Thanks guys.

Took a couple final pics of the L40s on the finished stands. I did add a round of stick-on rubber bumpers (the clear 3M ones) to the bottom and top of the stands for more betta.
...And it saddens me, but the L40s are off to Barter Town... :( Need to raise moneys to fix a bunch of stuff on my aging car.









 
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Finally wrapped the corner bass traps with fabric. At JoAnn's, I chose the thickest, cheapest fabric I could find in a neutral color that would work OK with the red wall, the grey wall and of course the white wall. I ended up with this natural, unbleached cotton colored 'duck canvas'. It's super thick like.









Now that those are in place, I can get to decorating / putting up artwork.
Also moved the towers around a little more: They're now 3.5' from the front wall (also moved the couch back) which made a big difference for the better.
I threw some hockey pucks under them and tilted them back a little as well, which helped raise the sound stage.
The speakers are very close to getting re-veneered in real-wood cherry.

The power amp is missing in the pics, because it's temporarily on studio monitor duty (haha I said duty) until the dedicated Crown D75 arrives.
 
Need to raise moneys to fix a bunch of stuff on my aging car.

aging german car- bust out another thousand!!!!! I unfortunately know from friends owning e30s and e39s . my advice is replace everything that has a chance of mechanical failure from dry rot.

there's less electronics in the E12 but doesn't mean less headaches- I will eventually own a sport quattro or the cliche e30 m3/80s 911 as a garage queen.. I don't have the balls to daily a german car. The lust for one is unparalleled tho


bass traps look good man
 
aging german car- bust out another thousand!!!!! I unfortunately know from friends owning e30s and e39s . my advice is replace everything that has a chance of mechanical failure from dry rot.

there's less electronics in the E12 but doesn't mean less headaches- I will eventually own a sport quattro or the cliche e30 m3/80s 911 as a garage queen.. I don't have the balls to daily a german car. The lust for one is unparalleled tho


bass traps look good man

Thanks! I'm happy with how the bass traps turned out and the ease of building them.
You and I know how key room treatment is and how easy / cheap it is to accomplish.
Anyone who's reading this and hasn't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?

80s BMWs are very reliable to daily, probably some of the most reliable and simple cars ever made, along with 80s Mercedes, Porsche, Volvo and Toyota.
Those are cars you could actually put 1m miles on if you maintained and protected them.
It's not until the 90s that they became a headache and started to not age well, mainly because of electronics and cheapened production.

I only like cars with round headlights, so I would never own any newer car. If I die tomorrow, I don't want a Camry or Forester to be the last car I've driven. No offense to anyone please.
 
I would be happy with a 2004 Forester XT turbo manual, it's performance figures are outstanding. I totally get what your saying, My 5er has been in the family since it was new in 85. I have a cool set of BBS RA's sitting in the hangar. Your place looks great!
 
Thanks! I'm happy with how the bass traps turned out and the ease of building them.
You and I know how key room treatment is and how easy / cheap it is to accomplish.
Anyone who's reading this and hasn't tried it yet, what are you waiting for?

80s BMWs are very reliable to daily, probably some of the most reliable and simple cars ever made, along with 80s Mercedes, Porsche, Volvo and Toyota.
Those are cars you could actually put 1m miles on if you maintained and protected them.
It's not until the 90s that they became a headache and started to not age well, mainly because of electronics and cheapened production.

I only like cars with round headlights, so I would never own any newer car. If I die tomorrow, I don't want a Camry or Forester to be the last car I've driven. No offense to anyone please.

I know they aren't that bad, just poking fun. You couldn't be more right about the 90s.. which is where all my exp with bmws is from unfortunately

I don't blame you man, If I die tomorrow I will be happy I wasn't driving some eco mode CVT garbage. Outside of nissan's gtr and only a handful of others, modern cars seriously are laughable in both design & performance. Not to mention they almost all consume oil because of increase in PTW tolerances in an effort to decrease engine friction & increase economy. Also when I say performance I mostly mean handling & suspension, anyone can make a car 700hp it's actually keeping it on the road that matters.

The straight 6s are hard to beat as far as engine construction robustness. I want a straight 6 80s 300d or any mercedes diesel for that matter. I have seen 2 with odometers over 500k in person


I would be happy with a 2004 Forester XT turbo manual, it's performance figures are outstanding. I totally get what your saying, My 5er has been in the family since it was new in 85. I have a cool set of BBS RA's sitting in the hangar. Your place looks great!

the 2004/5 forester XT actually got the 2.5L ej25 block found in the 04/05 STi opposed to the 2.0L ej205 found in the WRX. Even with the added weight of the pseudo "station wagon" the fxt (forester XT) actually had a faster 0-60 for those years than the wrx- the fxt was a true sleeper at the time. The gearing was more aggressive as well resulting in a different final drive than the WRX.

the FXT used to be under the radar, not anymore tho FXTs are extremely desirable and command a high price in good condition.
 
I was heavy into Subies at one time having an 04 WRX, 05 STI, and one of my all time favorite cars, out of a lot of cars, an 05 Legacy GT manual wagon putting down around 300whp which felt about perfect for that car. The e28 with either the M20 or M30 motor can easily support a well designed turbo kit (TCD) creating an old school wonderful performer with modern performance.
 
Great stuff, congrats!
Now would you please trim out that damn door! It's bugging me. :beerchug:

Thanks. I know, the lack of trim looks so bad. It will be addressed soon...

I decided to stay in for the holidays, so I've been chipping away at some projects:
Building up a 115 cab for bass guitar, going to be a 4.5 cf slot ported cab with a single 15. Looks like it will probably weigh in around 100 lbs though, so I'm building an amp stand for it and leaving it at home. Not gonna be lugging it around lol.





It looks bad, I don't have any clamps that big, so it's just glued together like that.
However, it's getting reinforced, sealed and braced like crazy, so it will hopefully be bad ass when done.
It's 3/4" mdf, but the front and rear baffles are 1" baltic birch. Two layers of 1/2" bb glued together...



This is absolute shoe string budget stuff, only using what I had laying around, so I'm not too critical.

A new project: building a pair of 5" midrange monitor cubes, like oldschool Auratones.
I picked up a couple Dayton PA130-8 midranges which have very flat response and high power handling.
Much like the Auratones, they will be a sealed, single driver box for checking just the midrange in a mix.
I wanted to make them look as nice as possible, because they are a gift for someone.
Got some walnut veneer and veneered a piece of 1/2" baltic birch.







This is my first time ever messing with veneer, or actually making a speaker box from complete scratch. The veneer is paper backed and I used contact cement.
I decided for miter joints instead of simple butt joints.













From a raw finish, I sanded the veneer lightly with 320, it was already very smooth.
Couple coats of Watco Danish Oil.
Then many, many layers of oil based polyurethane for a gloss finish.
The veneer soaks up so much, I keep having to put more layers on to build it up. The goal is a smooth surface, no orange peel.
Wood filler before the poly would've been the way to go, but I don't have any.

This is after a couple coats of oil:



After the first two coats of polyurethane:



And after a few more (still a ways to go):



Yes, I made the rookie mistake of forgetting to line up the veneer in order. Doh!
For tiny desktop stands for these tiny 6.5" cubes, I'm using the off cuts from making the stands for the L40s. Hah!





 








Picked up a pair of YAMAHA NS-244 10" 2-ways a while ago mainly because they look just like giant versions of the NS-10. They're not great speakers as is: their main issue as a 10" 2-way is that the crossover point for the woofer is way too high.
They're sealed enclosures and on bass-heavy recordings like Hip Hop and Reggae, they have deep, tight bass. However, on well recorded rock and classic rock, they really lack some umph.
The idea is to keep them looking as is, but to improve the sound. Econo-waving is ruled out because of looks.
I needed a giant tweeter with a low crossover point and also experiment with (rear) porting.
The tweeters I'm running in my car are SB acoustics SB29rdcn, n stands for neo. They're giant 29mm / 1 1/8" tweetersaurusrexes with an fs of 600hz.
They can be crossed over as low as 1500hz with a 12db slope, BUT the Ashly XR-1001 crossover has 24db slopes, so I can high-pass them as low as 1000. The Ashly can also put an adjustable gap at the crossover point though.

I gutted the YAMAHA tweeter for its face plate and retro-fitted the SB29 into it:































And just like that ^^^ it's done retro-fitted. Lots of heat gun, dremel, drill press action. It's ready for sound testing before I hot glue the flange sealed from the rear.
 
A couple shots of the inside of the speaker:



The cabinet has that YAMAHA quality to it, for sure. They just fitted it with cheap drivers I think.
Both drivers are recessed into the front baffle and have machine screws with metal threaded inserts. No coarse thread screws into particle board.
The front baffle is braced and the cabinet is stuffed with fiberglass.
I ended up just removing the passive crossovers (I don't like their kind 'round here), then put a blank piece of plywood in its place to seal the hole and fitted a couple speaker wires that attach directly to the drivers.



R.I.P.:


For the initial sound test, I played with the crossover point a little and ended up around 1.1k, but with a gap around the crossover point. Meaning the woofer rolls off before 1.1k and the tweeter picks up above 1.1k. I tuned it on the fly using an rta app on my phone. That worked very well and I adjusted the tweeter and woofer levels, crossover and gap size until I got the flattest response possible from each speaker.
The woofer had an annoying peak before between 1 and 2k, that's now completely gone. The only thing that could be noted is a slight peak around 10k from the tweeter that I think is due to the giant, flat front baffle without diffraction foam. I might play with foam still, but not before playing with rear porting.

The idea is once the porting is dialed in and the overall sound is acceptable, to rebuild the cabinets from scratch with real wood veneer, but saving the original front baffle and transferring it over to the new cabs. Reason why is that one of the cabs has a swollen corner (that doesn't affect the front baffle).
 
Man that new tweeter looks like it should be in there. Don't throw the inductors away, I'm still a passive fellow. How did the little cabs you built earlier finally turnout with the drivers installed?
 
Man that new tweeter looks like it should be in there. Don't throw the inductors away, I'm still a passive fellow. How did the little cabs you built earlier finally turnout with the drivers installed?

Thanks. The little cabs turned out really well, I'll have to post pics soon.
I recently picked up a pair of Smaller Advents, they're very good sounding vintage 'bookshelf' speakers. However, from the factory they're wrapped in vinyl imitation walnut.
I've taken the liberty of peeling the vinyl off and am replacing it with real walnut veneer:









Some Watco oil (2 coats) on the raw walnut:







After two coats of oil:



Oil only on the left, one coat of Shellac on right:



First coat of Shellac on both cabs:





Will update once they're fully done. I might still redo the grills and I've got original badges coming. Will convert to modern binding posts as well.
That will bring them into the new millenium.
 
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