Dual 21” subwoofers for audio setup. I’ve built many subwoofer setups in my life. Some for myself many more for others. I reached a point in my life where I was ready to combine the total knowledge and experience into a final magnum opus.

Starting at the end. Finished these is spring of ‘19. I used celestion 21” drivers. Cabinets are walnut burl veneer.

Nail down those designs in digital first!

These fixtures are for laminating the side panels. I wanted the curvature on the sides to match the Tannoy mains. If you know of Tannoy high end audio... then you know.

Laser cut a template for accurately marking the sides.

All 4 sides laminated 25mm thick Baltic birch.

The entire cabinet is 25mm Baltic birch.

Laser cut and threaded mounting plate for the subwoofer mounting attached to the back of the front baffle plate.

There’s never enough clamps.

Viking for scale.

Test fit driver... mostly for fun.

Lots of spline sanding to get the sides ready for veneer.

25 coats of black polyurethane on top, back and bottom. Lots of sanding between coats. Looking for that mirror finish.

Front and sides are cut from a single 4x8 book matched piece of walnut veneer.

Then poly. Lots and lots of poly. Then sanding. Then more poly.

Looks good...

But it could be better. At this point there was a total of 75 clear coats of poly.

Time to break out the wet sanding and buffing.

Wet sand 400, 600, 900, man my arms are tired. 2000 then 3000. Then buff with high abrasive cutting then swirl remover then polish... now some wax.

Gotta get that mirror

Ready to assemble.

edit for autocorrect: portedcabinets get thoroughly lined with absorption material.

Now the metal. Custom grills made from 10g steel laser cut and tig welded together.

Ready for powder coat

First coat of powder is chrome. Second coat is black chrome.

All the steel bits. Grills, terminal plates, isolation discs(top sub) and port fins.

Black chrome looks good.

Port fins prevent cats from climbing in. Shaped so that air makes no noise in passing.

High current terminals with ground.

Braided cables for high gauge and flexibility.

Spikes on the bottom to seat the sub directly to the concrete and level.

All assembled in their current home. Build time was 6 months.

Driven with dual amps @ 1600w RMS each. That’s mostly about maintaining quality at moderate listening levels though. It has been mind blowing getting this dialed in. My personal audiophile heaven.