DIY bookshelf speakers…

While I’m working on my rolling ball sculptures in the garage I always have some sort of music on.  Until recently I’ve been using a twenty year old, $5 cheapo boombox.  Well, it finally died on me a couple of days ago, so I decided to upgrade it a little bit.  I’ve always been a bit of a hi-fi guy and I’m pretty handy, so I figured why not build a new system myself?

My first step was to pick up a few components.  I wanted to spend as little as possible, but also make something that sounded fairly decent and also looked pretty good.  My requirements for the system were pretty basic; I wanted an am/fm tuner, iphone hookup, and some bookshelf speakers.  I could have just bought a little iphone alarm clock, but I figured I could make something that sounded twice as good, for a lot more fun!  Those little alarm clocks are like $70, so my goal was to spend less than that.

For the speakers I went with 3″ Aurasound NS3-193-4A’s.  They have some excellent reviews and with the wide frequency range I wouldn’t necessarily need to run tweeters or a sub with them.  I picked them up for $12 each, score!  Subtotal = $24.

For the amp I went with a T-class Lepai TA2020.  It’s pretty cheap, but does a decent job.  It also has both RCA and line-in jacks, perfect for my needs.  I picked it up on sale for $15.  Subtotal = $39.

Finally, for the tuner part I love the look of the old vintage tuners with the huge dials, cool lights, and cool little signal meters.  In one of my best ebay buys ever I grabbed a Kenwood KT-6500 for $25.  Grand total = $64!

I built up the speakers this past week (sorry for the bad phone pictures).  They are in 5 x 5 x 5 inch internal sealed and stuffed enclosures.  The boxes are made out of 1/2″ mdf, screwed and glued together, then sealed with silicon on the inside.  I did a nice little routered edge on the front baffle, then sprayed them with a few coats of semi-gloss black.  The finish came out really nice actually.  I did a fair bit of sanding and finishing, but seeing as though they are just going in the garage I didn’t go too over board with it.  There are quite a number of little imperfections in the paint, but I gotta say I really like how they turned out.

I hooked them up yesterday to the amp and my iphone and they sound great!  These little guys easily sound better than my 2.1 setup at my computer and probably also beat out the setup I have in the living room.  I may up building a system for the living room too, these are amazing!

The tuner should be here in a few days, so I’ll let you know how it all sounds together.  You can see the little amp in the corner of the first picture.  I want to build a nice little enclosure for the amp and tuner to match the speakers as well.