Woah, okay, that's a lot to take in. Thank you, all.
First and most important: not giving up entirely. I'll be making these speakers one way or another. Some day. (I have to credit the responses I got for a lot of that--I'm humbled by the positivity, thank you.)
This situation is classic me: bite off way too much at first and freak out.
I've got literally everything but the MDF for these. The speaker kit just shipped from Texas today. It's not even a question of sunk cost, because I could recoup most of that. I just... gotta take some time and think about this.
If the MTM seems a bit intimidating, I’d strongly recommend you start with the X-LS. If you enjoy building them, you could move up to the X-SLS towers and save money by reusing the same crossover and drivers. From my own experience of doing this, the towers were significantly more difficult to build. The experience of building the X-LS prepared me though.
If the X-MTM is too intimidating, then the X-LS is a very easy build and will get you an excellent speaker. In the future, if you decide to build the X-MTM, you can use the X-MTM's as your main speakers and move the X-LS to surround speakers in the back. Assuming you have a HT setup.
Agree with Tyson. I just built the XLS as my first speaker build. Managed with just 4 clamps and an evening of soldering crossovers and wiring. Nice first build.
I appreciate the idea of a smaller speaker, thank you, but it's not the size, so much as resignation. I'd been trying to avoid a bunch of clamps, mostly. I used to sell tools, so I know how expensive workholding gets, even with cheap import quality.
I'll very likely do this kind of setup in my HT when I get there, but I'm not there yet. My house layout is a bit odd, so it'll take some planning and a remodel to get to where I can go for rear speakers. Two channel is great for now.
D'oh! I don't want to discourage you from this build if this is what you want. This was my first speaker build as well, and I also blew through my budget. I also made plenty of mistakes, but my saving grace was that I took my time and didn't rush the build.
The suggestion of an X-LS is good if you feel the complexity and budget of the MTM are getting out of hand. It only requires a few clamps and could give you a lot of insight into whether you want to tackle something bigger. Peter's videos on Youtube are incredibly helpful for that specific speaker. Chances are you'll be really happy with them and you may not feel a need to go bigger.
There are LOTS of folks here who have built these so please keep the questions coming. Whichever you decide, you won't regret it.
Eh heh... I didn't take it as discouragement from the build itself. I get frustrated when I feel stupid, and I usually take it out on whatever project it is that I've been working on. I'm a bit of a thespian, sometimes, so uh... pardon the overreaction.
Take your time with these. Nobody expects or even achieves building these in a month. I ordered my kit in Sept last year and didn't finish til Feb and I just had the Studios. If clamps are a thing needed to be sorted out, go check out pawn shops. They have tools galore for that kind of stuff. You could also use Home Depot's very liberal return policy provided you keep them in good condition through the project. Also I have seen several builds where people staged out their assembly so as not to require 126 clamps at once. More clamps will result in better finished product and quicker assembly, but you can get it together with 6 or 8 at a time if you stage it out. This was never meant to be a discouraging pep-talk, just some guiding advice to get you a speaker that will knock your socks off in looks as well as sound. All else fails you could duct tape and zip-tie the thing together and it will still sound amazing.
Speed isn't the issue--though I do like to actually
do what I intend to do when I'm able, I prefer to do the
right thing, so... yeah. Thanks for the idea about pawn shops. Hadn't considered that one. Gives me a couple other ideas, too.
If not doing a full build, I would recommend buying a used pair of speakers that GR Research has an upgrade kit for. Lots of Klipsch models and many others. Buy used, do the upgrade. Less work, but still a small amount of diy. You might even like the outcome better.
I completely agree. I have a pair Sony SS-CS5 speakers that I got the upgrade kit for. I made a ton of mistakes on those things and they still sound great.
The weather around here is gonna to go toward crappy within a month, I don't have shop space of my own, and I don't intend to leave a half-started project sitting around in someone else's shop over the winter. This is going to take at least a couple months to finish, even if I had a working plan, because I only have weekends, and only part of each day on those. I have a long time to go over and over and over these plans and designs. I'll start things when the weather gets warmer again. I guess by then I'll probably have the dimensions practically memorized, but that's probably not a bad thing.
Thanks for the support, everybody. I'll get there sooner or later.
