DIATONE speaker cabinet conversion

Dedicated to those large boxes at one end of the room
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Toppsy
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#1 DIATONE speaker cabinet conversion

Post by Toppsy »

A few weeks back I was asked if I could recover some speaker cabinets in Santos Rosewood Veneer. Having seen the photos of the original cabinets I realised there would be quite a lot of prep work required before I could cover them.

However, I decided to take up the challenge and here are some before and after photos of the results. The 'suprabaffle was bolted on the front due the original fixing holes had been chewed to buggery. :shock:

My wife has likened this conversion as making a silk purse from a sows ear! I have to agree. :lol:

The keen eyed amongst you will note the front cut 45-deg chamfer is not perfect. Well neither are these cabinets. They are very poorly put together and are nailed along all joints! They are not true square and the sides are also not true. As the originals had a roundover to the front baffle I had to machine cut on my table saw the chamfer to allow for veneering. I cut this on my table saw with an old blade due to the nails! Doing this brought to light the poor build quality of the original cabinets. It's amazing what you can do with a tub of car body filler, some sanding blocks and a final covering of veneer.

Anyway here are the photos sent to me of the original cabinets.

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And here is the end result:

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The Santos Rosewood was a right pain to use. Around the highly figured contours it is very wavy and not flat. Great care is need to avoid splitting the very hard close grain veneer. This job really needs to be done on a proper veneer press or vaccum bag with a 2-part glue. But I done my best.
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The Stratmangler
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#2

Post by The Stratmangler »

My flabber has been gasted!
Them's some (now) luvverly looking silk purses :happy8:
Chris :happy3:
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Toppsy
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#3

Post by Toppsy »

Yes Chris, Lynn's description was spot on.

I have to confess, they look better in the photos than really close up in real life. It's a real bugger to get the joins perfect when you only have a metre long steel straight edge rule and a scalpel. Also any small inperfections or unevenness when spreading a thin layer of contact adhesive shows up in the final finish of this veneer. They are not perfect by any means but viewed from a few feet away they do look good.
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david C
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#4

Post by david C »

that is a real achievement,

are you sure you don't have a secret life as a magician?

I bet you can wallpaper round light switches too!!!
Last edited by david C on Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
David

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#5

Post by Cressy Snr »

In a word, awesome!
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Paul Barker
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#6

Post by Paul Barker »

There must have been a lot of sanding and filling.
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Mike H
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#7

Post by Mike H »

That is flabber ghasting ~

So did you take the 'adaptor plate' off and repair the holes? Or new panel on the front?

I'm guessing the latter due to the chamfer depth ..
 
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#8

Post by Toppsy »

Mike,
I took the original 'adaptor plate' off filled all the drilled holes in the baffle with car body filler and repaired the chewed up original driver fixing holes. These I cut out with a fret saw and glued in a new piece of plywood.

I started to originally fill the roundover edges on the front baffle with body filler to square off the edges, but this proved very tedious. I didn't want to cut any chamfers with my router. The brad nails would have ruined the router bit and at around £40 to replace would have been costly. I then remembered I had an old rip saw blade that came with my table saw that I never use. This has steel tipped teeth rather than my more expensive carbon tipped blades I use. So I cut the chamfer on the original baffle with this and cut through the nails with relative ease.

The old 'adaptor plates' have been thrown in the bin.
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#9

Post by simon »

Blimey, you really are a glutton for punishment Colin. Well done though, these might actually be even more attractive than Steve's Mets. :notworthy:
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#10

Post by Mike H »

Ditto! Yes I get it
 
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#11

Post by chris661 »

Phwoar. I still love that Santos Rosewood - lovely grain and colour on it.

Bet the owner's pleased.
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#12

Post by chrisby »

Colin: excellent work on the grain wrapping, particularly on the beveled edges


yup, those framing / demo saw blades do come in handy

now, howsabout some flowery description of the sonics?
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#13

Post by Toppsy »

Chrisby wrote
now, howsabout some flowery description of the sonics?
To be honest Chrisby, I haven't really had the time to seriously listen to these speakers since I finished covering them.

After being semi-retired and out of the UK Water Industry for neigh on 3-years now I start a new job Monday with a 6-month Contract as Civil Engineer for Yorkshire Water and have been working flat out to finish all my back order builds before I start the new job. I have also been building the standmount speakers for the Markaudio Alpair12P gen2 drivers at a request from a couple interested guys.

Anyway, here goes with my initial impressions when I fired them up to make sure everything worked as it should:

The drivers in these are the P-610FB and I understand this driver has quite some cult following. However, I was a little disappointed with the overall sound. My listening taste in speakers has moved on some from small(ish) single driver FR speakers and perhaps this is influencing my judgement.

Not sure if it's the drivers or the cabinets they are housed in but to me they sound quite thin, (read that as lacking some body or weight to the sound) and they are very directional. Though thin sounding they are quite revealing a driver with the singer quite forward in the mix and very well defined. Unless you apply lots of toe-in pointed at the listener in the `sweet spot', small movements of the head will lose one channel. In this respect they remind me very much of the venerable Quad57's that I have. However, once the toe-in has been sorted they produce a very respectable soundstage with good separation of instruments. For such large cabinets they are also a little bass light. I think a BSC would help here but in my experience of BSC's with small FR drivers this can rob the driver of some of the magic a FR does. I also believe these cabinets are under-damped. I could clearly hear the cabinets, but I understand the owner of these speakers really likes how they sound so it's all down to personal taste. But I think it would be worth experimenting with some damping to the internal walls of the cabinets. Perhaps I was expecting more and in fairness I have been listening extensively to my Edingdale and Rossendale speakers of late and so comparisons are bound to be made. So these were a little disappointing a sound from my perception of previous reports. But they do look rather stunning now, even if I do say so myself.
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#14

Post by The Stratmangler »

Toppsy wrote:After being semi-retired and out of the UK Water Industry for neigh on 3-years now I start a new job Monday with a 6-month Contract as Civil Engineer for Yorkshire Water
That's excellent news Colin :D
Chris :happy3:
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#15

Post by simon »

The Stratmangler wrote:
Toppsy wrote:After being semi-retired and out of the UK Water Industry for neigh on 3-years now I start a new job Monday with a 6-month Contract as Civil Engineer for Yorkshire Water
That's excellent news Colin :D
Certainly is Colin, welcome back!
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