DIY Wilson Clone Speakers?

The Wilsons use good drivers in exceptional cabinets, and it is the cabinets that are hardest to reproduce, especially using MDF.

I'd malso suggest a WATT/Puppy clone and there are several designs listed above. You could do a search for Wilson clones using Google. I've seen WAMM clones I think but I don't recall where.

If I were building a WATT/Puppy clone, I would try to match the original as there are newer, poissibly better drivers and the crossover would be too tough.

I'd look at something like SEAS W26 for the Puppies instead of Dynaudio 21w54 they used. Then the SEAS W18 EX for the midrange instead of the Scanspeak 8545 and either the SEAS Millenium tweeter or the Focal Audiom mentioned above.

As far as cabinets, build them using the thickest MDF you can with good bracing, and I'd seriously consider having the front baffle made out of Corian.

I'm not a crossover expert but if it were me I'd use an active digital crossover like the dbx Driverack PA (www.driverack.com) and triamping.

This way you can measure and tweak to your hearts content.

You could build the above for $1600 for the drivers, $500 for the crossover and the cost of the cabinets. It should sound great done well.

Good luck

Thanks for everyone's help, it is much appreciated!

I'll post any updates or links I find to projects.

Thanks again,
Brad

It was fun! At times frustrating but well worth it. I was concerned with same issues, Steved is mentioning, and used extensive bracing (check North Creek Music) and a lot of lead sheet inside the "Watt" cabinet to mimik density and weight of the original cabinet materials. X-over is easy but parts can be expensive. If you have any more questions you can e-mail me.

http://home.att.net/~dragan_v/home.html

Regards!

Regards!

First off as somewhat of a parttime wood worker I can tell you that you will not and can not produce the product that Wilson does. I had met David Wilson at one of the Electronics shows in the early 90's and the man is an absoloute psycho fanatic, about making the best.

I own a pair of Watt2/Puppy1'S and I can tell you the precision on the manufacture is miles better than I am capable. I can not work with Corian and get the precise same angle cuts like Wilson Audio did. My father was a life long electrical designer and worked on high end military transmitters, and he could not produce the type of x-over as Wilson has. Lastly if making a pair of the Puppys you can not buy the Dynaudio drivers in the US any more. That said you can build a decent pair of clone watt/puppys, but if you shop around you can probably pick up a used older pair as I did for not much more than you will spend on the up-scale drivers, the corian, special mdf and the high end crossover components.

I did find a kit on the net that was for building a pair of X-1's. That is now another entire different story. Those are some big cash even on the used mart...May be worth taking a stab at making a pair. Good Luck.

Eldragon,

You thought the crossover was easy? Are you sure you did it right, doing you own T-S parameter measurements for the drivers, and measurements for all the drivers, then again as a system, taking those initail measurements and using a CAD program to optimise the 3-way crossover? I'm into the speaker building hobby and there really is no such thing as an easy 3 way crossover. And I'm not talking about a crossover like one might see in car audio. Not trying to insult or question your methods, just suggesting to somebody trying to do the same that you will not even come close to a good design without doing all the things mentioned above. I recently got back into the DIY side of the hobby and let just say that in the 10 years since I last tried to do this things have become much more sophisticated. Word of advice if you want to DIY, go for a 2-way. If you really need the bass, use a powered sub. Those actually are pretty easy to build successfully. But you could get into it with a sub too, just a matter of you patience and willingness to learn.