Maggie 1.6qr cross-0ver upgrade 'mod box'

A trip to San Diego plastics yielded 1/8" cuts of black acrylic:

(2) 14x7, (2) 14 1/16 x 7 1/8 (4) 14x5, (4) 5x7(2) 12x16 1/2

one tube of weld-on glue #16 total cost to build two boxes:$26.55

recommend investing in 90 degree angled clamps $7 ea Home Depot: 

used 'scrap' Plexiglas for test runs.. easy on the glue; once 'cured' incredibly strong!

the 'old' box (ah; the memories..)$3.00 from Michael's art chain outlet

finishing touch's. Note Cardas binding post upper left

(below) rear plate drilled 5/16th bit (Caveats: drill 'nice-n-slow' plates easy to crack!)

Post 'post'....... Cardas binding post ($16 per set) gold plated spade

connector type  (DIYCABLE.COM)

maggie in high-heels 

Why spikes? 

(The following is from a text  I found online; it's author and origin  long  since forgotten. 

My gratitude, apologies and any errors to it's rightful owner :)   

  The goal of the exercise is to hold the speaker cabinet perfectly still relative to the free moving  

Speaker voice coil/cone assembly, which ensures that most of the

 electrical energy (musical Signal) imparted into the voice coil is 

converted into acoustic energy (some will always be Converted to heat).

 If the speaker cabinet is free to move, some of the electrical energy

 will go into Moving the cabinet instead of the cone. When this happens,

 the musical signal becomes distorted, Since portions of it are waggling 

the cabinet around instead of driving the loudspeaker cone.  Spikes and 

mastic (Bleak) work in slightly different ways to achieve the same goal. 

Bleak Couples the speaker to the mass of the stand, making it too 

heavy for the speaker motor Assy. (voice coil) to move i.e. for all signal 

frequencies and amplitudes, there is less resistance in Moving the speaker

 cone + air than there is in moving the cabinet + stand. This is why adding 

mass To a speaker cabinet and/or stand improve the quality of the acoustic

 signal we hear.   Spikes on the other hand effectively reduce the contact 

area of the speaker relative to its mass, Making it far more difficult to move.

 To use a real life example, imagine you are pushing a 200lb Box across

 a shiny flat floor. Easy to move huh! Now place the same box on 4 small 

nails sticking Up from the same floor. Impossible to move. Why? Because

 the contact area has been reduced From say 4 sq. feet to 4 sq hundredths

 on an inch. In the first instance, the box is exerting a force Of 0.35lb/sq in. 

onto its contact area. On the nails, the box in exerting a force of 5000lbs/sq inch

Onto its contact area. Again, from the music signal's point of view, the

 effect is to make the cabinet Appear to be a much heavier load to move 

compared to the speaker cone + air.  In summary, speaker stands with 

spikes or mastic prevent the cabinet moving relative to its Surroundings 

and relative to the speaker cone.  Neither speaker stands, spikes nor 

mastic will help when the speaker cabinet itself flexes i.e. moves relative 

to the speaker cone only. This not only perverts the signal (as described

 above) but also emits its own acoustic energy in the form of resonance's 

and colorations.  Hopefully, my rather poor explanation makes it clearer

 why manufacturers build very stiff, well braced cabinets, place spikes

 underneath as well as on top of speaker stands and mass load them

with lead and sand.   To answer your question, spikes work well in almost

 all cases and are probably the best technical choice, especially for rather 

light weight speakers and stands. This is because the effective mass

gain is a multiple of the cabinet weight. Spikes have the obvious disadvantage

 of marring the finish of speaker cabinets and are increasingly difficult to

 handle as speaker weight increases.  Blutac works best when used to couple

 heavier speakers to their stands. The effective mass gain is much lower,

 equal to the weight of the stand but is enhanced when the speaker stands are

themselves spiked to the floor.  Prudently adding mass to speakers 

and stands will enhance the effect of both.  

regards,

(GL)

excess wires trimmed later..

   wires trimmed, nestled in shipping foam; let's rock!

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