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The long-awaited HUMAN 81 DK is now available.
Best viewed in "landscape" mode.

HUMAN K-3.0 Speaker Kit
$723.00 / pair

Building speakers based on classic designs:
Epicure 3.0
(back to kit/legacy projects)

Some people have expressed interest in building their own pair of Epicure 3.0 speakers from scratch, so, since I can make all the parts necessary, here is an overview of how to go about it.

First and most obviously, the kit includes all new parts:

Below are a pair of drawings - one of the stock cabinet, and one suggested way to front mount the tweeter. Each is linked to a legible version.
Epicure 3.0 cabinet drawing Epicure 3.0 cabinet drawing alternate You are going to build a truncated pyramid-shaped cabinet with approximately or exactly the same dimensions as the original, which is 41 3/8" tall, 16 1/2" square at the bottom, and 8 1/2" square at the top. If you use material thicker than the original 3/4" (which I recommend), make the outside dimensions larger, maintaining the interior volume. The four sides slope inwards at an angle of 5 degrees. The outside "vertical" corners are curved - the original used quarter-round 3/4" wood trim. You will either mount the tweeter on the top and make sure to cover the top with material that will completely absorb any sound waves that hit it (such as felt), or build the box a couple of inches taller and mount the tweeter on the front panel above the midrange. Or build it the same height and mount the tweeter on the front below the midrange.

I would recommend some minor changes from the original. One is to offset the midrange and tweeter from the center line about a half inch, in a mirror-imaged fashion. Another is to add some bracing below the woofer (the midrange baffle board acts as a great brace above it). You also might want to make the cabinet thicker and heavier. The originals are made of 3/4" particle board. You will use MDF, which is much denser and heavier, and you might choose to use 1" thick material, either simply 1" MDF, or two sheets glued together, or perhaps even two sheets of different material glued together, like plywood on the inside and MDF on the outside.

The woofer is mounted as high as possible in the front baffle, to get it closer to the midrange. Another approach would be to mouont it as low as possible, in order to couple it to the floor.

The 3.0 is best considered as a nice six inch two-way mini-monitor speaker with a dedicated ten inch subwoofer built into the same enclosure. As such, using bi-amplifiable, separate input terminals for the woofer and the bass/midrange and tweeter could allow better control of its capabilities.

Miscellaneous and Esoteric

thumbnail linkJimbob eventually decided to build two pairs each of 61 and 81 kits as EPI 50 and 100 clones
thumbnail linkEd's Genesis 3 clones in fir thumbnail linkA different Ed's spherical speaker design using lots of my parts
thumbnail linkHUMAN tweeters installed on a pair of Magnepans thumbnail linkAn explanation of why I don't provide detailed cabinet plans

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