Hi everyone. I thought I'd share with you the fruits of my summer weekends. With much planning, guidance and help from forum members -- you know who you are -- I designed and built a pair of custom studio monitors based around a new pair of TAD TD-4003 drivers and solid resin clones of TAD's TH-4003 horns. The crossovers are TAD TN-4 units and I have mixed the 15" woofers: JBL 2234H on top and JBL 2235H on the bottom. Each woofer is in its own chamber and is separated from the other by a slanted, internal double-walled panel.
The boxes themselves are double-walled -- outside 3/4" birch plywood panels each glued to an interior of 3/4" MDF. The veneer is 22.2 mil thick "bubble-free" rosewood from Oakwood Veneer Company (which I highly recommend). The baffles have an extra layer of 1/2" plywood and are 2" thick. The woofers are countersunk 1/2" in order to be flush mounted. The interior is filled with Sonex foam panels. The horn and 2234H on top are connected to a TAD TN-4 crossover mounted inside the cabinet. The 2234H's higher sensitivity matches almost perfectly with the TAD 15" units for which the TN-4 was designed. The deeper reaching 2235H on the bottom is hooked to a 100Hz low pass filter that is wired directly to the lower (jumpered) inputs (very similar to the JBL 4435 except that I'm mixing drivers). I'm guessing these weigh close to 400 lbs each.
Right off, perhaps not surprisingly, they sound fantastic. They have a full-range, clear and coherent sound to them. Very well balanced with a wide and stable image. Even my wife, who rarely comments on the music, noticed a dramatic difference over my previous DIY efforts.
That's enough for now. Time to sit back and listen! Cheers,
Jerry
Here are pics of the cabinets and my workshop: