It's slightly premature to begin a build thread on these, but it just feels like the right time to put forth my intentions.
The intention of this build is to make the DR200 as light as reasonably possible without serious detriment to sound quality and/or sensitivity. I'll be using ¼" ply instead of ½" wherever possible and instead of the popular full/square back option, these will have exposed butt cheeks to further reduce weight. I've chosen a super light weight, 2.4 pound neo driver, the PRV Audio 8MB500v2-NDY, which is a discontinued item and no longer available. I bought 8 of these drivers back in 2018, along with nearly 100 piezo tweeters... man, I've been putting this build off for far too long. Anyway, this initial build will be four cabs, with melded arrays. I'll build the second set of 4 cabs at a later date.
I ran all the parts in MaxCut, the cut optimization program I use, and I think I'll be able to squeeze four of these cabs out of three 5x5 sheets of ¼" BB and two 4x8 sheets of 1/8" Poplar bendy ply (with a lot of bendy ply left over... Perhaps a Jack12 Lite is in my future too). So, I made that purchase today. In order to fit the lumber in my car, as well as make them more manageable on the table saw, I had them cut the 5x5 sheets down to roughly 20"x60" pieces and the 4x8 sheets down to roughly 19"x48" pieces. I've never used bendy ply before. It's way more flexible than I had envisioned it would be. Cool stuff. I look forward to learning to work with it. I was a little peaved that the local well known and respected specialty lumber yard had their ¼" BB ply stored the same way they do at lowes and HD... on two chocks with a deep bow in the whole stack! Oh well. Moving on. I'll just have to deal with it. (grumble grumble)
Since these first 4 cabs will potentially be bottoms of 4 stacks of paired cabs, I got the adjustable pole mount for each one. Only for the bottoms of these cabs though. Standard top hats for the tops of the cabs.As I'm going through this build, please point out any concerns or thoughts you have. One of the things I've been contemplating is additional side braces to adequately brace the thinner ¼" ply sides. The plans utilize one brace for ½" ply construction. I considered doing 2 braces spaced proportionately equivalent to the DR300, or even up to 4 braces which would achieve spacing equivalent to the internal brace spacing of the Jack12 Lite, of roughly 4" between braces. Obviously, fewer is lighter, more is increased rigidity and overall cab strength. Whichever solution I land on, they will be strategically cheese holed or trussed.
A couple other design considerations that I haven't come to a solid conclusion on yet are SpeakOn Jack and handle placement. Thinking a small enclosure, centered top to bottom on the back, in the butt crack, with two jacks, one aimed up (to the cab above) and one aimed down (to a/the cab below), along with one more on the top and bottom of the cab should be sufficient and fairly handy. Maybe even forego the one on top of the cab... Don't see much use for that location. As far as handles, I'm considering nice comfortable girthy handles glued across the valley of the butt cheeks, one at the top and a matching one at the bottom. Or, possibly a couple of strategically placed simple looped webbed straps instead, to minimize weight. Just something to make it easy to grab with a hand or two... or possibly grab two with one hand, maybe.
Anyway, happy to hear and discuss your thoughts along the way as the build comes together. If you've got a clever idea, please share it with me.
This will likely get started by midweek, next week.
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