Those just look insane...
Jim, is it even possible to have built the front baffle with real hard wood instead of wood trim plus veneer? Just you did with some of your HT1 but on a tower.
Ricardo -
Yes and no. It is possible to use hardwood for the front baffles, but there are significant issues and the larger the speaker, the greater those issues become.
Wood will expand and contract at a different rate than the underlying cabinet when exposed to changes in temperature and humidity. So the first thing you have to insure is that the wood you are using is well seasoned. This is somewhat of a problem since it is unlikely that wood being sold has sat around seasoning for a number of years. And if not, it may not be seasoned enough and you can have major problems.
A number of years ago, I purchased a "museum-grade" piece of cocobolo. I paid about $1000 for the board and it was fabulous - stunning. I had it milled to create a matched set of front baffles and basically book-matched them. I did the remainder of the cabinets in black and hand rubbed the finish to high gloss. They were incredible looking speakers to be sure.
A few months later, I noticed a few small cracks in the cocobolo hardwood. A few months after that, the cracks had expanded to the point where the board started warping. Since the cocobolo was glued to the cabinets, it had nowhere to go and actually started ripping the cabinets apart. A month or so later, the cabinets were broken beyond repair and all we could do was trash them.
I was VERY happy I hadn't sold them to someone.
That said, we have successfully done speakers with full hardwood front baffles. Some woods are a lot more stable than others and much safer to use in this fashion. We have had good luck with cherry, walnut and bubinga for example. And there are things you can do like kerfing the back side of the baffles that will help considerably.
But any time you have to glue hardwood to any surface, you are gambling.
If you look at wood doors, you will notice that the center panels are not usually glued to the frame. They sit in a pocket in the frame so they can expand and contract without breaking the frame.
With speaker cabinets, you cannot do this sort of thing (at least not easily) since the cabinet must be totally sealed. So the safest thing is not to gamble in the first place. Simply veneer the fronts and use hardwood trim. That way they should be very stable for a very long time.
I hope that made sense.
- Jim
