Discovery 18W, built by Patrick, Germany
Copyright 2018 © Troels Gravesen

Dear Troels,
After several years of studying various loudspeaker designs and also the ones on your site I first ended up building the Little Yellow Cab (Alex Gressler, 8 + 1 non-vented, with waveguide). Because of the wave guide both drivers end up on the same level - similar to a stepped baffle design. Now that I finished the W18 it’s interesting to hear the difference. Both are great sounding Speakers. Detailed, wide range, pretty deep bass. For mixing I prefer the tight bass of the LYC - due to the non-vented enclosure - but for overall listening experience in the living room I’d go with the W18. Although the W18 would work well in the Studio, too. I have a small room of 14 m2 but the W18 really works well and doesn’t over pronounce the bass even in less than ideal conditions. I placed them 30 cm from the wall and 50 cm from the corners.
I really liked the 3 Way Classic design with the box being slightly bigger than the front panel, also preferred the straight cut mid bass panel. So I tried to apply this to the w18. I adjusted the W18’s dimension to keep the same volume and get the 5 mm “frame" from the plywood while keeping the front panel to the exact dimensions of the original plan. The slanted cut on the mid bass panel with 20° turned out to be tricky. I almost messed up the panel with only 0,5 mm (probably even less) of material left at the top. I reinforced it from the routed side using isocyanat based glue.
I finished the enclosures with several layers of hard oil (called "osmo top oil”). The first layer was done with lightly pigmented oils (black for the MDF front and cherry for the plywood). You can still see some of the lighter fibres of the black MDF but they are a little less apparent than with just transparent oil.
I always find it hard to get the routing right and also with the W18 ended up making the holes a little too big.
Overall I am super happy both with the typical “troels-optics” and - especially - with the sound. Thanks for a very good, reasonably priced loudspeaker.
Patrick
Hamburg, Germany