Re: Speaker From Scratch (Not just the cabinet)

On Wed, 28 Sep 2005 03:12:14 GMT, "James Lehman"
<james[remove]@akrobiz.com> wrote:

>Good luck with that! I have seen places where you can buy replacement cones,
>surrounds, voice coils, dust caps, even spiders, but where would you get a
>basket? And why? I'm not absolutely sure, but I think speaker magnets are
>magnetized after they are put together with the basket, pole plate and plug.
>Maybe I'm completely crazy, but I think I remember reading about that years
>ago. How else could you align the parts without them sticking together?

I've not heard about how they are made, but perhaps you could have
a non-magnetic, plastic 'pipe' that fills the magnetic gap, fitting
perfectly over the centerpole piece and perfectly inside the outside
pole. Put glue in appropriate places, assemble parts, and pull out the
'pipe' after the glue dries.

>Also, from what I understand, there are companies that specialize in just
>one part. In other words one company will make nothing but baskets, another
>company makes the cones and another makes the spiders, voice coils, etc.
>Then the "manufacturer" just assembles the parts; much like you want to do.
>You might have a hard time getting a few parts rather than thousands. What
>is it that you think you would do differently than what you find in speakers
>that are already made? Why not just buy speakers and modify them in the way
>you like?

I can understand the OP's quest, making it from scratch is the
challenge of DIY.

The donut-shaped "Speaker magnets" should be the easiest parts, get
them from old speakers <g> or from the magnetrons in old microwave
ovens (I'm not sure if the magnetron magnets have the correct
north-south oerientation, only that they stick to refrigerators well).
If you don't like that idea, try some online surplus electronics
dealers, most of them have interesting neodynm (sp) magnets, or you
can get them out of old hard disk drives.
The moving parts for woofers are available as "recone" kits though
it may be fun to make these parts as well. As far as the magnetic
circuit and the basket, it could help to have a friend at a
***-metal and/or machine shop. There are people who have machine
shops in their basements and garages over on rec.crafts.metalworking,
perhaps you could interest one of them in such a project.
It seems one could build a ribbon tweeter quite easily, especially
with the recent crop of high-tech magnets. ISTR at least one article
from Audio Amateur or Speaker Builder from way back when on making a
ribbon tweeter from scratch, as well as an electrostatic. Now that I
think about it, it was the "make your own Heil 'air motion
transformer' tweeter" cover article in 1977 that turned me on to that
magazine.

And I can see the goal as being not neccesarily something that
"sounds good" to someone who has technical audio interest, but that
"sounds reasonable" to an average person. That is, it makes listenable
sound, plays at a moderate volume, and has no obvious problems such as
the voice coil rubbing on a pole piece. If it actually "sounds good"
that would be icing on the cake.


>http://www.akrobiz.com/speakers/
>
>Take care. James. :o)
>
>
>
>
>"bmearns" <bmearns@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:1127873924.942310.200170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> I want to build a speaker from scratch. Everything I find online has
>> people buying the audio driver, and building the cabinet. I want to
>> build the audio driver, too, but I don't know what to use for the
>> basket or the spider. I'm also having some difficulty finding speaker
>> magnets.
>>
>> Any suggestions or direction will be very much appreiciated. Thanks!
>>
>

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