Steve Houlihan is helping me build some new main panels for my Phoenix speakers.   The thought was that wings would help reduce the diffraction effects compared to my current prototypes.  It should also open up the back air flow since there won't be spines and the backs of the wings will be more open.. 

Steve likes curves and suggested this design.  I wanted to try something with wings like the ones on my Infinity RS-1b's and this is what Steve came up with.  I like it!

Here are some pictures of the current status.  We hope to be finished by Thursday 8/15/2002.

This me with the unfinished main panel just sitting on the base.  The wings still need to be cut flush and the tops and bottoms added along with the two back braces.   The ABS will be painted black.  The speaker cables will be routed down inside the ABS tubes and connected at the back of the base.

This is the template for the top and bottoms.  You can see on the right, how the 5 - 1" pieces make up the wings.

This is a rough wing.  Two pieces and three pieces were glued together and then those pieces were joined with biscuits and glued together.  It took 2-3 hours to sand EACH wing to smooth them from piecewise linear to a smooth curve. I could use a power sander on the fronts but the backs were done by hand.  They aren't as smooth... :-)

Steve Houlihan using his template to cut the recesses for the SEAS tweeter and the SEAS W22EX001 8" drivers.  Steve's workshop is VERY well equipped!  Steve has a belt sander, seen to the left, a drill press, 5 routers, a table saw, a jig saw,  a planer and much more...

Here is the main panel after all the sanding and the edges have been planed flush with the front panel.  I used veneer Oak for the front panel but now I wish I'd used solid Oak since the veneer is so thin!  Since we cut the 5 wing pieces from a piece of solid Oak and maintained the order of the pieces, it nearly looks like a curved piece of solid Oak.

Here is one of the two back braces that were sanded to follow the wings.

Here is the base with the recesses cut to position the ABS tubes.  In the cutout in the back of the base, two banana connectors will be mounted - one each for the tweeter and 8' drivers .

The base, the ABS and the bottom of the main panel are held together by 1/4" threaded rods.  We probably will fill the tubes with sand.  A smaller piece of PVC will carry the wires through the tubes.  The base is 1 1/2" and the ABS tubes are 30", so the tweeter center will be 44 1/2" (=1.5 + 30 + 13) off the ground.