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Homemade speakers are a Home-Run!!!

B

bwilhoit

New Member
Just finished a pair of custom built speakers that are positively the best I've ever heard! I started this by buying a pair of the legendary Pioneer CS-99A and like so many others was very impressed with them. I had previously built a very large entertainment center from Corian & oak and wanted some real sounds from it. Well nex step was that I bought a second pair and just added them in paralell for a total of two each channel... well, its not often that you can do anything and get nearly TWICE the results like those gave me so I sat down and designed myself a super set using those amazing speakers.. I built a custom cabinet that would fit nicely inside my existing entertainment center and ended up with three of the 15" woofers along with a couple of the CS mids and a mid and tweeter from another set of Kenwoods in each cabinet. The result is unbelievable!! The most amazing sound you've ever heard from ANY speaker... I had been prepared to wire them up however they sounded best and started by not using the crossovers at all and simply paralell all of them together. That is not supposed to work but believe me it absolutely does!!
 

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THe problem with not using a crossover is you are feeding a full range signal to all those mids and tweeters. They were not designed to be able to handle freqs below a certain point, and once you ad a little volume, you're going to start popping and frying those mids and tweets..

Very nice looking other wise..
 
:jawdrop: Holy home-made kabuki, Batman!

(actually, that seems to be the most useful use for a set of CS-99(A) woofers I've seen yet)
 
Nice craftsmanship! However I agree with that Similost said.
And one more thing: I guess all the vibrations will transfer to the components above. If you will ever add turntable to the setup it's not good.
 
OH.. one other MAJOR problem with running all those drivers wired in parellel... You are running very serious chance of frying an amp.. You are pretty much presenting your amp with what would look like a dead short.. you have dropped the ohms to almost nothing...
 
They look great and I'm surprised at the open baffle thing going on . I agree with the poster above . It's just a matter of time before you lose a driver/tweeter probably . Also I thought that those Pioneer CS-99a's used alnico magnets . From the looks of their magnetic assembly they are clearly not alnico's . For the longest I thought this was the reason they were selling for such high prices on Ebay . Must be the cabinet work on the speakers . They are quality . Anyway , don't gamble with running the speakers wide open without a crossover . They are not designed as such .
 
similost said:
OH.. one other MAJOR problem with running all those drivers wired in parellel... You are running very serious chance of frying an amp.. You are pretty much presenting your amp with what would look like a dead short.. you have dropped the ohms to almost nothing...
Click to expand...


Beat me to it... I was going to say the same thing.

Nice work...I'd put in some crossovers IMO so you don't fry anything plus you will get a better sound out of the drivers.
 
Almost speechless here, too... almost, but not quite. :D

I'm happy for you that you created something you love the sound of. That's always a satisfying thing! :thmbsp:

But if you want to continue enjoying that sound for long, take heed of what the guys above have said about a crossover -- the basic principles of electricity don't change, and what they are predicting will happen sooner or later, if you don't. Simply wiring all those drivers in parallel is a designing that is doomed to cause component failure.
Maybe you can still use the crossovers from the Pioneer speakers the drivers came from? Not sure about the stats for the Kenwood drivers, but it's possible they might be combined and used with the same crossovers(?). Post details of the drivers (numbers on the backs/magnets) and perhaps some of us can give some specific suggestions.
 
Well, I'm seeing first-order x-overs (caps) in the pic, so that's covered (safety-wise) if the right values were used,
but the total system impedance should be a definate concern.
 
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