Cube Audio Nenuphar Single Driver Speaker (10 inch) TQWT Enclosure

@djembeplay 

I believe that your Yamamoto 45 amplifier will be a very good pairing with the Nenuphars given the intended use.

Charles

Hi @toetapaudio - glad to hear your endorsement for the Yamamoto.  For the cabinet, I'm planning on building the plan on their site that's labeled "F10 Neo / F10 DIY cabinet" at 1000mm x 600mm x 320mm.  This looks like the closest of the two designs they published to what they are using in the Nenuphar.  I'll build everything exactly to plan, except my material may end up being slightly thicker -- I'm thinking about using 3/4" stranded or vertical bamboo ply, built over an inner box of 1/4" or 3/8" Baltic Birch, with a thin silicone layer between the two materials... sort of a 'ply - spring - ply' layer.  This will let me build the inner box with less attention to aesthetics (exposed fasteners, rough edges, etc.), while creating a form with exact right angles to layer the bamboo on top of.  Those are the plans for now at least... Summer is still a ways off, and parable quotes of mice and men applies suitably here.

Like you, I did notice that the Nenuphar is built differently to the published design I'm looking at.  The two major differences I can see is that the Nenuphar is 500mm deep instead of 600mm, and it's bottom ported instead of rear ported.  It's also listed as being 5mm higher, but this might be taking the gained height of the front floor spikes into account.

I do wonder why there is a difference between the Nenuphar and the DIY plans... I'm planning to write Cube to ask them.  Perhaps they have a proprietary design in the Nenuphar that they don't want to publish for marketing reasons, which would be understandable... or, perhaps they just updated their design at some point and haven't likewise updated the DIY plans... shrug.

@charles1dad Thanks also for fortifying my thinking about the Yamamoto -- we in the low watt SET camp have to tread very carefully with our speaker selections, so it’s good to know I’m not ’off in space’ thinking this would be a nice combo.

@djembeplay thanks for the details. Probably you know that every material used in audio has a sonic signature. One can test by introducing different materials under equipment and listening to the change in sound. I haven’t tried building cabinets yet but considering. Some say spruce is better than birch ply, mdf giving the least good results. Apart from the plans on Cube, I understand that Scott at Woden Designs has undertaken some designs for Cube drivers.

@toetapaudio Likewise, I’m new to building speaker cabinets as well -- but, I have decades of woodworking and cabinet building to my credit, so I’m all ’tooled up’ for the job.

I just had a look at the Woden Designs page and found a design based around the Magus driver, called the "Rubik". I couldn’t load any info about it though. I’m not sure how it would play compared to Cube’s own design... I’d probably take the conservative route and opt for the latter, in the face of the unknown.

I like the idea of bamboo. I’ve been gathering what info I can about it over the past few weeks. It’s extremely stiff, while still being modest on weight (although not ’lightweight’ per say). It’s also high on the Jensen scale, so ’tough’. It’s harder than red oak, yet very dimensionally stable when constructed as a 3 or 5 ply. Aesthetically (totally subjective of course), I really like the look as well. Particularly, I love the way the edge grain can look like intricate inlay work if finished to showcase this, and this also is an ’easy’ cut to make. Oh, also, if purchased as a ’carbonized’ version, where it is pre-colored, this is accomplished through a baking process. This means the color is uniform through the entire piece, making sanding and cutting and finishing that much easier because consistent color will be maintained as we ’dig in’ to the material.

The vertical / edge grain ply has a unique look that grew on me, while the stranded grain appears a bit more like a traditional solid hardwood (and it’s even stiffer / more resilient than raw bamboo). As far as having a nice look but also being available in stable ply construction and available in standard 4x8’ sheets, this seems to be one of the better options. I usually work with solid hardwood, but of course it’s too dimensionally unstable for this application.

On the downside, the bamboo ply is pretty expensive... I might pay around $1k in materials for this in total. I’m good with it, though -- I want to shoot for something really top notch on this job, both in form and function. Economically I’d still be coming in at around half the cost of a new set of Nenuphars, I figure... instead, I pay through sweat, maybe some tears, but hopefully no blood :0.