Building a Speaker

[guitarcam123]

Is it worth it?

How hard is it?

I was thinking that by starting building my own amps and speakers, i could get a really unique tone.

So what do i need to know about building one?

Can you buy premade cones or do you make them yourself?
What material are the cones?
How many winds of wire are usually used?
What type of magnets are usually used?

I know little bits here and there about a speaker but not much. I'm more of a Guitar and Pickups guy, but i wanted to try something new.

[trevorus]

This is a very expensive endeavor, and one that is not taken to lightly. It's time to get reading about what goes into the design and building of amplifiers. Speakers are even more of an anathema in some ways, in that their construction differences are often more subtle, but can have major impacts on what it actually sounds like. I suggest starting to do some mods and such to get familiar with circuits and such, and what they can do. Pedal modding is a great place to start. Low voltages, and relatively cheap components.

[guitarcam123]

yeah i know circuits etc. I have built a few pedals and modified a Little Gem circuit. Yeah its only a Gem but its a circuit :

I'm not worried / asking about the amp. I know all that stuff, i was asking about the speaker and how there made, the process etc.

[trevorus]

You eve looked nto recone kits? That's a good way of getting an idea about how they are put together. I have no idea where you would source parts for small runs of speakr builds. The baskets and magnets and such are a little less easy to find.

[J M Fahey]

I make my own. Mind you, it's not for the faint of heart.
You need full access to a metallurgical shop, large enough to make car parts and small enough to consider you a client.
The work is 350% boring metallurgical and 5% amusing electroacoustic.
Minimum cone orders: 500 (100 if you are lucky)
Magnets: from 50 to 500, inversely proportional to size.
You can start with sand cast aluminum frames (that's what I did), so you can make small 10/20 unit runs..
You can wind your own coils.
You'll need a magnetizer.
The magnet structure parts can be turned by a not so large machine shop.
Well, that's it in a nutshell.

[stokes]

I'd suggest trying to recone a few first so you get an idea of how tough that step alone can be.Getting all the components lined up and glued into place can be a bitch.If just your cones surround is off by a c-hair it can cause you coil to rub and its back to square one.If you wanted to do it just for the satisfaction of doing it yourself thats great,but if you are looking to make something better than the big guys do,you likely have years of hard work ahead of you.I thought I wanted to get into re-coning a while back.I contacted Ted Weber who was fantastic at helping and advising me,I even sent it to him to straighten out the mis-aligned post,which he did for free,as well as supplying me with all the parts,apparently when the speaker blew it blew big time and knocked the post out of line.When I was done,I sent it to him to evaluate the job I did,he said it was fine,but I found it to be such a pain,I no longer want to do it.For me it is more cost effective to send the speaker out when I need it done.Its easier building the amps circuit than just doing one recone,so building an entire speaker fromn scratch......not for me.

[Enzo]

What stokes said.

You can source recone parts from various places. Try reconing a few speakers. After all, reconing is exactly the same activity as installing the cone in a new speaker, at least once the old materials are removed. if you want to make your own speaker, you WILL have to have this skill. Google "speaker reconing" for tons of information.

[loudthud]

I seem to remember that there is/was a company in the US named Speaker Frame Stamping Company or something like that. They made a lot of the stamped speaker frames you see on old CTS and Eminence speakers. Minimum order could be large but you never know. The magnets and magnetic circuit pieces you have to get made elsewhere.

[R.G.]

I have some books describing how to smelt iron from the raw ore if that's any help.
I have some books describing how to do the black-smithy work to make various shapes of metal from heated iron.
I have some books describing how to smelt copper.
I have some books describing how to make paper
I have some books describing the metallurgical content of Al(uminum)ni(ckel)co(balt) and magnetizing, but I don't have any particular information about how to get them properly alloyed nor where to find cobalt ore.
I have some books describing how to produce somewhat-precision mechanical objects from metal using files, saws, etc.
I don't have, but know where to get books describing how to make a machine shop starting with scrap iron and aluminum and a sack of coal (google "gingery books" and "lindsay")

It's a pretty steep, winding road though. It may take some time to get to a working speaker.

[J M Fahey]

Hi Loudthud, thanks.
Unfortunately, when I googled "Speaker Frame Stamping Company", guess what was the *first* hit?
(And the following 10 or more):
China Speaker Frame catalog and Speaker Frame manufacturer directory. ... Shengzhou Hengtai Pressure Casting Industry Co., Ltd. [Province:Zhejiang, China] ... We can supply all kinds of precision metal stamping parts, metal fabricated ...
-
RG: ROFL
Although it doesn't get *much* easier than that.

[guitician]

Hey, Guitarcam123, the general idea is to have a rigid suspended diaphragm that moves like a piston in relation to a given waveform. The goals are i/o linearity, db efficiency and ease/cost of manufacture. There may be hundreds, if not thousands of ways to reproduce sound, and if more creative genius' applied them self's to this task, maybe the standard cone speaker would become obsolete.

[tubeswell]

I have some books describing how to smelt iron from the raw ore if that's any help.
I have some books describing how to do the black-smithy work to make various shapes of metal from heated iron.
I have some books describing how to smelt copper.
I have some books describing how to make paper
I have some books describing the metallurgical content of Al(uminum)ni(ckel)co(balt) and magnetizing, but I don't have any particular information about how to get them properly alloyed nor where to find cobalt ore.
I have some books describing how to produce somewhat-precision mechanical objects from metal using files, saws, etc.
I don't have, but know where to get books describing how to make a machine shop starting with scrap iron and aluminum and a sack of coal (google "gingery books" and "lindsay")

It's a pretty steep, winding road though. It may take some time to get to a working speaker.

So no books on mining ore aye?

Speaking of smithying, at one stage I was dead set on becoming a blacksmith. I even knew the last blacksmith in the town where I grew up as a kid, and when I was a kid I used to hang around the forge and learn by watching. He told me he did his apprenticeship in the big foundries in the UK where they had huge mechanical drop-forges for making components for steam locomotives. I was intrigued by how he could take a length of iron and melt it and pelt it into all sorts of shapes. He used to make everything under the sun from iron. He even tried to teach me to shoe horses as the first part of learning, but as a kid I lacked the strength to keep a firm grip of the hooves, as I tried in vain to tack the shoes on. I eventually admitted to myself that it'd be no good as a career for me because I was too tall and a large part of his trade was back-breaking farrier work. Such are the decisions we make.

[Diablo]

So no books on mining ore aye?

Speaking of smithying, at one stage I was dead set on becoming a blacksmith.

When I was in college, I remember one of the students complaining to the professor about why we needed to take thermodynamics. The student claimed that at some other university, thermo wasn't a requirement for their engineers. The professor's reply was: "If you want to be a blacksmith, you don't need thermodynamics. If you want to be a metallurgist, you need thermo."

[J M Fahey]

The student claimed that at some other university, thermo wasn't a requirement for their engineers.

hah!!
Well, *maybe* if they were to become Systems/Computing Engineers.
I, as an Industrial Engineer, had Thermodynamics on the 2nd year, Thermal Machines on 3rd. , Internal and External Combustion Engines in 4th, and we stopped there. The Mechanical Engineers went all the way until 6th.
As far as what RG quotes, I *did* study a lot about Pulvimetallurgy, specially sintered magnetic ceramics, to make my own reverb units.
Finally a guy at a rubber magnet factory, the ones used in fridges, felt pity and gave me 1 Kg of ferrite powder. I had the die made to press the small cylindrical perforated magnets and he put them in his oven to partially melt and solidify them.
I made over 5000 and still had some powder left.
I made around 300 reverb tanks (4 magnets per tank) until cheap imports strangled our industries.
I also did study a lot about paper industry. After all, one of my suppliers made good Kurt Müller cone copies , and many others, in the back of his crumbling house.
He was (is) *very* secretive about his process, but along the years I could manage to see a common bathtub full of "dirty water" (the very liquid cellulose paste), packs of dry cellulose paste, some pumps and plumbing, and he often mentioned "steam drying" and "vacuum drying" the cones, which could be bought "pressed" or "unpressed"; the former ones better for guitar, the latter better for audio.
Considering he had hardly finished elementary school, I'm *sure* the cone making process wasn't rocket science.

[amptech]

want to build my own speaker!

Welcome to the show,

sometimes it's cheaper to buy a speaker or try some out to 'see' what type of sound your looking for.

Every man and dog seem's to jump on the banwagon of 'let's build amps!

It can take years and lots of time and money to put something together that sounds ok, but just like speaker's try some to get the feel of what sound you want!