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Gigantism Rampant in Speaker Design
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Building the first cannon was great fun and it actually
worked pretty well. So I wanted to kick it up a notch and do
things right. We would occasionally have parties at our place
with a line up of hot local DJs with around 500 guests, and I
felt that we needed to give people something to remember when
they came to dance.
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Driver
I got an Adire Tempest 15 driver, which is an excellent piece
of audio engineering. It has two voice coils and can handle
800W input power, with an xmax of 16.4mm and a swept volume of
2.7L.
Subwoofer Amp
KG-5230 Plate amp from Madisound. I didn't want to spend a
fortune on this project in the beginning, so I thought I would
see how things went with this amp before getting one that
would be better matched to my driver. Even though it only
cranks out 300W, I never turned it all the way up and it was
able to make the room PLENTY loud.
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The tube system is built from two ten foot lengths of 15 inch
diameter sonotube, which I had to pick up from a lumber yard
on the other side of Boston in my friend Jay's truck. One tube
was cut in half, with half being stacked onto the other full
size sonotube piece to make the front tube and the small half
piece forming the back tube by itself.
My friend Ben Polito and I put together the tube system in
preparation for a party. The two tube
joints are formed by a plywood and 2x reinforced ring
system. First we cut the plywood flanges, with a 15 inch hole
in the middle and an octagonal outside profile. Then we cut
four wedges per flange out of 2x wood to arrange radially around the
flange. Each wedge was attached first to the flange by drywall
screws, and then mounted to the tube using drywall screws
driven from inside the tube.
Cutting the
flanges and wedges
Mounting the
flange/wedge assembly
Ready for painting
The flanges on adjacent tubes are joined together by 1 inch
steel bolts all around their perimeters. This was probably
overkill, but it looks industrial and tough. One of the tube
joints has an additional flange inside the joint, which
accomodates the driver rim.
Drilling for
the bolts
Painting was done using our airless sprayer, followed up with
some masking tape and spray paint to get the flanges the right
color and get some nice industrial style safety stripes.
Gray is my
favorite color
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The assembled and finished unit was hung with 3/16 steel cable
and clips from the ceiling.
Suspended
In Context
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Design partially original and partially ripped off from other websites
by Holly Gates
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