Bottlehead Straight-8 Speakers

Bottlehead Straight-8 Speakers
I'm currently building the Bottlehead Straight-8 Speaker kit. They've actually stopped making the kit but a friend bought this one a few years ago and I have decided to build it. The first thing I have learned is that working with MDF sucks! Use a respirator and do all the cutting outside. It will cover you and everything around your cutting area in a fine brown dust.

These are the parts all cut for glueing and fastening.

Jim uses some leftover epoxy to fill in some of the screw holes on the first cabinet. No, Jim, you can't eat it.

Cabinet clamped up after applying glue and ready for pre-drilling.

That 3M spray-on glue contains nearly every cancer-causing agent the state of California warns against. Full Tyvek suit and chemical respirator for safety. I was still able to smell the shit through the respirator.

Spraying the stuff on.

Cabinets with felt insulation installed and ready for final front-piece assembly.

Screwing the front panel on. Make sure to pre-drill all the screw holes. You want the holes to go through the first layer of MDF, but not very far into the second piece so the threads pull the panels together properly. Also remember to set the clutch on the drill to be pretty low or else the holes will strip right out.

Here's Jim doing the driver wiring.

Here he is again...looking like a midget.

Here is the wiring and soldering setup. The top four and bottom four drivers were connected in series and then the two sets in parrallel. The tweeters were connected separately to the inputs through a simple RL low-pass filter. You can see the inductors sitting on the end of the speakers.

Here's the finished product. We had this cool idea to make it look like stacked dice. We even cut out a mask on the drill press. Overspray ended up getting everywhere so we just said fuck it and went nuts with red and white spray paint. At least it's quite obvious they're not store bought. I also attached some screen covers to keep people from poking the drivers. And, no, the sub isn't hooked up yet, but that's the next project. I've already started ordering parts for its amp.