Elegant Natural Porcelain Speakers

These are definitely not your typical speakers. When I came across these speakers I was amazed that anyone would even think to use porcelain as the speaker case. What the builder claims is that with the porcelain you get a certain resonance from the speaker that makes it sound like an acoustic performance is occurring right in front of you. That would definitely be something that I would like to experience myself. 

From the picture above you can see that plenty of handiwork must go in to building these very interesting speakers. It goes without saying that these speakers definitely have a great look about them, as they are a design that I have never seen before. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a set of these to see what they are all about. You can see a write up about these speakers here along with a video of how these are put together.

Natural Porcelain Speakers

Stylish Acoustic iPhone Amplifier

This is a very stylish DIY build, again where the builder found a way to bypass a high cost of an original product, and built himself a very comparable version shown here. Noel Davis saw the $1000 price tag of the iVictrola iPhone and iPad acoustic amplifiers, pictured below, and decided to design his own using his school's laser cutter and some high grade plywood. 

Although the original is definitely very cool, especially since all of the horns on each one are different since they are found antiques, having Noel's plywood version on your desk would definitely work great as a conversation starter. To be honest, the work alone that would go into building the plywood version is definitely much more impressive than just finding a horn and sticking it onto a piece of wood, which is all the iVictrola basically is. Oh how I wish I had access to a laser cutter.....

DIY iVictrola Plywood Project

Amazing "Odyssey 2" Speakers

It is really worth looking at the build pictures for this project. Lluís Pujolàs, an artist from Spain, spent 400 hours designing and building these spectacular speakers that weigh over 300 pounds each. They are based on the Bowers and Wilkins Nautilus speakers seen below which are some of the best sounding speakers in the world. Of course the Odyssey's probably didn't cost $60,000 to build which is what the Nautilus would set you back. It is amazing what quality DIY work can get you! The link to the translated build notes can be found here.

Amazing Odyssey 2 Speakers

My DIY Home Theater Speakers

These are my current home theater speakers with HiVi m5a woofers and TN28 top mounted tweeters in 8.5" MDF cubes with a 1" port. I based them on one of the speaker projects in the Parts Express showcase called the SC 5.1 by Tom Lawler found here. Now I know that the cube is probably the worst shape for a speaker but I tend to value the looks of a speaker at the same level as the sound. Luckily, these speakers ended up looking and sounding great. I started out with 4 speakers as front and surrounds and then built a center channel that fit in my entertainment center with the same two drivers.

 I ended up just pairing them with a cheap 10" Sony subwoofer for now, but I hope to come up with a better solution for the low end. I was thinking maybe instead of the stands, putting two 6.5" Tang Band subs in bass bins on either side so you get blasted with bass in stereo. Well that's my setup. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Super Subwoofer

Now this is a subwoofer! Who wouldn't want a huge 15" subwoofer disguised as an even bigger Rubik's Cube? I'm sure the pictures don't even come close to doing this justice. Even so, you can definitely see the large amount of work that went into building this super subwoofer. You can visit the build page here to see step by step how Zachary Paisley went about putting this project together.

Project Cube DIY Speaker Build

Old Radios

This old Philco Radio is the first radio project I ever attempted. I was able to find this radio on Craigslist and it was beat up pretty bad. My initial intention was to try and fix it up like new, but I bit off more than I could chew and reluctantly decided to just put a couple small speakers and a modern T-amp to make it an Ipod speaker.

After my first radio attempt I decided to look for radios that were the case only, so I would not feel bad about throwing out the internals that could still potentially be fixed. So I happened upon this nice little Truetone case on ebay and went for it even though it started out with a thick layer of bright blue paint. After a couple days sanding and scraping I finally got all of the blue off of it and was able to apply some stain, put new radio grille cloth, clean up the really cool glass dial piece, and find some old knobs to finish the look. I popped in another T-amp and set of speakers and was actually able to sell it for a little profit on Craigslist. Not bad, eh?

This Westinghouse radio has been a work in progress for quite a while now, but I have got to the point where all I need to do is find some matching knobs and it will be done. Like the rest I have sanded down the entire case but instead of applying more stain where needed, I just kept the vintage used look it had and sprayed some nice satin lacquer on it to even the shine. I hope to be done with it soon.

A Masterpiece

The project I have here to show you is probably one of the coolest DIY projects I have ever seen, and if I had the chance to try something like this I would definitely go for it. This modified turntable was completed by Nandor Szabo of Hungary and is the epitome of DIY audio projects in my opinion. It combines woodworking and audio in such a great way that I find it hard to think of any better project to describe what I am all about; and I didn't even make it! The link for the project walkthrough can be found here, and I urge you to take a look at all the grueling hard work that went into making such a fine piece of equipment.

DIY Wooden Turntable Project