Small & Ugly Speakers

These are small and, as you can see, remarkably ugly. However, they sound rather good if you shut your eyes!

They were built to plans published in one of the electronics magazines quite a few years ago now. The original intention was, I seem to remember, to produce a pair of speakers within very strict constraints:

They had to be cheap enough for a student
They had to be small enough to fit in a student's flat
They had to be very simple to build
They had to be sensitive so that they could go loud :-)
They had to produce as much bass as possible in the cabinet available!!!

The design is a bass reflex (the port was on the back in the original design - I moved it to the top). The bass(!)/mid driver is a small unit which Tandy used to sell (it hasn't been available for several years now) - I think it was probably intended for car audio use on 8ohm systems. The tweeters were just something I picked up from a local shop. The original specification wasn't very particular. The crossover is just a single capacitor to feed and protect the tweeter - there isn't much point in being too clever here.

Overall sizes are 9ins x 9.5ins x 5.75ins. The cabinet was intended to be cut out of a length of 9ins wide shelving using just straight cuts. Notice that there are plenty of screws to hold the sides on - it was assumed that your average student wouldn't be too particular about air leakage so just pour on the glue and clamp up with screws! Looks were deemed to be of secondary importance.

The sound is quite good. Obviously, you are not going to be in the hi-fi stakes here but it is far better than the plastic and hardboard boxes sold with many small systems. They are fun to listen to - in fact I used them as my main speakers for several weeks even though there is not really enough bass for me. They have also done excellent service as rear speakers on a home theatre system! They may look rough - the wood was reclaimed from cutting up some old furniture - but looks are definitely deceptive here. These speakers deserve proper stands and really need positioning properly to get the best out of them.