Foam Board Mini Karlsonator Speakers

✏️ 2020-10-31 🏷️ music, hardware

In October, my dad and I built a pair of speakers our of foam board. He’s a bit of an audiophile and loves working on hardware projects, so we decided to follow a mini Karlsonator build we found on DIY Audio. The exact guide we used is the 0.40 Single TC9FD version, which is somewhere deep in this thread (DIY Audio) for the 0.53 Dual TC9FD version.

The speakers pack a punch and the bass was noticeably deeper when we added the front panel. Here are some pictures from the build!

Initial foam board cuts

Here’s the speaker — the TC9FD full range woofer.

Speaker, TC9FD

Gluing the internal “horn” to the side panel.

Gluing inside to side panel

We deviated from the build guide slightly here and added the tiny support pieces that hold the internal folds in shape on both side panels. This made glueing the last side panel a bit challenging but gave the enclosures some more stability.

Cross-section

Both sides attached

Finally we mounted the speakers and top/back piece. Using some laptops as weights for the glue. The two black front plates were the last step.

Assembly almost complete