[kmillsmatsci]

Next question: can someone point me to a definitive wiring diagram? I swore I had one and can't find one online but generic MTM schematics seem to look like this with the woofers in parallel: https://sites.google.com/site/undefinition/overnightsensationmtm

I assume the lower woofers are also in parallel.

I feel like a saw a hard copy and maybe i left it at the FIL's house.

Thanks!

[hawkeyejw]

Both sets of woofers are wired in parallel.

[kmillsmatsci]

Thanks everyone for the input, we made some more progress:

We routed rabbets and sawed and chiseled in chases for the wires like you guys showed. We also glued up the box for the second speaker cabinet.

[Jmitchell3]

Looking forward to more photos!

[kmillsmatsci]

we glued up the baffle and drilled a lot of holes! Going to do final sanding and tuning up panel alignment with planes and, hopefully, shellac today.

[UtopiaNemo]

Looks gorgeous!

[kmillsmatsci]

Made a bit more progress: 4 coats of garnet shellac, 1.5 pound cut. This photo is somewhere near the end but its more even now. We used 320 grit foam pad between coat 3 and 4 to flatten any high spots and will do one more sanding then a wax to take down the gloss.

As we sanded everything the Baltic birch looked so good we wanted to high-lite it as best we could. I think I like the shellac look. We did a test panel of clear, amber, 50/50 clear/amber and garnet and garnet did the best at accentuating the figure of the wood.



I'm in the process of working up the wiring harness and have come up a few feet short. My design goal of making the crossover upgradable required some extra slack and pre-cutting the sections with the accumulated extra for being careful added up. Im going to wire up the woofer section with basic speaker cable for now because that should be the easiest to re-work. I don't want to have to redo the MTM section or the tube connectors. Is there a good equivalent to the GR wire supplied? Basic amazon searching is fruitless and I haven't made it to DigiKey yet. I dont want to bother Danny for 4 feet. 

[Jonathon Janusz]

Those are starting to look pretty good!

I just thought it worth mentioning that I don't think I've ever known Danny to feel put out by anyone needing a little bit of help to finish their speaker build - particularly if you're building one of his kits.  I wouldn't hesitate to give him a call to get your wire situation sorted out, which will likely a lot faster/easier than trying to find the wire you're looking for (and not having to buy a ton of it you aren't going to need) from somewhere else. 

[hawkeyejw]

Looking really good! Agree with Jonathan, give Danny a call about the wire and I’m sure he can get you what you need.

[Danny Richie]

Shoot me an email with your mailing address on it and I'll send you some more wire.

[kmillsmatsci]

All Done!

I've been relaxing and enjoying so I've been slow to post what I've been up to but here are the photos below.

I really love the garnet shellac, it really fits the mid-century vibes but isn't too on-trend or retro to be out of place anywhere.

The hidden wiring was... a bear. The solid core wires were like wrestling a a pile of angry pythons and what you see is as good as I could really get it managing pinch points and slack being taken up as the speakers were installed. The clearances to do this right need to be way more generous than I gave it. Oh well, its not so bad to see them and its even enough. I wonder if there is a stranded core wire that Danny would deem worthy for tricky routing sections.

The crossovers come out easy enough when I want to upgrade but did run short on the wiring. I used some Amazon Basics cable on the woofers for now and will reach out to Danny shortly for more. They sound so good and I don't have a good reference point to know what I'm missing anyway. Right now I have no damping inside and would appreciate any info on how much norez to order and if any additional fiber fill material.

[TexE4D]

Good work matches your decor nicely. Is the top baffle two pieces laminated together to get the concealed wiring duct?

[hawkeyejw]

They look great! Highly recommend the no-rez to help tighten up the bass response. If memory serves it's about a sheet per speaker, but Danny can confirm.

I like how they match your decor as well, they look like they belong in that room.

[S Clark]

Well executed!  I have top level speakers in my living room and X-statics in my den, and although they are not the caliber of my LS9's, they probably get more play than my main system.  They are just very fine speakers at a low end cost-- and quality wise they are at the edge of high end.  Congrats, as you are going to get a lot of great listening out of them.   

[Budget_Mike]

Oh man these look fantastic!

[kmillsmatsci]

Hi Tex, yes, the top two plates are laminated with a chase in between. You can see how this was done earlier in the thread. If i were to do it again I would give a very generous cable chase because the sold core wire is SO hard to work with. I wonder if Danny has a next-best sounding stranded wire. I think I would consider that for tight sections.

Thanks for all the compliments everyone. They really are stunning sounding with a Pro-Ject Box S2 and an XTZ Edge amp run from computer or fine with Tidal MQA. I don't have comparable reference points but its a whole new world and i have the space to set the speakers up right.

Here are some more photos of the final build I found:








 

[Esoteric Junkie]

What is the typical build time for this speaker kit?

Thanks,

EJ

[kmillsmatsci]

EJ, I can't say what is typical and I didn't carefully track how long this took but it was easily over 50 hours of busy time. My father in law also did a lot of jig making, test cutting, and angle verification as well as doing stain test panels without me. He is on the analytical side of OCD when it comes to much in life and it paid off here but if I were all alone it would have gone faster and been a lot sloppier. We also did some interior bracing and wiring details not truly to the drawing. The bracing with biscuits and splines made gluing perfectly square achievable without more complex cabinetry clamps or additional phased gluing.

Tool availability WILL also impact time. There are a lot of holes to cut and round. We used a jig saw to get close, a router with custom jig to get them perfect to dimension and then more router passes to round over those edges and exterior corners which together, ate up the most time over all. Anything to automate some of that would have a drastic impact. If I needed to make more than 1 of these, I would gladly wrap the cost of a CNC router table into the budget. If flat packs of this become available it would be a great proposition.   

A high quality table saw and a range of sleds for various cuts is also important, this design has enough duplicate cuts and angled cuts it was critical for our execution. It would have been really hard to get such a tight fit on a lot of joints that we intended to keep visible.

I am interested to know other people's build times as well. It was a bigger project than I expected and I think well past what a beginner in experience and tool kit complexity would feel comfortable with. Worth it.