You heard it here first. And, there's even an Altec twist to the story which I'll get to...
Anyway, I have been hanging out with a buddy of mine, a very well respected legend in the audio business, Dennis J. Had, founder of Cary Audio Design. when I first met Dennis right after he left Cary, he was fiddling around with rebuilding and modifying vintage tube amps on his kitchen table. I guess this was mainly due to his non-compete clause with Cary, but at the time, I don't think he had really decided which direction he wanted to take with respect to further endeavors, and I think he was also still smarting from the less than warm send off he got from his former partner and chief bean counter, now CEO.
Anyway, I started in on him, giving him grief about soldering on his kitchen table, and how he needed to get him a little space of his own, even if he couldn't really get back into the business right then. eventually he rented a 700 sq ft space inside the industrial park where he by coincidence, also started Cary. One thing led to another, and he is now back in business building custom made single ended tube amps, mainly using single ended pentode (6BQ5) and single ended beam tetrode. (6L6, 807, KT-88, etc) What I know about tube amps would rattle inside a thimble, but I have been fortunate to act as Dennis' foil, gadfly if you will, bringing him amps to look at, and tubes to play with, and filling his ears with off the wall ideas, most of which he ignores, but some of which he uses.
For quite awhile now, he has been complaining about not being able to find a good cheap reliable cabinet maker to build him some boxes to branch out into speakers. At one point during his Cary reign, he started messing with some speaker designs on a whim, and soon spun off Soliloquy speakers. Apparently the itch has never left him, and maybe 6 months ago, I got an idea.
Turns out that a good friend of mine from Boy Scouts is the Chief Designer/CTO of a CNC router company called ShopBot, and used to be a carpenter and cabinet maker. After chatting with him, I found out that not only was he interested in and enjoyed audio gear, he had always wanted to build speakers. At this point, the wood was really staring to smoke....So, I told Dennis that we would build him some speakers. I don't remember if he laughed at the time, but I would have. Anyway, I introduced him to my friend, and we sat down and started talking about design. Originally Dennis wanted to build a set of transmission line speakers, similar to a set of SONY TL-5's I had loaned him, and also I believe, similar to some of the Sililoquys. I still have that design, stashed away, but after some additional discussion, we decided to build a set of open baffle speakers similar to another set of prototypes Dennis had built, but smaller, as to easily fit within UPS/FedEx shipping limitations. We settled on a dual 10" woofer surrounding a 1 1/8" dome tweeter. We left the TL port in the new design, partly to eventually have a design commonality with some future TL designs, and also to be able to display a logo.
The initial design looked something like this...
I do have to say, it's really nice having a CNC router in your garage.....(click picture for video)
We got some of these boxes built, and then decided to modify the design, thin out the back and make it a bit more delicate, almost mimicking the shape of a wine bottle.
I won't go into how many iterations we went through or all the hours of work that got tossed into the failure pile, but here's where we are now....
I've learned a lot about woodworking, and have also learned to hate sandpaper. I know how to bookend veneer, and why better quality plywood is worth the money.
And after many months of hard work, we are just about ready for prime time...
The Karilian Birch model
The Ziracote model
and a slightly less fancy model, the Natural.....
Dennis will get a professional photographer in this week to do some glamour shots, and we will be off to the races. For now this will be a small e-bay store type operation, but if things take off, we are positioned to transition to a more mass production type assembly process, but that's definitely putting the cart before the horse.
Now the important question....How do they sound? Dennis says they sound way better than any of the Soliliquy speakers, and he is excited as a little boy in a candy store. I personally think they are amazing sounding speakers, despite the fact that I helped design and build them. The idea was to create speakers that mated well with Dennis' Inspire amps, and believe me, they do. But, only time will tell.
Now, how does the Altec teaser fit in? Well, did anyone notice anything else in the Ziracote picture?
Like that 604-8G sitting next to it? Well, assuming we have some down time while Dennis gets the sales machine geared up, we have already finalized in theory a wider design specifically meant for a 604 driver. Dennis is already mumbling about a 3rd order crossover design, and I'm hoping to get a prototype pair built sometime before the end of the year. Anyone know where I might be able to find a steady supply of new 604 drivers?.....
Wish us luck!
Originally Posted by mattvandyke
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