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I am planning to buy a speaker kit without cabinet. 0.75 MDF is used in the original cabinet. I want to use 0.75 solid Rosewood. WAF. Will the sound be affected appreciably and how? It is a 15x9x10 cabinet.
Thanks
Bill
Follow Ups:
to avoid complications. Will use Marine plywood, a high quality one which has better workability than MDF. Will do Rosewood veneer on it. For WAF, it will be sweetly announced that it is Rosewood. Knowing me for 50 years, she will nod knowing for sure that it is only veneer.
Thanks to you all. You are very helpful.
Regards
Bill
Veneer is fine. After all, beauty is only skin deep.
IF you have the skills and money to built a rosewood box...do it! It'll be more that adequate for a great sounding speaker and more importantly it'll be something you're proud of , enjoy and can talk about for years.
I have a solid rosewood case (someone else built) for my Fisher KM60 tuner and it's held up for over 20 years.
Show us some pictures.
I bet a cabinet made with solid rosewood would be very expensive.
Another thing is gluing of oily woods is tricky. I would think you would need to use lots of screws and blocks in the corners. In addition having to join your pieces to get a panel - more gluing problems!
There is something to say about making cabinets out of solid woods. The SONUS FABER speakers, if not all but many of their speakers, are made with solid woods and are highly regarded and very expensive.
There are many who find the resonances of solid wood euphonic. In addition the resonance of a solid wood is more centered at a certain frequency, there will be a peak, which is easier to damp unlike MDF with a rather broad band of resonances which are impossible to damp. Many feel this gives speakers made of MDF a blurred quality along with a "deadness" in dynamics.
I would not use MDF for anything but a subwoofer. Baltic birch is a great material for speaker cabinets as the BBC found many decades ago.
Resorcinol glue will hold rosewood joints together nicely if the joinery is close fitting. Resorcinol doesn't have the crack filling qualities of epoxy. For added strength wipe the surfaces to be joined with a cloth wet with acetone before gluing.
Another fact is that rosewood, being a tropical and very dense wood, is more dimensionally stable than most hardwoods. The proposed cabinet size, if carefully fitted, will likely stand up to seasonal movement.
Use PPR, Powdered Plasticised Resin and what the British call "housing joints". Butt joints won't do. Google both.
What I have here is Indian Rosewood, not Brazilian. There may be some differences between the two. My father's office desk has a 3'x4' top which is one Rosewood plank. Has lasted 60 years now without cracks or warps. The joints are never Butts. I do see wooden nails too. It was built by a Carpenter whose carpentry family tradition went back centuries, a Carpenter by caste, 'supposedly' a low caste.. His son and grandson are IT professionals in the US making more money than the former high castes.
Cheers
Bill
Ideally, the enclosure should be as inert as possible. Hardwoods resonate.
MDF or furniture grade plywood is preferable.
Opus 33 1/3
I disagree. All materials resonate. It is just a question of at what frequenies. Just like all materials will be transonic to some degree at some frequencies. Particle board and MDF is a bitch to work with, can off gas nasty stuff and are so dense they can make speakers sound dead/dull. Baltic birch ply (void less thin laminate layers) is much better. Solid hardwoods can sound fine but can be very price and prone to warbling if not correctly drired, climatized/acclimated to the room environment and appropriately brace. At you size, these should not be too much and issue. I like solid hardwood front baffles and 2 layers of 19mm Baltic birch ply sides and backs with hardwood veneers. Just my $0.02.
I thought the hardwood was not being used because of the price. Resonating means problem. I may as well stick with MDF with Rosewood finish which should look OK among the existing Rosewood furniture. Thanks.
Cheers
Bill
Use MDF, and then veneer it with Rosewood veneer. My favorite source is Tape Ease. I recommend the 10 mil over the 20 mil, as the edges disappear more easily. Rosewood veneer is rather pricey, at $256 a sheet.
If you were to deviate from MDF, I would think Baltic birch plywood would be a more logical choice.
perfect choice. Baltic plywood is solid and dense and easy to work with. And who says one can't veneer it (WAF) with rosewood veneer or any other wood for that matter?
I totally agree about dense many-ply Baltic birch as an excellent choice for speaker boxes. Properly braced it can be as non-resonant as MDF, and it is much more pleasant to cut and join. If you practice a few times on scraps of the birch plywood I think you will find that by using paper backed veneer applied with 3M High Strength 90 spray contact cement veneering is a doable thing. I would suggest that before you start you read a good how-to veneer article or view an online tutorial. There are lots of little tricks which will make the job easier and the finishing touches such as where two pieces of veneer meet at a corner much more professional looking.
I would not recommend 3M High Strength 90 spray contact cement to somebody who is not very experienced with veneering. Instead, try regular yellow/white carpenters glue. Apply to both, box and veneer, let it dry for 10-15 minutes, secure the veneer on the box with any masking tape and then use hot iron just like you would to iron a shirt. It's easy...er.
WAF isn't going to matter when the solid rosewood box pulls itself apart.
I have plans to use Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia Sissoo) which is long lasting and very strong
Cheers
Bill
Strength is not the issue. Solid hardwoods move around a lot with varying environmental conditions. Your solid hardwood speaker box will literally rip itself apart in a matter of a few months.
If you have to have rosewood hardwood, use 1" plywood to construct the box, the veneer over with 1/2" rosewood.
Very interesting and informative. I think I will avoid all complications and use Birch Plywood or MDF and Rosewood veneer it. Wife would say 'Ah, its only veneer'. She will point to the Rosewood furniture, especially to a little 200 year old chair in black rosewood, uncracked. But sound is more important than WAF. Or is it?
Cheers
Bill
It's a lot easier than veneering it afterward. Better lumber yards will have it.
My brother built a bunch of Straight 8 cabinets with various exotic woods using veneered plywood. I wish I had some of the pics handy, but here's one of my pair in a black laquer.
The trick to not using veneer tape was to join a ripped down 1x1 of solid wood to both sides of the side panels. The top was made of joined pieces of either 4x or 6x material. It gives strength to the edges and then you can quarter round it for a clean look.
-Rod
That speaker looks great. Veneering is as good as the solid wood. Thanks.
Cheers
Bill
Another issue is stuffing or not. You can get a very lively speaker if you forego the stuffing. It can make a huge difference. It just depends what you like to hear in a speaker. Look at this (Red 100) one to get some idea.
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
Chairs and other furniture are built using techniques that allow for the expansion and contraction of the wood. With a speaker that must have airtight joints it's a much more difficult proposition. I'll use solid wood, but never with wider than 1x8 nominal boards, beyond that the expansion/contraction issues are too difficult to overcome. So bookshelves, OK, but that's about it.
A chair has much smaller glue joints. If a leg twists three degrees on its length, that doesn't bother the glue joint much up where the seat is. If a side panel of a speaker box twists three degrees, it pops apart.
If you look at similar furniture from that time period, specifically dressers, I would bet that you'd find lots of exotic veneer over a more stable wood substrate.
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