Yesterday we were talking about the "warm" sound of wood. Turns out that there are engineers who don't take it as a joke at all!
I just found out that JVC has been developing speaker drivers with a thinly sliced then pressed piece of birch wood!!! The chief engineer had kept a "burning desire" to make a woodcone speaker since 20 years ago, when he made some initial prototype drivers. He eventually made it into an official project 5 years ago, which resulted in a dozen or so patented methods of making a cone/dome out of a thin piece of wood. They hope to release the first bunch of complete speaker systems by the end of 2003; I have no idea if they will market them outside Japan. Now I have a "burning desire" to listen to these speakers!!!
Anyway, here are several photo's...
The 8cm (3") mid-woofer
The 1" dome tweeter
Woodcone material after the "tertiary press" stage
A prototype bookshelf
A prototype floorstander
Hey, the shape of the cabinet looks soooo familiar!!!
