W6 build

[whines]

I run a kareoke event occasionally and figured that giving the vocalist the ability to hear how his or her mic holding is sounding is a good idea. (no amount of gesticulation on my part seems to do any good when they decide to hold it so no one can hear them)

Also, the W6 looks really cute and I had a fair amount of BB left over from the SLA's. So I ordered a kit from Leland and got started.

This weekend most of the parts got cut and the first few panels were glued!

[miked]

Cool! We don't see a lot of these builds. Post lots of pics and good luck!

[whines]

Wow, impressively bad job on the mouth panels. I cut them way too tall--which is at least correctable--and then overcompensated and made them too small. Within the bounds of what PL can deal with, though, so I went ahead and gooped it on. I'll have to add a bit more in a few places, depending on how much it expands.

Used brads to hold the very wobbly panels in place, and tacked in scraps of wood behind them. (not visible)

[Chris_Allen]

That looks less than 1/2" out - I made cutting errors way bigger than that!

[whines]

Thanks, Chris, that's reassuring.

Got the shell assembled last night. I wish I'd remembered that I had those right angle clamps when I was dealing with the front sides, which were inclined to flop around on me while moving it around to get brads in connecting it to the side. It's pretty darn square now.

There are a couple of the tiny brads (20ga?) holding the unglued side in place temporarily...I have a tiny worry about being able to pull it out with that many (one in each corner). We'll see once the PL cures.

[whines]

Crossover work, since I have to back off on the woodworking for a few days!

[whines]

...whoops, the right inductor shouldn't be hooked up to In -. Glad I didn't solder yet!

[Bill Fitzmaurice]

It looks like your 0.6mH has .53 ohms resistance. That's above spec. It will work, but will cost you some sensitivity. OTOH the 0.5mH appears to be a larger gauge than required. No worries, but a smaller gauge would cost less.

[whines]

18AWG inductor ordered. Thanks for catching that.

Crossover soldered and glued down (although I'll be taking off that inductor) and I cut the horn to fit in the shell. Eugh, that top section...my angles were not great on the horn top and bottom. Mental note: Get them closer next time. Hopefully close enough though.

Next: Track down some pet screen, do a little sanding and paint parts that are gonna be hard to reach later!

[whines]

Attaching the spacer ring.

[whines]

Installed the horn in the shell last night. I stapled mattress foam in the parts that will be hard to reach later and predrilled holes for mounting the crossover on the lower back, leaving foam off that part. Driver test-installed--I was thinking those screws were way too long, but they go right into the edges of the horn throat panel, no problems.

I paid attention to getting the front aligned and making sure that there was contact between the baffle and the bottom, but forgot to check the horn 'legs' that contact the sides. PL will fill the gap between the installed side and the legs but now I need to shorten the two sticking out on the uninstalled side. Oh well, fixable!

[whines]

Second side attached. The misaligned leg only needed a quick pass with the orbital sander to make it fit just fine. A few pins shot in to keep it from wandering, and lots of clamps!

[whines]

Access panel flanges go on!

[Grant Bunter]

Bit late now, but after building a number of WH8's, I worked out the easier method when it comes to installing the driver (in terms of access), is to put the flanges on after driver install.

Nice build to date...

[whines]

Corners rounded with a router, inital sanding and a bit of white primer. This is going to be white with marker art to match the rest of my boxes.

Haven't painted the horn yet, it needs a lot of bondo...