DTQWT, built by John, US
Copyright 2013 © Troels Gravesen

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Hi Troels,
I started the speakers in March and I finally finished my DTQWT MkII in October as I had to wait for less humid weather to spray the lacquer.  I want to thank you for this wonderful design and all the time you have spent perfecting them.  I have around 100 listening hours on them now and they sound great.  They have a big sound stage, very good imaging, nice dry bass and clean vocals.  I really think these speakers will be the speakers that stay in my system.
Build:  There were so many incredible finished DTQWT’s out there so I borrowed from some of those ideas but I also wanted to make them mine too.  I made the cabinets from 18mm Baltic birch with 30mm Baltic birch baffles on the front and back.  I used hard maple for the front styles, with mahogany insets on the front and curly maple veneer on both the front and rear baffles.  The sides, top and terminal plate are ribbon mahogany paper backed wood veneer.  The spiked stands to get them off the carpet are made from solid 12mm hard maple and 12mm mahogany laminated together. The finish is natural Danish oil to bring out the grain and clear gloss Deft lacquer.  I will have to say I learned a lot about wood working on this project as I had little or no experience with using a table saw, router or a biscuit jointer before beginning this first time speaker build.  I debated buying the biscuit jointer, but am very happy with the purchase, as assembly would have been much harder without it.  Veneering this large of a project proved to be a challenge, as I do not have a vacuum press.  I had to caul press all of the veneer and even though I had a large piece of granite counter top and a lot of good clamps I had issues with adhesion.  I was able to hot iron the bubbles out but that caused issues with the seams pulling slightly on the non-paper backed wood veneer.  I believe that part of the problem was that the Baltic birch is not a flat as MDF and the slight irregularities caused adhesion gaps.  If I had to do it again I might have tried laminating MDF to the Baltic birch so the surface would be smoother and still get the possible sound virtues of the Baltic birch.  
My main system:  I am powering the DTQWT’s with a 25 watt per channel McIntosh MC225 tube amp and a MX110 tube preamp.  My sources are a Clearaudio Concept TT with a MM cartridge as well as my computer through an Xfi soundboard.  My audio room set up is about 3.3m W x 5.8m L x 2.6m H.   I have DIY sound dampening panels on the wall behind the speakers and at the first reflection points on the side walls.  The room also has 3 inch rock wool dampening material in all of the cloth covered soffits and thick carpet on the floor.  I have experimented with placement a little and at least for now am very satisfied with the back of the DTQWT’s 75cm from the front wall and about 65cm to the center of the speaker to the side walls.  The speakers are slightly toed in to the center.  I originally had them placed farther out into the room, but I thought the vocals were a little less focused.