Welcome!

I have been a vinyl nut ever since my dad showed me how to play his Technics record player many years ago. I have also been a woodworking nut ever since my grandfather showed my how to use his bandsaw when I was five. That being said I would like to welcome you to my blog: Engrained Audio. I will be posting both DIY audio projects I find on the web and some projects of my own. Enjoy!

Thursday, January 31, 2013

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.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

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

Thursday, January 24, 2013

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.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

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