Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler a lifetime of audio

Not sure exactly when I started building speakers but best guess from the music I was listening to at the time is somewhere around 1972, or ~14 years old. I think Electro Sonic was downtown at the time, and somehow I ran across a Philips DeForest speaker building guide.

My parents must have really humored me, since every so often we would make a pilgrimage down to one of the US electronics stores like Lafayette. Tent trailer and huge stress crossing the border so we didn't get arrested by the food police, eg drinking 2 quarts of milk between the 4 of us because we weren't supposed to take it across the border. In practice nobody asked or cared and we all felt sick for the rest of the trip.

I had a big financial advantage because the only audio electronics I had access to at the time were monophonic - a big shiny wood "stereo" with a turntable, AM receiver and a 12" full range speaker. That meant I only had to build one speaker rather than a pair.

First speaker was a 2-way with 5-1/2" woofer and 1" tweeter in a fairly small sealed cabinet. Still sounded better than the 12" full range, which was an eye opener for me.

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I ended up using a pair of 3-way Philips DeForest boxes and SWTPC electronics for about 25 years, until I was convinced to dump the whole kit off at Goodwill to make the living room more "open". A few years after that I found I was missing good sound, ordered a pair of M2ti's, and that was the start of the slippery slope.