Copyright © 2011 Ron Malcolm All rights reserved.
The Early Years
At an early age I had an interest in music. I had an uncle who collected 45’s. He literally had thousands of them and he would always give me a bunch when I visited him. I would be spend hour after hour listening to music on a small Radio Shack portable record player. In high school I purchased my first stereo cassette deck (a Sony TC121). At about that time Dolby B processing was becoming a standard feature on cassette decks so I purchased a Panasonic RP-966 outboard Dolby B processor. I wasn’t all that happy with the performance of the Sony TC121 so I sold it and upgraded to a Teac A-170 which remains in use today.
While still in high school I put together my first stereo system around Kenwood separates (KA-3500 integrated amp and KT-3500 AM/FM tuner) and KLH Model 17 speakers. I then received a Dual CS601 Turntable with Shure V15-III cartridge for high-school graduation. This system served me well through my college years. I eventually sold the Kenwood separates and KLH 17’s but I kept the Dual turntable. The original Shure V15-III cartridge was later upgraded to a Shure V15-V.
First Speaker Build
I started out building my first speaker when I was about 12 years old. Early on I had an interest in playing with speakers. Since my dad was an electrical engineer and repaired televisions for family and friends there was an assortment of speaker drivers available that had been pulled from various televisions. My first project was to connect as many speakers as I could to my mono record player. Somehow I thought the more the better. As my dad had some background in speakers sand stereos he quickly pointed out that without an enclosure or baffle to prevent the back wave of the speaker from canceling the front the sound quality would be poor. We then headed to the basement to build my first speaker. Later on I built another version using speaker drivers from Lafayette Radio. For the time (1969) the five inch driver was pretty high-quality with a huge Alnico V magnet structure. See side panel images. (notice the high-tech wiring) Too bad I could not say the same about the tweeter. The original tweeter had to be replaced some years later due to foam rot.
My Next Speaker Build
In the early 1980’s I set out to build my first, ground up, pair of loudspeakers. Back then there was not a lot of information about speaker design. A company called Speaker Lab was one of the early companies focusing on the speaker builder/hobbyist. Also an offshoot of Audio Amateur Magazine started to put out a publication called Speaker Builder which I eagerly subscribed to.
Since there was not at the time places where one could purchase better quality drivers I resorted to asking around the various local audio shops for spare drivers. Most of the audio shops would stock some quantity of drivers for warranty replacement and such. As luck would have it I was able to purchase a full set of Kef drive units that were being used in their current models. Kef was also was supplying the hobbyist market with their Constructor series of speaker drivers and crossovers. I ended up purchasing a set of four B200’s, two B110’s, and a matched pair of T27 tweeters. The B110’s and T27’s were the same driver types used in the famous KEF 101 mini-monitor. Building a pair of speaker cabinets was beyond my skill set at the time so I purchased a ready made pair from Speakerlab. components.....continued
At an early age I had an interest in music. I had an uncle who collected 45’s. He literally had thousands of them and he would always give me a bunch when I visited him. I would be spend hour after hour listening to music on a small Radio Shack portable record player. In high school I purchased my first stereo cassette deck (a Sony TC121). At about that time Dolby B processing was becoming a standard feature on cassette decks so I purchased a Panasonic RP-966 outboard Dolby B processor. I wasn’t all that happy with the performance of the Sony TC121 so I sold it and upgraded to a Teac A-170 which remains in use today.
While still in high school I put together my first stereo system around Kenwood separates (KA-3500 integrated amp and KT-3500 AM/FM tuner) and KLH Model 17 speakers. I then received a Dual CS601 Turntable with Shure V15-III cartridge for high-school graduation. This system served me well through my college years. I eventually sold the Kenwood separates and KLH 17’s but I kept the Dual turntable. The original Shure V15-III cartridge was later upgraded to a Shure V15-V.
First Speaker Build
I started out building my first speaker when I was about 12 years old. Early on I had an interest in playing with speakers. Since my dad was an electrical engineer and repaired televisions for family and friends there was an assortment of speaker drivers available that had been pulled from various televisions. My first project was to connect as many speakers as I could to my mono record player. Somehow I thought the more the better. As my dad had some background in speakers sand stereos he quickly pointed out that without an enclosure or baffle to prevent the back wave of the speaker from canceling the front the sound quality would be poor. We then headed to the basement to build my first speaker. Later on I built another version using speaker drivers from Lafayette Radio. For the time (1969) the five inch driver was pretty high-quality with a huge Alnico V magnet structure. See side panel images. (notice the high-tech wiring) Too bad I could not say the same about the tweeter. The original tweeter had to be replaced some years later due to foam rot.
My Next Speaker Build
In the early 1980’s I set out to build my first, ground up, pair of loudspeakers. Back then there was not a lot of information about speaker design. A company called Speaker Lab was one of the early companies focusing on the speaker builder/hobbyist. Also an offshoot of Audio Amateur Magazine started to put out a publication called Speaker Builder which I eagerly subscribed to.
Since there was not at the time places where one could purchase better quality drivers I resorted to asking around the various local audio shops for spare drivers. Most of the audio shops would stock some quantity of drivers for warranty replacement and such. As luck would have it I was able to purchase a full set of Kef drive units that were being used in their current models. Kef was also was supplying the hobbyist market with their Constructor series of speaker drivers and crossovers. I ended up purchasing a set of four B200’s, two B110’s, and a matched pair of T27 tweeters. The B110’s and T27’s were the same driver types used in the famous KEF 101 mini-monitor. Building a pair of speaker cabinets was beyond my skill set at the time so I purchased a ready made pair from Speakerlab. components.....continued
