HT speakers finished w/ pics

Using the hand to touch is ultra important.  If your fingertips feel it, it will be seen.  Good suggestions, Steven, and I like that flexible rack system.

Thanks, Rob.  I made the crossover mounting area to allow the circuit board to be easily pulled out.  This speaker has top and bottom vented enclosures and a middle transition area that gives it the overall height and form.  So into this middle area I put the crossover board and kept the back open for easy access.  The board is made from the the hard fiberboard found on clipboards.  I did the wiring through the enclosure to allow enough play so that the board can be lifted up and pulled out enough to unhook the speaker wires.  Then it can be pulled out completely away from the cabinet and over to the workbench.

The crossover cubby is completely sealed off from the rest of the cabinet.  And then the inside of it was painted black before the final assembly.

I labelled the crossover boards for the speaker connections and used bullet connectors, which are also used for the crossover-to-amp speaker wire hookup.  There's a 1/4" lip on the back of that cabinet that keeps the crossover board from sliding out.  Pictured above are the two completed 3-way crossovers.  I used Jantzen 18 ga. coils, Dayton poly caps and teflon siver-coated 16 ga. connecting wire....nice to solder.

To save some expense on this crossover layout, I do have a couple of n.p. electrolytic caps in place that are paralleled with poly caps.  Those can be upgraded in the future.  And resistors can be traded out if I want to experiment with the padding.

You can, Aruman!  You're hanging out at the right place.  This forum is basically where I learned most of what I know, or got tips to links, products, etc.

I did this project from scratch, from concept to the finished product.  I even made a safe work enclosure within the laundry / utility room (thanks to my wife for allowing it), with filtered air and a constant fan exhaust.  The fan came off the bottom of an old discarded table hockey game (you've seen them), and the filtered air is courtesy of Mr. Hoover pictured here.  Kept all the MDF dust out of the house and makes a great place for painting so you're not subject to the dust and pollen of painting outside.

Thanks, haemphyst.  You know how much of my accumulated knowledge and inspiration can be directly attributed to you.  And I appreciate it!

zhalverson, that's something I purposely didn't keep tabs on for one reason:  if or when my better half gets into regret mode and starts harping on expenditures (not that she ever will ;), I couldn't lie about the total cost if I don't know it!  Nickel and dime your way through...that's the way to do it.  But if I were to to a quick guesstimate...for each one of these two speakers I think I have about $250 in materials.  And that includes the mids which were bought so cheap they were nearly free.  I used ten coats of red gloss and 6 or 7 coats of the more expensive textured black, which amounted to about $30 per speaker.  Stuff adds up.  If I consider associated tools I added to do them and the cost of the rest of the HT sound system it would get to a point I'd rather not think about.  But still, it costs considerably less than what you could buy commercially when comparing to something of equal quality.  You just have to love the "overcoming the challenge" part of building it. 

And the best part is that there is no other set of speakers in the world like them.   

P.S. to the earlier post, I did an official weigh-in.  51 lbs.

Ok.  Didn't want to put you on the spot or anything just curious.  I'm a big fan of doing things yourself and building your own towers is definately taking it to the next level.  Way to go.  I think I'll stick to car audio for now but someday maybe when college is over and I have a nice place of my own I would like to give something like this a try.  I guess I will know where to go for help.  Gotta love the12volt.com!

They probably look more imposing because of the camera angle I used, which was at about viewing height of 38 - 40"..and the weirdness of two-dimensional pics on the internet.  If you break it down, the largest woofers in these are the same size as the front component mids in your car, at 6.5".  The net enclosure spaces are 5.8 liters (0.2 ft^3) for the top mids (combined) and 22 liters (0.78 ft^3) for the bottom woofer.  In between, the speaker narrows from 10.5" to 7.5" at 12" deep.  Those dimensions include the use of 3/4" MDF.  The very top of this speaker is barely over an inch deep.

But you can almost play these without a sub, the vented midbass woofers reach so deep.  I experimented with them today and dropped the active crossover on the receiver down to 60 Hz.  I'll be doing some experimenting between that and 80 Hz.  The Fb of the 6.5 woofer enclosure is built at 70 Hz.  Fb of the mids is 135 Hz.  The midbass and mids cross over at 500 Hz.