the router plate which i didnt really want to do. This actually worked really well. Only thing that sucks is drilling holes in alluminum, it alll gets plugged up onto the drill and quits cutting at the tip and you have to clean it out and go agian. I ended up with about 8 holes total, only two were drilled when pic was taken.

Heres the woofer mounting plate

[Jodean]

Waiting for binding posts, router bit for port flare, and base plate.

Ya, you guessed it, im not going to wait for stuff to try it out......no glue, its all just resting there. Sounds amazing and i have a x over set at 50hz. The reciever has no sub x over in it, it sounds full range.



Theater room

[Owen Bartley]

Hey, I really like those chairs! And the Tempest X looks like a pretty nice driver too. So are you going to finish the tube, or leave it "au natural"? I'd think you could make a sock to cover it and match the colours in the rest of the room without too much difficulty.

[Sonnie]

Nice work!

Do you plan on taking some REW measurements?

[Jodean]

Will take measurements some day....no meter yet.

Here we have the binding posts being attached to the sonotube. I had to use some nut spacers as the dayton binding posts were made for 3/4" material





This is the port which im going to flare on each end. I just glued the inner end on it and will router the flare when dry. Im going to take about an inch off the inner circle yet its a little big.



3/8" round over and the new 1" round over bit

[Owen Bartley]

That 1" roundover bit is huge! Are you going to do a full one inch on both ends of the port? I guess this is becoming more standard practice and more of a necessity with the amount of air the recent drivers are pushing, but it's funny that with my old Tempest I didn't even think about doing it except possibly for cosmetic reasons.

[Jodean]

Heres my dayton binding posts. I had to add nuts for spacers since they are made for 3/4" material and the sono is only 1/4"





heres in inner port flare mdf before cutting or shaping



after 1" roundover and 3/8" on outside lip



exterior flare



and you all were wondering why those tires were there.......