All that Dave had given on the Parker Audio web site were the box dimensions, no explicit plans, but how hard can a box be to build, right? As you can see from the plan my speaker design is very straightforward - the only real consideration for me was how to do the front panel as it is double the thickness of all the other panels. We can't get 1.5" MDF in the UK (well at least I have never seen it) so I designed my speakers with two thicknesses of front panel, the inside one being smaller in height and width so it would fit inside the sides, top and bottom. I figured this would give better rigidity than sticking two front panels of the same dimensions to the rest of the speaker. Cutting the wood and driver holes Luckily for me my father and I bought a relatively cheap table saw so the cuts were very easy (after we had replaced some of the table saw components with ones which actually had some precision). I first of all set the saw to the width of the pieces and made all the long cuts - with the table saw fence in position you can run off all the same widths of wood and they will be perfectly identical. Then I made the cross cuts and then cut the holes for the drivers. As luck would have it, my father has a rather useful "fly drill" which he created to cut large holes. It consists of a cutting bit of machine steel which can be positioned up and down an arm which is fitted into the pillar drill chuck. This allowed us to cut perfectly round holes. The alternative would have been to jigsaw out the holes, which also would have been fine. Because of my double front panel design the driver holes had to align as accurately as possible. With eight cramps at hand gluing the speakers together was quite straightforward and over the course of a week I had completely built the cabinets. I started by gluing the inside front panel to the sides, then gluing the outside front panel on, then adding the tops and bottoms and finally the back.
The hardest joint to
glue was the first one - attaching the first side to the inside
front panel. I glued the front to the side and then clamped on the
other side and put another piece inside the back to hold
everything as square as possible. Even so, when applying pressure
with the cramps the joint has a tendency to change angle so it is
important to check and re-check the joint with a square before it
is left to set.
Once all the pieces were glued together and I only had the backs to glue on, I fitted the speaker drivers to ensure they would not present any problems. The Fostex tweeters have eight ribs which protrude about 3mm and you will need to cut notches for these in order to fit them into the cabinet. The screw holes are very close to the ribs so take GREAT CARE when cutting the notches. At this point I also decided to glue a piece of bracing MDF across the cabinet about half way between port tube and bottom and of about 15mm square cross section. I also drilled the holes for the binding posts using a 16mm drill which is large enough to allow enough space for the binding post tags. Then the backs were glued on and, I'm pleased to say, the cabinets were very close to being perfectly square. Wiring The kit came with some CAT-5 cable and no capacitors, so I decided to buy some 24 awg silver wire and teflon insulation with which to wire the speakers plus the recommended Hovland MusiCaps capacitors which were quite expensive. While the backs were gluing on the speakers I attached leads of 300mm (12") to the drivers - the Hovland capacitor being about the same length including leads. Once the speaker cabinets were complete it was a simple matter of passing the leads through the front driver holes and through the binding post holes on the back, attaching the drivers and then turning the speaker around and wiring the leads to the binding post tags. The speakers complete, I excitedly plugged them in to the Zen Select Triode amp for their maiden voyage. I have to say that from the moment I started listening to them, the Parker Audio 95 MkIIs sounded excellent. I was totally blown away by just how smooth, detailed, focused and fast they were. When you start hearing new details, new textures in music you have known and loved for years then you KNOW you are onto something good and I was hearing a lot of new stuff with these speakers! The speed of them is something I had never really heard with any of my speakers before - it lends music a real coherence, and you hear it especially with percussion instruments where everything sounds so tight it makes it feel almost live. These speakers are also the first which have been able to fill my living room when powered by the Zen amp and the bass extension is really good, too. If there is any downside it is that the midband is a little laid back at the moment but having had a chat with Dave, it seems that my choice in using solid silver wiring may not have been the best choice after all and I may well replace this with something else. All in all, it's difficult to fault these speakers and they only cost as much as the old ones I sold on eBay to fund these! Dave Dutill, the designer of these speakers is also a very friendly helpful guy (as well as being a loudspeaker genius) so I can say that this journey has been an extremely rewarding one. The speakers need finishing off, probably with a veneer, and I still need to put the Deflex panels in which Dave recommends - I shall post an update as to how they sound once they are broken in.
I would like to thank John for sharing his speaker building journey with the 95 MKII's.
Parker Audio 7232 Hopeful Road Florence KY 41042 Phone: 859 512 3566
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