Yeehaw! Minisub is complete! *PICS!* (1 Viewer)

[Brian J Dupuis]

Yay! Finally got everything finished and in the house for some listening pleasure. Ah, what a delightful thing to have some bass for once . Without further ado, here's a picture so you can see what all the fuss is about:
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That's as it sits... it is destined to go more in the corner, but due to the doors of my entertainment center, that will have to wait until I build new mains.
Here's a shot of the grill, and one of the entire room, so you can see how much this little thing has to fill (say "hi" to the Mrs.).
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For kicks and giggles, here's the nearfield response of this guy as measured by a RatShack SPL meter:
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I'm still working on that web page!

 

[Dave Crigna]

Great looking sub brian. Can you give some specs on it...how much power, size..etc you know everyhting that makes diy people drool...

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Great looking sub brian. Can you give some specs on it...how much power, size..etc you know everyhting that makes diy people drool...

Thanks! Oops... I've been spamming so much about this silly little sub that I figured it would only be overkill to mention those things :b. Absolutely, I can!

It's built around the Dayton 12" DVC and the Parts Express 250W plate amp. Interior volume is approximately 1.2 cubic feet minus whatever amount for bracing, innards, driver displacement, etc, stuffed with 1.5 lbs. of polyfill. I don't have UniBox on this machine, so I can't run a Qts for you.

I'm going to try to get some listening position measurements sometime soon, but it will most certainly be more of a pain. I have a feeling that I have some quite significant room modes to deal with, so my eyes never stray far from the BFD pages in some sites (my local Mars Music has them in stock for $129... as good a price as I've seen online!).

 

[Jack Gilvey]

Nice work, Brian, that's a beautiful sub. I think the Qtc would be around .65 or so.

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Nice work, Brian, that's a beautiful sub. I think the Qtc would be around .65 or so.

Thanks Jack! Oops, yeah, "Qtc", that's what I meant. I'll get the terminology right one of these years.

 

[Kyle Richardson]

Very nice looking sub. It should sound just as good as it looks judging by the components you used.

Enjoy it!

Kyle Richardson

Acoustic Visions

 

[Dan Hine]

Brian,

Your sub looks very nice! Could you tell me what you used to make the speaker grill, and how you got the veneer to look so seemless going across the rounded edges? Again, it looks great! Congrats.

Dan Hine

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Your sub looks very nice! Could you tell me what you used to make the speaker grill, and how you got the veneer to look so seemless going across the rounded edges? Again, it looks great! Congrats.

Thanks, Dan.
The speaker grill was made with a piece of MDF, rounded out to a circle with a circle jig to the external dimension of the grill (which I think was about 13 1/4", but I'll have to double check that). Then, routed out the center with a circle jig to the inner dimension. Then, rounded it over with the same 3/8" roundover bit I used for the enclosure. Apply a bit of black spray paint to the outer surface. After that dries, I pulled out the black grill cloth I got from PE and laid it out flat. Put the grill hoop on top, face down and cut a square that was oversize ont he edges by about 1 1/2". Pulled one end up tight over the hoop and used a spring clamp to hold it there for a while, then started actually gluing the grill cloth on from the opposite side of the hoop. I used pretty standard hot glue from a hot glue gun, and just pulled it a little tight along the perimeter and glued a little bit at a time. Once it was glued around the perimeter of the circle, I trimmed off the excess and glued down whatever was still sticking up. For fasteners I was going to use some plastic "ball and hole" things I got from PE, but it was just too tight against the side of the driver to fit. So I used velcro of all things, and that appears to work like a charm. I got some of those little circular pieces of velcro, applied eight of them around the perimeter. Works like a charm .
As far as the edges that are rounded over, they aren't quite what they appear. I used plywood in this project for the out finish layer, then rabbetted the edges out to 3/8", glued in some 3/8" square stock along the edges and rounded those over with a 3/8" roundover bit. Here's a couple of pictures to make some sense of that...
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[Neil Joseph]

Nice build, and specs for your "smallbox".

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Brian, nice work! Really good looking finish. Be proud!

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Thanks Neil and Hank. I'm really excited by this little thing. I've taken to listening to something just to have it going now. Really gets me pumped up. Now I'm looking into mains/center channels. Time to go full range!

 

[Kerry Hackney]

Brian,
Looks like your sub turned out great. I'll bet it sounds great too. I hate to tell you that there is no known cure for DIY disease. It only gets worse.

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

Another one gets bitten by the Bug! Late nights in the workshop makin' sawdust beats television!

 

[Peter Jessee]

Hey, Brian -

I'm working on a 1.0 cu ft DVC 12 system with a 300-794 amp, too. I'm curious as to the bass boost you're using, if any. I was just starting to graph mine when the amp went phhtt! and quit, so I have to do the RA number shuffle before I can finish. I tentativly plan to use about 2 dB of boost at 30 Hz, but I'd like to know what you used on yours.

Great job on the cabinet - I wish I could do carpentry like that! I'm using a SubZero car box, since I plan to use it in the cars from time to time. I just got a digital camera, so I'll post some pictures when the new amp gets here and I get finished.

Peter

 

[Philip Hamm]

Wow that is really beautiful, great job! The construction pics really round out the post. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Brian J Dupuis]

Wow that is really beautiful, great job! The construction pics really round out the post. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, Philip... thank you for helping to provide such a useful resource to the DIYer. This sub was literally built by this forum... everything that I needed to know about making it was gotten from advice or research on here. Pure power, that. So, thanks!