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?
I made panels for absorption using OC 703 and fabric. Also made some deflection boards -- about 4 ft. x 2 ft. on stands about 1 foot off the ground. Placed near the speakers they direct sound which might bounce off a side wall back around the room. This improved the imaging of the speakers without deadening the sound. |
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I wanted a surround/stand for my McIntosh mx110z Tube Preamp. Not the old walnut case. Research, correspondence with McIntosh about vintage enclosures, ended up developing a unit in 3 optional heights and several optional finishes. Ventilated, Rubber Isolation feet, tempered glass top, wide open back. All dressed up, never offered them for sale, maybe some day I put photos on this site
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Back in the 70’s when I started this journey, I built most of my gear. I built my preamp from a kit, my power amps were a scratch built copy of Dynaco MK III’s. I built numerous speaker sets mostly 2 way. I did a 3 way but I bought premade crossovers. I built light boxes that had multiple colors and interfaced with the different frequencies of the music. They were 3’x 5’ X 12”. The front had opaque plastic from industrial light covers. The three colors were blue ( low freq ), green ( mid ) and red for high. I hung them above and behind my speakers. I built a credenza with front doors that closed and an open back with fans to dissipate the heat from the tubes. I built my speaker cables and RCA interconnects. I was in High School and had enthusiastic wood shop and electronics teachers. My humble attempts pale in comparison to the work that I’ve seen here on AGON. Had I continued maybe I would be on par with some of you. What I took from my few years of building was a lifelong appreciation of audio, wood and electronics. And a realization of how truly hard it is to design speakers. You guys amaze me with your ability to create and your skill at matching gear. People poke fun at MC, but look at what he did. Have a blessed day, Mike B. |
Built a wall hung record shelf that holds about 400 records, hung on wall with a French cleat. Id have to build about 10 more to hold entire collection! Also made my own absorbtion/diffuser panels using cotton towels and decorative wooden wall panels with scroll pattern bought from Target. Yes, not very thick, but it can’t hurt in maybe cutting down some high frequency reflections. I Mainly use these on back wall to cover some of the drywall. For front and sides, I’ll most likely buy something from gik eventually. I also made my own 50 inch TV screen cover using a 100% black cotton bath rug with rope weaved in an out at top. This is hung from TV using several 3M removable clips stuck to back side/top of TV. |
Finished the build on my 12" Tannoy speakers (enclosures are 150 liters nearly 2" thick MDF, @ 192 lbs. each, built custom crossovers using Mundorf capacitors, Alpha Core inductors and Dueland resistors, rebuilt my Garrard 401 turntable, built my plinth, and installed a Dynavector tonearm. I also built many interconnects and power cables over the years. If I had to buy this stuff new and and/or already built, my system wouldn't be any near as good sounding as it is. And, I enjoyed myself in the process. Regards, Dan |
i build a lot of wires--speaker cables, interconnects, etc. I have the stuff on the way to rebuild the crossovers on my 4 way speakers. I am building a set of outriggers for the same speakers. I installed a dedicated 240V 30 amp circuit for my system. I built custom low mass speaker binding posts from all non-metal parts except the center conductor. I'm thinking of building a custom wood chassis for my amp. But I'm less into woodwork and more into metalwork nowdays. Ask me about my other hobbies, I build a lot of stuff for them. I have a metalworking machine shop in my garage. Jerry
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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. |
The current moving-coil phono preamp, 50-watt center channel amplifier, and 120-wpc left rear/right rear stereo amplifier (Published in Audio Xpress magazine) are all of my design and construction. In the past, the front left/right 100-watt pure class A monoblocks were also of my design and construction (See Audio Magazine's January, February, and March 1995 issues for construction details). Prior to purchasing McIntosh MC611 600-watt monoblocks 1-1/2 years ago, the front channel amps were ten Harmon Kardon Citation II tube amps configured by me to deliver 500 wpc, the details for which AudioXpress magazine published. The listening room was configured in live end/dead end configuration and front 'speakers configured according to a formula I ran across, but acoustics is not my forte. 'Speakers are B&W 802D's, which are excellent in my opinion. |
@asvjerry , Black Locust is usually used for decking and fence posts. Carbide will cut it fine but like Teak it has silica in it which dulls carbide blades fast. This is why woodworkers avoid it. We also (except for the Danish) tend to avoid teak. Most of it goes into boats and they are probably using diamond tooling to deal with it. @buellrider97 , I started out just like you building DynaKits. It is great to have a group of people who are willing to mix it up and treat this like a real hobby. |
I for one would like to see MORE PHOTOS of some of this cool stuff!!!!! It's very easy to post photos (create a system) here. doesn't need to be anything more than what you want to show. delete/add photos at any time https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/10186/edit
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Dacs are not a big deal. You can use existing models as a template. Doing such complex involved beasts from scratch makes you a prototyper(ist)(ish) for manufacturing, so it’s bit far down the rabbit hole, there. If indeed you went that way. These days it would involve using software for circuit layouts and then a whole bunch of ancillary skills and lore, so yes, a real pain. The vast majority of all executions of modern complex chips, in a given circuit, involve a perfect copy of the orignal chip utilization tech manual’s suggestions. No one wants to take risks these days via any variances in the proffered employment/utilization of given chips. None of them ever did, actually. In this specific case..this turns most engineers and engineering the world of modern complex electronic (audio) circuitry (when working for large firms)... into elevated technicians or technologists, not engineers. Glorified rubber stamp board swappers. No one steps out of their lane of expected competence any more. Pity. Re mods, using selected models for modification, where most of it is in place as a starting point, is useful. It invariably makes a (hands on modifier) person far more adventurous than most any main manufacturer these days. What I means is... you can open up any Denon, Yamaha, Sony, JVC, NAD, Marantz, etc etc..and you will se the exact same utilization and layout and parts count and parts type, around any ESS, AKM, TI, etc..digital chip and so on, in all of them. That is a large part of why they can sound so similar. Within the scope of chip utilization, they are similar. Exceedingly so. None of them will take any form of a risk in the build and execution of the given gear that is built out of so many complex ICs. The same thing, for the most part, happens around the idea of Class D amplifiers, to an extreme. The entire amplifier board comes in, fully assembled/finished, and then they stuff it into a box, with some power supply and some speaker jacks, maybe a relay. That is now called ’amplifier manufacturing’, in the world of Class D. I think it is a bit of a joke. Designing a functional and good sounding Class D amplifier circuit, and executing it well is no small task, mind you. so we end up where things in class D models and companies..is more a case of box stuffing than anything else. This consideration makes such manufacturers more of a ’Dynaco kit assembler’ kinda manufacturer, akin to taking dynaco kits and swapping faceplates and boxes out and somehow calling it ’manufacturing’ of audio gear. Even then, with the older less complex analog based circuits, more builders would be closer to true manufacturing as they would take chances and make modifications and parts changes involving the given circuit. |
We bought a house on the lake that needed a lot of attention. With that in mind I rebuilt the entire house. Almost 6 inches of closed cell spray foam in the floors. Closed cell foam in the exterior walls. Open cell foam in the attic and layer acoustic batting on all trusses from one end of the house to the other. All interior walls are insulated. Used cork floors throughout the house. Used all double pain low e impact windows. Also cut the entire top off of the fire place stereo rack and rebuilt the top to fit the equipment. I did all of the things to this house that I always wanted to do to every house that I lived in. This one gave me the opportunity as it needed rehab. Acoustic bliss! |
I usually don’t mess with stuff but I couldn’t justify spending $$$ on a rack so I modified my Pottery Barn end table into a HiFi rack using thick slabs of reclaimed wood to fabricate a shelf for my Dac/Streamer and a plinth for the amp to sit upon. Anti-vibration material (Herbies Audio Lab) is fitted under the shelf, amp slab and the table/rack feet. I think it turned out rather well!
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Needing more room on top, I took a 4X2 foot 3/4 inch plywood blank and replaced the top shelf of a generic four-shelf equipment stand. Now I have plenty of room for my turntable and all the gizmos for playing vinyl. Also, got an eight-foot aluminum "C" channel (should have got an "L" channel) made cuts and bent it around the plywood (to hide the edge laminations). Will probably paint the wood in the future. |
@jl1ny Fantastic job on your rack thanks for posting a pic! I can't DIY but would love to see pics of some of these projects guys. |
Some major improvements: - passive crossovers replaced with active, allowing for a multi-amp system - dedicated AC lines with #8 wire and regenerated power - equipment rack with hollow vertical tubes filled with lead - added 160 lbs of lead to each speaker, added 100 lbs lead to each sub
Planning on adding Rockwool insulation to attic and interior walls to help achieve my goal of 30 dB ambient noise level.
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@jond Thank you. I’m notorious for effin’ stuff up, the HiFi Gods blessed me on this one. 😁 @curiousjim Thanks! on the shelf is a Denafrips Terminator and Aurender N100SC. |
