Hello All!
My long enjoyable journey building my NX-Otica speakers is finally drawing to a close. I figured now would be a good time to post a thread about this, as my anticipation is nearly boiling over!
As a lot of you know I was tossing around getting the NX-Studios, NX-Otica MTM's, or the NX-Otica. I decided I wanted to build my "end all" speaker, and ordered the Otica kit in April of this year - with all the available upgrades.
The NQ drivers were being shipped from overseas when I got the kit on order, so it took a little while to get.
The flat packs came first:
Awesome quality! Coming from a engineering manufacturing background for years, being around CNC's cutting MDF all day long - These pieces are TOP NOTCH! Couldn't expect much better. Definitely a paint grade MDF/Plum Creek style grade.
A few weeks later I got a much anticipated package... That of course UPS took a nice chunk out of... There was literally pieces ready to fall out of the box!
I thought for sure I was missing pieces.. But alas, everything was there!
Immediate layout of the crossover consumed my mind. My whole goal was to not use any additional wire in the whole circuit besides for going to the drivers of course. Lead to Lead on each component.
Initial layout being inspected by the great LittleHead himself!
Finalizing the Layout.
Sub Assemblies tied together.
Sub Assembly ready for solder.
So... Then life happened, and happened quick! I asked the woman of my dreams to spend the rest of our lives together!
...She said yes!!
...sucker haha! Kidding!
About 2 weeks later, we decide to elope to Vegas. We decide on a Tuesday, get tickets for Thursday, and Elvis is marrying us Friday morning! Unfortunately I don't have the real pics on me, but here's one with a watermark... It basically sums up the event. It was perfect! My little lady and I both wore Pink Floyd T-Shirts (her idea... yeah, I found the right one!)
The happy new couple!
On our way back from an absolutely adventurous one night getaway on a roadtrip to the BOONEYS of Arizona, tumbleweeds, cattle crossing, we HAD to stop at the most oldschool diner we could find... Stop in this little place, in the middle of nowhere, sit down at the bar, and there's this gentleman sitting next to me. We start talking, music comes up (of course) and it turns out this is Greg Collier of the band Silver... You may not know too much about him, but he is an EXTREME talent. Toured with the Doobey Brothers etc. Basically knew every famous musician. It was amazing. We talked for maybe 2 hours. I basically had to be torn away from my seat to leave...
Then on Sunday... Yeah, the Sunday two days later after we got married, one of my lifelong friends got married at a beautiful rooftop wedding in Milwaukee... So we got to enjoy a really nice wedding immediately after! For FREE!
Then two weeks later we had a mock wedding (Friday the 13th
)... Not everyone knew that we were already married so... shh
Another absolutely perfect day... Had it in the back yard of my parents house, the house I lived in for most of my life. Maybe 40-50 people. It was the perfect size! we only had two weeks to plan... so we literally didn't have time to stress about it. It couldn't have gone better!
Alright alright... Enough with that unimportant stuff... back to the fun
Dry fitting the cabinets together. Everything fit perfect!
First one done!
Stepped back mid clamping to snap a pic of the Old Man, and the Nephew.. of course playing games on his phone
this certainly wasn't exciting enough!
Sanded the bad boys down, and next came the priming!
The awesome booth that was set up in my Dads garage (thanks for all the help Dad! You're the best!)
First coat of prime! Sanded, then did another as well.
First coat of finish. Went with just a standard run of the mill satin black.
Dad creeping...
Finish coat two.
Got the bad boys home safe and sound! Roger inspecting them (my wife's cat, named after Roger Waters. Yup, she's the one)
Of course had to mount the drivers in immediately... I didn't care how late it was
Figured it was probably time to finish my speaker cables as well... Man, I really pushed those off
Finally time to get the sub assemblies of the crossover soldered together and ready for wiring to the woofers! LittleHead ensuring quality.
LittleHead after a long day of Quality Control.
Roger QC'ing the GR boxes... They pass.
Some of the soldering connections.
Ready for the drivers!
Mapping out how much extra wire to use, in case I want to mount the crossover outside the cabinet.
Winding wire...
Wiring the Crossover to the Tweeter.
Wiring up the Mids.
Well! That's where I'm currently at with the build! It is quickly drawing to a close, and I should have them running this week!... Just in time for Gun Hunting weekend!
Hope you guys enjoyed the thread so far! More to come!!
....oh wait, what is this??? New/Upgraded source components just in time for the speakers?! Don't mind if I do!
Thanks for looking!
More pics, and impressions coming soon!
