Got Al to build me the cabinets since i'm in an apartment and can't really do that... but I can do the rest here! So I picked me up some mahogany veneer, some contact cement (let dry and did the iron-on as Al advised), Minwax wipe-on poly, and went to work. Needless to say, my kitchen got really messy with veneer trimmings and sandpaper dust
Here's what I got from Al to start with.
After wrapping it with the mahogany veneer; one coat of poly on the right one, two on the left. Oh, that's also after light sanding with 320. ...the bracing inside is different.. hmm. :S
After 7 (or was it 8? I lost count) coats of the poly.
All installed. Sorry for the yellowness; my camera's white balance was off.
With the magnetic grille on. Love them so much better than the other plug-in kind!
Photos can't show the shimmering of the wood that you get at different angles. The poly wipe-on was pretty easy to use and looks good, but doesn't give the depth that I'd ideally like to have. I'm happy with the way these turned out though, considering it's my first attempt at the contact cement veneering and finishing it this way.
The crossover took up a bunch of room in the cabinets, but I covered all of the remaining wall area with the RAW ICE acoustical foam. The kit comes with everything you need (including solder!), except for the disconnects to hook up the woofer... no problem though, as I picked some up from the electronics store for a buck or two.
I haven't had much of a chance to listen to them yet b/c i've been out of town on work for much of the past two weeks, but so far they sound really good compared to my old Kit41 speakers. The Kit41s had a bit of a boominess on the low-end (which I mitigated by way of stuffing the ports...) whereas these are smooth all the way down. The lows are pretty strong from the M130x's - in part due to my room (12' x 12') and their close placement to the wall (about 1' away) - unavoidable because of space contraints.
Running them off a Panasonic receiver at the moment and a Panny DVD-S52 for the source. Speakers were my first upgrade... next comes the amp - what to build, oh, what to build...
