Stereo

Back in high school I would sometimes go to high end audio shops just to see what kind of crazy things were being offered. I don't know how it started or what my motivation was, since there wasn't really anything that I could afford. Occasionally if the staff were bored they might let me "audition" the latest McIntosh amps, or huge electrostatic speakers, or any number of other ridiculously priced components. On those occasions I was shocked by how life like, smooth and "present" the sound was. Previously I had no idea that a sound system could possibly sound that good. But I did know that even if I someday acquired $20,000, I sure as hell wasn't going to spend it on a stereo.

Fast forward to one year ago, when a chance posting on a climbing discussion board alerted me to the presence of a different way to get excellent sound: the Do it Yourself (DIY) community. It turns out that there are people all over the world who assemble their own amplifiers from kits or raw components for under $1000 which sound *almost* as good as their $5-10k brethren. As soon as I discovered this, I immediately set out to find the best deal among a bewildering array of designs and kits. There were the push-pull amplifiers, the in vogue Single Ended Triodes, the fancy looking Output transformerless amps and on and on. All of the amplifiers that I was looking at were based on old but beautiful sounding vacuum tubes. I settled on a kit from DIY Hifi called the Joplin, and bought a set of speaker drivers from Bastanis speakers. The components arrived while we were still living in France, and although I was able to start the wiring for the speakers, I never got a chance to complete them. They require cabinets of course, and despite my best efforts I was unable to get a carpenter to build them for me. I was in contact with two carpenters who said they were interested in the project and would get back to me soon with price quotes. Well first of all, what "project"?! Its a BOX! And second, they never got back to me. So when our things finally arrived last week, I was excited to rewire the amp for US voltage, get the speakers wired and build the cabinets. The amp rewiring took about 30 minutes, as did the speaker wiring. The next day chloe and I went down to Ashby Lumber, ordered a 4x8 sheet of MDF and described what sized pieces we wanted it cut into. Amazingly, their cuts were almost perfect to the millimeter (except one or two panels which were good to 3 or 4 mm), the guys working there were all helpful and knowledgeable and they were done in 15 minutes. No talk about "projects", no meetings or faxing, just 16 pieces of MDF cut to order in a quarter of an hour for $35!

After we got home I went into full "project mode" which I think Chloe was a little taken aback by. "Project mode" is a state of mind that I enter when building things which means no breaks and intense working until things are finished. The first cabinet took around three hours to build, but the second one took a lot less time since we pulled the measurements off of the first cabinet (The plans for the cabinets were in metric which led to some quick calculations at the lumber yard). When we brought the finished speakers upstairs and fired up the amp I think we were both amazed by how good it sounded. Here's our setup: