Who has built their own speaker systems

Just curious . Hey Carl ,don't be bashful . I'll admit in the early 70's I obtained a set of plans , ( pages and a full scale orthographic plan (top) view ), for "The Mello Monsters" and built four of them . They were an article, I believe, from an early 60's Popular Electronics monthly magazine . They were a folded horn labyrinth enclosure , supposedly equal to a 16 foot straight horn . They each took a sheet and a half of 4x8 plywood , I used marine grade particle board 3/4 thick . That was some tough board to cut . Used 4 Lafayette 12" woofers , 4 Phillips 5" mid ranges , and 8 Philips dome tweeters- 2 per cabinet . Bought a Lafayette LR-5000 4 channel reciever 40wrms x 4 . I'll have to say it was impressive to hear weird sounds and passages of music that sounded as if one was in the orchestra . I still have a pair in the basement . They can take a small wattage and shake the house and still sound decent . I miss stores like Lafayette , some carried top brand name audio electronics , and you could order them through the mail from their catalog . Who' next ? FBI .

My design ideas are less extreme and perhaps more elegant, but I don't feel the need to be ridiculed by the jerkwads on here that don't know as much about speaker design as I do (which is most all of them). A few of my designs might be good enough to be "world beaters" one day, you never know. The point is, you started this thread as sort of a confessional to say "look what I did tens of years ago...gee, I'm glad I'm past that stage now"...There's entirely too much of that bull dung going on in this hobby already. I just don't look at speaker design that way, and don't feel the need to justify my speaker design philosophies to anyone in a public forum, because the "public" doesn't need to know anyhow. And as far as nano-decible measurements go, the human variable is never absent in gathering this "data", and certainly no one on this forum has their room dialed in enough to make use of such skilled-labor intensive testing/manufacturing. And most assuredly, anyone who can't even hear the full frequency range to begin with (anyone over age 40), has no business commenting on loudspeakers in the first place. I'm a speaker hobbyist and audiophile, and I refuse to apologize for my philosophy to anyone, especially if they think they've "seen it all, heard it all"!

Hey fellow audiogoner , Don't BEAT around the BUSH . Say what you think and quit being so vague . Me .

I just completed a BESL dual 10 sub. The inner case is 3/4 inch MDF and the outer case is 3/4 inch Oak. It uses two 10 inch Peerless drivers downfiring in a push pull arrangment and a 3 inch port. The sub is powered by a KG 5230 amp. Here are my thoughts on my new sub: Looks- Much better looking than the production models. It has legs and a nice top and looks like a fat mission end table. My wife gives it a thumbs up. Sound- I had a sunfire hooked up to my system and have listened to several velodynes. No AB test, but I think my sounds just a good as any of the mentioned model. Build- much better case than production models. Very heavy but super solid. Total cost- 700 dollars

I have built several systems and all have proven better than expected. The last uses 12" NHT's for subwoofers and Dynaudio 13W75 for mid range and Dynaudio 28/2 tweeters for top ends. The subwoofers have separate enclosures (90 liter) and the top ends are housed in 12 liter enclosures. The enclosures were made by Woodstyle (available at Madisound) and are finished in golden oak with black grilles. (They are visually quite appealling.) The subwoofers were lined with 3/4" MDF to give a 1.5 inch thickness and increased rigidity. The crossover is electronic @80 Hz and @4000Hz. Electronic crossovers have fundemental advantages over passive LCR types and eliminate the nightmare of cross-over design. While I have not A-B'd them with other high end speakers in the same room, I have listened to high end Thiele's, Watt Puppys and B&W Nautilus and come away feeling my speaker's sound as good or better. Total cost was less than $1500 including enclosures, drivers and cross-over. My design was inspired by the late Dan Hildebrand's site "A Speaker Project". I went with electronic cross-overs and different high end drivers. Check out Marchand on web for electronic crossovers. Madisound for drivers and enclosures. Zalytron has good deals on drivers as well.