Do you build anything for your high fidelity system? If so, what do you make?
After some self assessment and introspection on my own high fidelity habits I discovered that I build or make things for my stereo/audio room. Some examples of these things are;
1 Tore out carpeting/padding/floor tiles in the addition to my house (audio room) and painted the cement floor with epoxy paint and clear coat. Placed out a Turkish area rug.
2 Made cherry wood speaker stands on wheels.
3 Had made custom speaker covers and stereo stand covers for when I am not listening to audio to keep away dust. Thanks to my seamstress....
4 Custom made Paduak wood cover (with legs) with two low speed exhaust fans for my tube amp
So curiosity got the best of me. Have you made anything for you stereo system or room? If so what did you make and why?
DIY air bearing turntable - design and build from ground up. DIY air bearing tonearm - design and build from ground up. Just installed this weekend!!!!! DIY phono pre - implemented design with ultra components, like vacuum capacitors. DIY amps - complement design with ultra components. DIY central power supply - design and build from ground up. Designed and helped build listening room. Heavily modified modern Quads. Cartridges unmodified. |
@terry9 Would be interested in your tonearm design, have a turntable that could use one...as well as a deck for the table itself. Since I work with locust (robinia), I've lots of 'drop' planks as thick as one could care to apply.... Hard and dense, laughs at carbide.... ;) DIY TT switch for 3 tables, the 3rd needs an 'input'...allows for RIAA (or not) and anything else I'd care to run 'in' or 'out to'... DIY 'stand' for all; two 1" thick slabs of polished stone supported by a heavy pine frame. Takes 2 to think of moving it...bumping it will hurt you before either TT notices it. Anything that can rack mount is, and is on the above as well. Have built speaker cabs of various shapes for the 'typical' sort of drivers. Most of that takes a back-seat to the DIY Walsh drivers I play about with for the last 15 years on and off.... Some berserk concepts of a surround AMT array with a distributed sub array to go along with a surround Walsh array is pending, but will await moving lock, stock, and everything else to a new home in a vaguely sub-rural location. That in itself will have 2 spaces open to treatments as desired. One of which has the SAF issue, but as long as it has 'plug & play' simplicity, she's good to go with it. ;) All of the above is dependent on the 'spare time' that I've in limited quantity, but I'll manage....*G* |
Gosh folks, I wound up building it all. Power amps, preamp, DAC, active crossover, four way speaks (I need 8 amplifiers of varying power sizes), line array of 9 tweeters and line array 5 upper mids, single low mid, two sets of baffled woofers of 4 driver each. It has evolved a lot of the last 4 years. |
@asvjerry It's a linear tracker, which I tried to build without compromising rigidity or adjustability. That means expensive off-the-shelf stuff from Igus (costs more to make equivalent quality, IMO), three indexed linear slides and two slides with brakes on the sleds. Lots of machining too. I prefer Panzerholz to natural wood because it's rigid and has great damping properties. Lots of decisions peculiar to the layout - like where to hang wires and air hoses, etc. Just installed this weekend, so still finding things that don't quite work together - luckily, little things. But the concept is proved - it's the most adjustable arm I've ever heard of, like tangentiality to the nearest 5 microns - the length of a medium large bacterium. Clarity improved from bass to treble, soundstage wall to wall and rock solid, speakers disappearing. That's over the former unit, also an air linear tracker. |
