A sample of my DIY speakers

The bedroom systems:

The really tall ones are called ‘BIB’ or ‘Bigger is Better’. While it is called a tapped horn, it falls somewhere between a true back loaded horn and a transmission line. The low freq limit of a BLH is defined by the size of the mouth, but here the room boundaries act as an extension of the mouth. When I measured the in-room bass performance, I was surprised to find a flat octave from 25 to 50 Hz, which I attribute to the room being part of the horn. These BIBs are 89” tall, and use Mark Audio Alpair 10.3 drivers

The short floor standers are open baffles, and are a variation on Martin J. King’s small, passive OB project. Drivers are Eminence Alpha 15a and Fostex FF85K. OB provides a different presentation than box speakers. Some love it, some hate it. I encourage you to get your ears on a good pair of OBs and judge for yourself. Panel speakers like Magnapan are very similar. (Side bar: these drivers aren’t as picky about amplification as Maggies.) OBs won’t give you chest thumping bass, due to the way they load the room, but I find that drums are rendered much more realistically than with box speakers. Bass radiating from the front and back results in cancelation to the sides, such that room modes can be less of a problem. And as an added bonus, rooms above and below your listening room will experience less ‘bleed over’. I would think this could be a great advantage for those who live in apartments and have to be considerate of neighbors. I also note that these speakers sound exceptionally good at low volume, an area where many speakers do poorly.

The little stand mounts are Fonken Prime using Fostex FE-127e drivers; designed by Dave Dlugos. The long, narrow vents perform differently from circular vents. What bass there is, is quite articulate.

Thank you all for the kind words!!

I do the wood working myself. It looks better in the photos than in person--I am no Norm Abrams, nor do I have access to the New Yankee Workshop.

I do my best to make presentable speakers, but not everything gets my best effort. Here is a comparison of the prototype for the PTL (made from OSB, with is closer to plywood in performance than MDF) and the finished product.

@Nightfall,
As Mark said: they are P-10's Fostex Onken (Fonken) using Fostex FE-127 (4.5") drivers (no longer available). But Dave Dlugos has a bunch of those Onken type designs, mostly for Mark Audio drivers now. I also built a pair of micro-Fonkens using Fostex FF85k (3.5") drivers which are in daily use in our dining room.

Serious doesn't begin to describe Dave's health problems. He is the only one I know who has had an aortic aneurysm begin to rupture and lived to tell the tale!

I was never bold enough to cut out a dust cap and install a phase plug. I can say that a bit of fiber stuffing between the whizzer and main cone did fix some issues. Below is an FE-167e with the bearded whizzer treatment. Note that the 167 had a hole in the dust cap to eliminate some resonance.

Thanks!

I started by using the dimensions for a Fostex FE-108eSigma Metronome as given by Dave Dlugos. Using circular saw & jig saw.

When I saw that I was going to be building more, I acquired a small table saw and a router. Router is key to so much! Good not only for cutting holes for drivers, ports, & terminal cups and bevels & round overs, but also for getting long edges perfectly straight and clean. Even with the table saw, I couldn't get a perfectly straight edge several feet long. I find a good straight edge (maybe an 8' piece of lumber, maybe a metal straight edge) and use that with either a flush trim bit or a pattern follower bit.

And then learning how to veneer is another whole adventure!