mattsk8
Full Audioholic
I’ve been a member here for about a year now. I’ve been into stereos for a long, long time. After building some tritrix so I could get my speaker building feet wet (first set I’ve ever built), TriTrix MTM TL Speaker Components And Cabinet Kit Pair 300-702 , and a lot of deliberating, I’ve decided to build the statements and a pair of ER18s. This thread is for the statements.
Being a complete noobe in the speaker building arena, I have to completely rely on the amazing knowledge of the guys on this fantastic site and it was the general consensus here that these are some pretty phenomenal speakers. Also being a complete noobe, hopefully anyone that’s as skeptical as I am can gain much wisdom from this build thread. I will do my best to document every inch of what I do to build and finish these; including material costs and tools used. Being an ex-cabinet maker, fortunately I have a pretty exhaustive collection of tools and woodworking skills. While I post the build progress, I’ll try to make notes of different ways to complete this build; not everyone will want to run out and buy thousands of dollars worth of tools to build a pair of speakers!
I’ve received all the speaker and crossover components already minus 2 of the capacitors that are on backorder but should be here any day, I just ordered what Curt Campbell recommended right from Parts Express and Madisound per this site: Statements. So far I have about $950.00 into these, that’s for all the speaker and crossover components as well as the ports.
I’m starting to get my bearings for the cabinets. The design on Curt’s site is ported through the bottom, but can be ported through the rear as well; the rear port is the design I will build.
My first 3 questions are mainly for jinjuku: Can I trouble you for anything you think I may want to know before I start slicing up MDF (I do plan on dadoing everything; did you just add ½” to the pieces in Curt’s cutlist?); and, where did you mount the crossover and do you have finished pics of the crossovers?! Also, I see the mid/tweet cabinets pass thru the rear of the cabinets. Do have a pic of the finished backs of yours? If you could answer those questions that would be awesome! Thanks in advance!! While I have read through your build thread quite a bit, are there any changes you made to the design that I might want to consider?
Another change to Curt’s design I’d like to make is to the base. The base on the website is 3” thick and just based on the pic (didn’t do the math on the cut dimensions yet), it looks like about 1 ½” wider than the base of the actual speaker cabinet all the way around. I would like to avoid this if I can; I’m not a big fan of the way the bases look. If these are tipsy and need this for stability, I’d rather add something later; if I build this into the cabinets w/ MDF per Curt’s design, it’ll be tough to change later. I guess to simplify the question, does the base need to be made out of 3” thick pieces of MDF glued together? I would think a 1 ½” thick piece would be sufficient to support the 120lb weight of these monsters and I could put that inside the cabinet instead of on the bottom. That would make finishing a lot easier and allow me to add some nicer looking “feet” to the base of the cabinets later; know what I mean?
Thanks to everyone and especially to GranteedEV and Skyline_123 for all the wisdom you guys have shared!! I can’t wait to post comparisons of these next to the ER18s, the Tritrix, some JBLs, some Polks, some old Pioneer 3ways w/ 12” woofers, and whatever else I can dig up!!!
Being a complete noobe in the speaker building arena, I have to completely rely on the amazing knowledge of the guys on this fantastic site and it was the general consensus here that these are some pretty phenomenal speakers. Also being a complete noobe, hopefully anyone that’s as skeptical as I am can gain much wisdom from this build thread. I will do my best to document every inch of what I do to build and finish these; including material costs and tools used. Being an ex-cabinet maker, fortunately I have a pretty exhaustive collection of tools and woodworking skills. While I post the build progress, I’ll try to make notes of different ways to complete this build; not everyone will want to run out and buy thousands of dollars worth of tools to build a pair of speakers!
I’ve received all the speaker and crossover components already minus 2 of the capacitors that are on backorder but should be here any day, I just ordered what Curt Campbell recommended right from Parts Express and Madisound per this site: Statements. So far I have about $950.00 into these, that’s for all the speaker and crossover components as well as the ports.
I’m starting to get my bearings for the cabinets. The design on Curt’s site is ported through the bottom, but can be ported through the rear as well; the rear port is the design I will build.
My first 3 questions are mainly for jinjuku: Can I trouble you for anything you think I may want to know before I start slicing up MDF (I do plan on dadoing everything; did you just add ½” to the pieces in Curt’s cutlist?); and, where did you mount the crossover and do you have finished pics of the crossovers?! Also, I see the mid/tweet cabinets pass thru the rear of the cabinets. Do have a pic of the finished backs of yours? If you could answer those questions that would be awesome! Thanks in advance!! While I have read through your build thread quite a bit, are there any changes you made to the design that I might want to consider?
Another change to Curt’s design I’d like to make is to the base. The base on the website is 3” thick and just based on the pic (didn’t do the math on the cut dimensions yet), it looks like about 1 ½” wider than the base of the actual speaker cabinet all the way around. I would like to avoid this if I can; I’m not a big fan of the way the bases look. If these are tipsy and need this for stability, I’d rather add something later; if I build this into the cabinets w/ MDF per Curt’s design, it’ll be tough to change later. I guess to simplify the question, does the base need to be made out of 3” thick pieces of MDF glued together? I would think a 1 ½” thick piece would be sufficient to support the 120lb weight of these monsters and I could put that inside the cabinet instead of on the bottom. That would make finishing a lot easier and allow me to add some nicer looking “feet” to the base of the cabinets later; know what I mean?
Thanks to everyone and especially to GranteedEV and Skyline_123 for all the wisdom you guys have shared!! I can’t wait to post comparisons of these next to the ER18s, the Tritrix, some JBLs, some Polks, some old Pioneer 3ways w/ 12” woofers, and whatever else I can dig up!!!