Building speakers based on classic designs:

HUMAN 81 or 81+

EPI 100 or 150

Epicure 10

Genesis I, 1+, 1 or 10

(back to kit/legacy projects)

The most successful speaker Epicure Products ever built, and for good reason, was the EPI 100. Using just an eight inch woofer and tweeter that were designed from scratch to work together, it provided a seamless, balanced musical experience in a small package, and at a very low price. (The epicure 10 is essentially the same speaker as the EPI 100.) The EPI 150 used the same parts, but took advantage of the capability of the woofer to achieve lower frequency extension when used in a larger cabinet, for those who didn't mind giving up some more space for them. The Genesis I, 1+, 1 and 10 worked from the same principle with similar drivers. Guess what? My HUMAN 81 and HUMAN 81+ do too!

This project, then, includes a variable. The volume of the cabinet can be anywhere from one half to as much as two cubic feet, and you can experiment creatively with cabinet shape and dimensions, given the range of "opinion" expressed by these wonderful forebears to your project.

The crossover used by EPI 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 I also added a shunt coil of 0.47 mH, and the Genesis 10 used 8.2 uF shunted by a 0.9 mH choke coil - these "second order" networks are 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 81 Kit includes:

2 PRO 005 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.)