Sunday, August 8, 2010

Protected Woofing

Now that I have 5 speakers upstairs (including the subwoofer), I like the sound of the organ even more than before. On the advice of a very gifted organ technician, I cleaned and protected the contacts on the bass tone generator cards, which appears to have solved the low bass volume problem once and for all - at least enough so that I had to turn down the bass amplifier volume or risk continuing to knock down eyeglasses resting on the ceramic clock in the next room (don't ask!).

Anyway, one key task was yet to be done - some sort of protective cover for the now completely exposed 15" speaker which was sitting in the stair well right about where something might fall if anyone tripped on the exposed speaker wires. The other speakers had covers, but the woofer did not.

So a few trips to my favorite hardware, home supply stores, and fabric stores gathered up the wood for a frame, felt for staple backing, some dowels and wood glue to put it all together, as well as some black speaker cloth from MCM Electronics nearly finished it. But I also wanted more protection than the speaker cloth could possibly provide, so additionally I purchased and stapled 1/2" square hardware screen (fairly heavy metal screen) behind the acoustic cloth. This way, most minor disasters will be avoided. It came out looking great! You can't even seen the metal screening behind the speaker cloth, but tomorrow will tell whether I can hear anything through it - or perhaps hear something I shouldn't (like rattles!). Oh yes, I used velcro at the four corners to hold the speaker grill frame in place.