best wood for speaker cabinets ? oak,cherry, balti

A fairly new and non-traditional alternative is bamboo plywood. Not expensive, fairly dense, and a bit "greener".

http://www.calibamboo.com/bambooplywood.html

What did Kondo recommend for speaker material?

Mattzack2, I just took a look at the #3 kit. The birch ply is a no brainer, imo. They look fun enough to build, maybe you can play with a couple of proto builds and see which you like in your system. Careful. It can be addicting. :-)

Thank you, Isochronism. My amateur status shows itself in the finishes. ;-)

@Photon46...good info man. Yeah, clamping the speaker stands with all the layers and glue was no easy task. :-) Luckily I have friends that helped out. It was completely worth it, as they look great!

I was thinking of using the same technique for compression/clamping that Magico uses. They have a steel bar that runs through the layers, and then I would screw that down for compression. We'll see how that turns out. :-D

@Ngjockey...that looks promising, but spendy.

Mot

Matt - I don't quite understand analogy with guitar woods. Cedar and Spruce are two woods with the highest strength to weight ratio and often used for the guitar tops to make it vibrate well. You don't want vibration and the one of the best materials is high density MDF or stone (marble, granite etc). Some speakers (like Paradigm) have internal crate in form of crossing boards along and across that have holes (circles) cut outs resembling honeycomb. Some more expensive speakers have either irregular shapes or round sides getting narrower at the back, to prevent standing waves.