Back Loaded Horn Speaker Plans Full Range Speaker

You want the hex screws to be tight, but dont over tighten them.

Like many of you, I love speakers and DIY Audio, but my woodworking skills are mediocre and I dont have a suitable setup and proper tools for loudspeaker enclosure building.

As a result I am often browsing the many DIY speaker kits that are available.

When I came across the Tang Band D4-1 DIY Horn Speaker Kit, which is pre-cut (no cutting or drilling no saw dust), pre-finished (no painting or staining) and looks like it goes together much like ready-to-assemble furniture, I figured it would be the perfect kit that can be built indoors as winter already had a firm grip on Winnipeg.

One week after ordering the speaker kit arrived via UPS from a warehouse in California in two boxes with shipping weights of 11 lbs (5kg) and 49 lbs (22.3kg).

The speaker kit was packaged very well and there was no damage to any parts.

The smaller box contained the speaker drivers, hardware, damping material, hex keys and instructions.

The enclosure comes as a flat pack which was extremely well packaged, double boxed with durable foam padding.

The speaker enclosure consists of CNC cut HDF (high-density fiberboard) and the exterior faces are pre-finished with a low-gloss clear finish that I could not identify.

Examining the enclosure (Photograph 1, exploded view) you will note that the horn is not the typical back loaded horn.

Back Loaded Horn Speaker Plans Full Range Speaker

The D4-1 speaker kit comes with the 4 (100 mm) Tang Band W4-1617 full range speaker driver.

The cone is paper made from sugar-cane fiber and mounted with a rubber surround.

The noted sensitivity of 89dB 1W 1m is optimistic - I measured about 86 dB with a radio shack 33-2050 sound pressure level meter.

If you have built ready-to-assemble furniture before you are likely over qualified.

The kit comes complete with everything you will need except for an optional soldering iron which we will discuss later on.

The step-by-step instructions are very simple to follow with plenty of illustrations.

All of the parts are clearly labeled with a lettered sticker and this is how they are referred to in the instructions.

The photos below show the basic idea of the enclosure assembly.

Be sure to read through the instruction (14 pages 10 minutes) before you get going.

I used a marker to label the pieces which are only marked on one side.

There really are no tricks to construction, just follow the instructions.

Only peel back a little of the backing to expose the very sticky-back felt to get you started.

The large damping sheets are floppy and if they come together it may make a mess much like when packing tape comes together.