The cabinets...
Below are some pictures of the first pair of Exotica 3 cabinets. Some background...
When we began work on the cabinets, we wanted to do something a little different. We decided to use side panels with this design. That offered a number of benefits.
First, we could build the basic cabinet with 3/4" walls to keep the weight down. When we then put 1" panels on the sides, the area around the woofer section would have side walls that were 1 3/4" thick to minimize cabinet resonance.
Our idea was to be able to build a basic satin black center cabinet (we could build these ahead of time) and have any type of veneer on the side panels. So production time could be cut since we could have the actual cabinets built ahead of time. We could still customize the center cabinet as well if a customer wanted to wait longer for a custom finish on these.
The resulting design allows for what could be some very interesting combinations - various veneer combinations, veneer/automotive paint combinations, etc.
We wanted to chamfer the edge of the side panels. In the first drawings, we simply angled the side panels straight back. It would have been easy to veneer the edges on these. But later, we decided to curve the side panels. This made veneering much more complicated and our first test with this pair of cabinets did not work. Since time was running out coming up to AXPONA, we simply painted the edges of these side panels. Since then, we think we figured out how to veneer these curved, chamfered edges. So that should not be an issue going forward.
Since we were adding the side panels, we had to figure out what to do for the spikes. Mounting them in a normal fashion would result in spikes being very close to the edges of the main cabinet. In this pair, we actually wrapped the side panels partially under the bottom of the speaker so that we had a solid section to attach the spikes to. So the side panels also serve as a plinth for the speaker itself. As we take a second look at the entire design, this may change.
When we began work on these cabinets, I had just purchased a batch of some really interesting imbuya burl veneer (which I can't really capture in a photo here). Since it was a dark color to begin with, we decided to use some automotive paint for the center cabinet. We chose a gold color that picked up some of the highlights in the imbuya burl. The combination worked out quite well.
Since this was the first pair of actual cabinets, there will probably be a few changes. But here are some pictures of the Exoticas we displayed at AXPONA last weekend...
And a side shot...
- Jim