Building speakers based on classic designs:

HUMAN 61

EPI 50, 60, or 70

Epicure 5

Genesis Basic or 6

(back to kit/legacy projects)

It is almost an industry cliche that a six inch two way speaker is the easiest to build and make sound good. This is because a woofer that small usually has great dispersion and control characteristics. It helps to use one of the best six inch woofers ever designed, with a very low resonant frequency and out of band rejection. Combine this with a tweeter that is crossed over low and also has fabulous dispersion and low distortion and you have one sweet little speaker.

EPI enjoyed great popularity for their model 50, followed up with the 60 and 70, and their cousin the Epicure 5. Genesis built three small six inch two way speakers, the Basic, the 6, and the (vented) V-6. (Until I have accurate port size data for the V-6 we will ignore it for now). Customers who own the HUMAN 61 also seem to admire it very much.

The box sizes used in these models ranges from a Q of about 0.9 at the small end through about 0.5-0.6 at the larger end, as far as I have had the opportunity to measure and calculate. You are free to do your own math and pick your preference for low end alignment.

The crossover used by EPI/Epicure and HUMAN is just a single ten microfarad capacitor (I'd recommend using a high quality film type capacitor) in series with the tweeter. The Genesis 6 used 8.2 uF shunted by a 0.9 mH choke coil - a "second order" network intended to decrease the power "seen" by the tweeter below the roll off frequency. Since this comes with a penalty in the linearity of the phase response, I prefer to use the single capacitor design myself.

Details:

Interior dimensions in inches, volume in cubic feet:

Stock bracing: None (except HUMAN models). I recommend adding at least one brace front to rear at the point between the woofer and tweeter cutouts.

Driver position: Offset from center of cabinet face, tweeter a different distance from the top than the sides, drivers as close together as practical.

The HUMAN 61 Kit includes:

2 PRO 007 woofers
2 PRO 002 M2 tweeters
2 Terminal cups with gold plated 5-way binding posts
2 Complete wiring harness/crossovers
Screws to install all parts
Pegs and sockets for grill mounting
Basic instruction sheet (and telephone/email support)

You provide:

The cabinet
The grill, if desired
Internal damping material (e.g. fiberglass, polyester, etc.)