What is the easiest speaker kit, for a Novice?

The Hawthorne Silver Iris can be pretty simple. The driver is a coaxial design and it comes with the crossover. You would simply need to buy a suitable piece of plywood or MDF and have someone cut the appropriate sized hole for the driver. Screw the driver to the baffle "board" and hook up the crossover to the driver and you are set. You could use another piece of wood or a couple of shelf brackets for the anti-tip feet.

The Hawthorne SI is an open baffle speaker. Put simply, its a driver mounted to a board. I don't think it can get much easier than that.

Enjoy,

TIC

Bbchem,

What you see in the factory assembled Hawthorns is not really an enclosure. It is a baffle (board), but it has a frame over which the grille cloth is stretched. This makes it look a bit more like a conventional speaker.

You could ask on the Hawthorn forum or on the Open Baffle speaker forum at www.Audiocircle.com . You may find someone who will cut a baffle for you or someone that is moving on to a new baffle and may sell their old one to you.

The Hawthorns are a high efficiency open baffle speaker. Depending on your taste and depending on your point of reference, the Hawthorns could be the best speaker you've ever heard. But it is unlikely that the Hawthorns will win any beauty contest. Really, most people simply take a board, cut a hole in it and mount the driver and crossover. The beauty is in the fact that you can get true audiophile sound quality for well under $400 (driver kit, plus wood for baffle).

Enjoy,

TIC