You too can have the best loudspeakers in the world

You have just unlocked a stream of memories. Back in the mid 1970's I made a matched pair of stereo speakers bought from Wilmslow Audio. I fetched them myself. They were KEF kit 3s, three drive units. With help from a mate we built them in my Dads garage, and of course they were the best speakers in the world, and I have still got them!!

So spot on! I'm still chasing to relive the sound that came from the Altec Lansing 12" woofers I built cabinets for that had horn tweeters with exposed crossover components that sat on top of the enclosures. Those speakers rocked all the houses I inhabited during my college years. I eventually sold them to a rock band, since they were too large to fit in my car when I left school. Now I'm thinking it was the memories of cranking tunes outside on big grass lawns with a keg of beer, a bushel of oysters, throwing the Frisbee with friends and smiling at the coeds in cut off shorts walking by that makes me think that no other speakers have sounded as good as those Altecs. In reality, I'm not chasing an improved sound, I'm chasing the youth of my past.

What you say is so true! I've never owned "store bought enclosures", but boy have I built quite a few different cabinets. I started out with single 12" "full range" speakers in a very pleasing sized box but way too small to get the bass performance I wanted. This was when I was around 16. Then I read about bass reflex cabinets and cut some ports into the too small boxes. The bass was better, but everything else sucked. A new neighbor moved in next door and one day I heard the most magnificent loud and clean sound coming from his house. I got to know him and it turned out he used a wall in his living room as an infinite baffle. There was a large open stairway on the back side of that wall. Each channel had 2 EV SP15 speakers and an Altec 500 Hz horn. I'd never heard anything like it before. The sound levels he could achieve were unbelievable and I'm surprised nobody called the cops...but he was a cop, so maybe that's why. Sometime later, he decided to replace the SP15s with JBL LE15s and sold me 2 of the EV speakers for next to nothing. This was in 1967. I used a guide from Electrovoice to "design" properly sized bass reflex cabinets. I was just out of high school and living with my parents at the time. My dad and I cut up the wood and built my cabinets, which were huge. I had them in the basement and when nobody was home, I cranked them up. These were the best speakers I'd ever heard, with the exception of the neighbor's infinite baffle driven with all McIntosh gear. I brought my girlfriend (now wife) over to hear them and she proclaimed them to be the best speakers she'd ever heard. After we got married, I build a listening room in the basement of our new house. It featured an infinite baffle with 1 SP15 and 1 Altec horn on each side. Now these were the best speakers in the world. I had also built my preamp, power amp and electronic crossovers from scratch and they were the best too. When we moved to our next house, there wasn't any wall that could be used as an infinite baffle. Someone at work showed me a catalog from a company in Seattle that offered various speaker kits as well as plans. Speakerlab was their name and they offered a set of very detailed plans to build a clone of the Klipschorn as well as a kit. This was a woodworking nightmare from hell with all the compound angled cuts and many pieces to make the folded horn. A pair required 5 sheets of 1/2" plywood and 2 sheets of 3/4" walnut veneered plywood. I bought the plans and built a pair. They were beautiful and looked just like the real thing. I used my EV SP15 in the bass bin and the Altec horn along with a new EV tweeter. These now were the best speakers in the world and even my old neighbor with the infinite baffle said so when he heard them. The only problem was that when friends heard them, they wanted a pair too. I think in total I built 5 pairs for other people. This was in 1978 and I still have them today. They're now bi-amped with home built electronic crossovers and lateral MOSFET power amps. My most recent upgrade was the addition of DSP equalization. I'm old now and I know there are better speakers than mine, but the built in low pass filters in my ears probably couldn't tell the difference.

With a fondness that can only be born of nostalgia, your video reminded me of my years during the 1980s aspiring to construct the ultimate "high-end" speaker system. My Bible was Edward T. Dell, Jr's Speaker Builder magazine. With my favorite issues of this invaluable resource dog eared and highlighted to near oblivion, I time and again struggled through the arcane stages of cabinet and crossover design, parts purchasing, woodworking and finishing. At the zenith of my hobbiest years I once mounted an 8" polypropylene woofer into a rosewood transmission line cabinet supporting a curvilinear electrostatic element with a passive 6 dB/octave crossover. Considering my total cost was little more than $200, its successful comparisons to an early 1980s Magneplanar MG-1 owned by a close friend convinced me that I'd indeed built the best speakers in the world.

My dad, when he was a teenager still living at home (around the mid 1950's), and after obtaining permission from his parents (my grandparents ), proceeded to saw two big square holes in the wooden floor and placed two DIY speaker boxes on top; he used the entire under-floor crawl space as an infinite baffle. Superb bass performance, so he tells me. Fortunately my grandparents approved of that kind of initiative; my dad did lots of DIY audio builds when he was young. I built my own design headphone amp before they became available commercially; I still think it is the best headphone amp 😬👍

Your videos are pure joy. Can´t wait for the next one. On this particular topic, there is no way I would ever venture into building a pair of speakers (kit or no kit), but if I did, it would surely be due to your compelling arguments...

I must say that it’s refreshing to find and old fart, like me, who started this journey in the 70’s. You are much smarter of course. My first speakers where Crazy Eddy’s Acoustic Phase, which were garbage. Then I made my own which were better. After that I have got speakers like: EV, Altec Lansing, Infinity Slopes, Infinity Kappa 9, Roger Studio one and now B&W. Nothing like those I made. Thanks for the memories Sir.

Always appreciate your videos! I have taken a slightly different approach with my listening. When we moved to this house, it came with a sound system that was well beyond anything I would've put together (Krell amp, Krell pre-amp, Sonus Faber Concerto speakers and a REL sub). The Krell needed repair (dried out capacitors) and the room needed to be re-arranged for better placement. Prior to this, I didn't have any systems of any note, although my brother had owned a few that I'd enjoyed listening to from time to time. The sub died shortly after moving in so I replaced it with a modern REL equivalent, not for music but for surround entertainment. I listen in 2 channel for music and 5.1 for movies. I am absolutely ecstatic with the 2 channel performance. Having tested it out as thoroughly as I can, there is nothing lacking to my ear. As such, the ONLY thing I do when I listen to it now is simply enjoy it. I primarily listen to prog rack, some very specific classical concertos and Julian Lage (a jazz guitarist). Listening to the delicate work of a 3 piece jazz trio really makes the hairs on my arm stand up, especially with quality recordings. A friend of mine, on the other hand, is always talking about upgrading his setup (2 channel, vinyl with a tube amp), to the point where I'm not really sure how much he's allowing himself to enjoy the music he owns. TLDR: if you're happy with the music you're hearing and can't pick out any artifacts, then stop chasing upgrades and enjoy the hell out of it.

Been doing this for years. DIY speakers have changed my world. Buidling speakers especially suited for the environment they will be listened to makes a world of difference.

That was the most fun I've had watching a YouTube video in a long time! Thanks for sharing!

I just discovered your channel, and I love it. What I cherish the most is your down-to-earth, no-bullshit attitude. Thank you, and kudos for that!

Excellent video. Thank you sir. Ahh, the memories… my Dad had a workshop with all the tools (radial arm saw, drills, fasteners, etc.). I managed to order a book on how to build speakers (this was the 70’s - pre- internet obviously). I perused the information and came up with a design. I reused some Radio Shack mids from a friends old speakers, bought a Phillips Dome tweeter and an 8” woofer from somewhere. I don’t recall where i got the crossover from. Anyway, I assembled the cabinet, gave it a beautiful finish and framed and covered the speaker covers with some material I found in my mother’s sewing room. They looked fantastic! I installed a 1” strip of wood on the front underside of the speakers so they would sit tilted slightly back. Excitedly I hooked up my 20 Watt Realistic (a Toshiba that sounded like 50 Watts) amp, put a record on my Dual 510 and… They did not sound as I had hoped/ dreamed. The bass was completely anemic. Mids and Highs were ok. The point of my long ramble is that no matter how disappointing the results it was a very satisfying venture. I then turned my ambitious thoughts to building a pair of 12” Karlson (open baffle) Enclosures. I even managed to get the plans. (I still have them somewhere although they can be found via a brief google search.) Alas, I never got around to building them. My son has excellent woodworking skills so perhaps one day soon we could build a set together. And just maybe he too will get to experience the joy of building your own speakers no matter the outcome.

I've recently discovered your channel and I'm really enjoying your videos. Please, keep it up!

Very refreshing. Thanks. Built the transmission line PRO-9 monitors from Wilmslow Audio about half a century ago! Gave a very good result. Everyone was very impressed because until then no one had a concept of what Hi-fi is all about. Been listening to transistor radios! PRO-9's eventually were discarded due to moving around.

I built kit speakers when I was high school. They were from a Seattle company called Speaker Lab. I liked the company because the built their own speaker components included spinning the voice coils and magnetizing the drivers. I built the cabinets in the wood shop at school. They were nothing fancy; just 2-way speakers with 8" woofer, dome tweeter and sealed cabinet of the appropriate volume. I ran them from a vacuum-tube integrated amp with about about 25W/channel, but the setup actually performed better than what most kids my age had. I actually don't remember much else about the system. I don't even remember what I had for a turntable, but remember playing nothing but vinyl. :)

Hello David, best channel ever.. I’ve upgraded and redesigned crossovers, and have upgraded drivers, on stereo speakers in the past, but I’ve never built any from scratch. (I stink at woodworking). I have a few books on the subject that just sit on a bookshelf, but the one you mentioned sounded intriguing, and a seemingly good buy at $50, but no current plans for new speakers, since I currently have 2 sets of floor standers already. I had to chuckle when you mentioned the 4x12”’s. Back when I played guitar, more years ago now than I care to think about, I picked up a Laney LC-50, which was a 50 watt 1x12” combo with 2 6L6 output tubes. The problem was that it had this really annoyingly crisp and bright HH speaker in it, so I got my hands on one of the 12” Celestion speakers that was same as the ones in the old Marshall 4 x 12 cabinets, and I put that speaker in the combo instead in place of the HH speaker, and then, problem solved. 😉

So many comments to dig through…assuming people have already mention using it and was great to see it in the description. But I also got my start using “The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook” by Vance Dickason …. No idea what version they are on now… I used it to design and build subwoofer boxes for cars…. Sealed, ported, band pass ….. all that jazz. MDF was hard to come by those days.. early 90s… Thanks for the great walk down memory lane

Great!! Took me back to my twenties when I did build my Hi-Fi speakers (from a kit) , and also a bass speaker for my bass guitar (yes, I played in a band) - that box was huge and weighed a ton, but did the job, just fitted in the car.

You too can have the best Youtube channel in the world - yours

You are a likable chap. I enjoy the way you encompass your life story into a well mashed out focus on making your own speakers. All in under 12 minutes. Thank You. :D