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The Loudspeaker-3, built by John

Copyright 2021 © Troels Gravesen

Hi Troels:
I sent a copy of this also to Nigel at Lean as he wanted to see the end result. I completed a simplified build of "The Loudspeaker III" out of Baltic Birch Plywood 25mm on the exterior panels and 18mm for the internal braces and port dividers. The build was made with 2 boxes per side to facilitate ease of construction as well as to make moving the loudspeaker by one person easier by being smaller and lighter.  I used Walnut trim with exposed Baltic Birch ply butt joints in some areas for aesthetic reasons as well as visual honesty of construction, a simple but solid box. Since I do not have a table saw setup (something I would recommend for this build) a track saw, a small miter saw and routers were used for the majority of cuts augmented with hand tools and electric RO sanders. Titebond 3 was the adhesive of choice for most of the the assembly but special callout for the use of self mixing epoxy (West System six/10 thickened Epoxy Adhesive) for the lower 2 piece slanted baffle board due to its long working life of 40 minutes for precise assembly as well as gap filling properties. Messy but it sanded off beautifully.   Prior to the build I purchased multiples of parallel clamps which turned out to be a wise investment along with an upgraded fold down workbench with vises. I relocated  and reoriented the Hypex cutout horizontally to allow easy access to the controls, off switch and ports. as well lengthen it to allow use of some Hypex FA253 amps I have as a fallback for the Hypex FA501s. This would require some rewiring so currently a mute point. I use Speakon connectors for input and a reverse gender version for output so no confusion (other than twist and lock) on hooking these up by some neophyte err... family member. With a week off from work it took 2 months to build with finishing limited to a serviceable wipe on poly of 2 to 3 days that I gave up on after fumes began to seep into the house. Given that a quarter of that time was used to correct, repair and/or hide mistakes (Dutchman's !) I am both somewhat pleased and disappointed with how they turned out.

As for sound these are the closest that I ever have come to an all encompassing loudspeaker for any genre of music be it classical, opera, rock, jazz and whatnot. Soundstage is so solid I wish I could space them wider but am constricted due to the size of the room. I can play it soft or loud yet the volume seems to find itself to its appropriate level with plenty of headroom as needed. I did have problems finding the right bass levels initially as I also use this for tv sound and found voices thick, after some experimentation I reduced the overall bass level from your settings to 2db gain and the shelf at 45hz at 0.0, 0.5, 1.0 db's for the 3 presets using Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly" as a gold standard. It amazes me how small changes in the bass level can affect the overall sound with even a 0.5 db change difference. Given the controls and settings available I find it extremely flexible to setup and change on the spur but also quite challenging. I suppose WAF should replace with AGB* (Almost Guaranteed Bachelorhood or perhaps Absolute Guaranteed Bachelorhood) but I find their presence in my living room comforting. I probably get around to making flat grills for these but that will be a separate project as I made no provisions for these in this build. My hearty Thanks for this design as well as all the others and hope for yours and others continued well being.
Cheers,
John