These speakers are an implementation of a design published as the "Esquire". URBC member udamahan made a pair of these and we were all very impressed. I wanted to make a pair also, but without the sloping front baffle and using a built-in, front-firing duct instead of a rear firing port.

Construction was pretty straightforward. I cut the panels out of 3/4" MDF, notched the edges for dado joints on all corners, cut the driver holes with a drill press mounted adjustable hole cutter, cut the duct opening with a jigsaw, and glued them up. Not too complicated. The dado joints are nice because they keep everything nice and square during assembly and provide a tight seal without the need for any caulk. The finish is just a few coats of satin polyeurothane to protect them, but leave the nature of thier MDF construction visible.

The 4 binding posts shown in the blurry photo above are for bi-wiring the speaker. The upper pair of terminals is for the tweeter's high pass filter, and the lower pair is for the mid/woofer's low pass filter. The jumpers allow a single pair of wires to be used for hookup. I am a big fan of the brass thumbscrew binding post with ring lugs on the inside. Directly soldered connections may be a better choice for ultimate sound quality and durability, but the brass screws allow a degree of modularity and simplicity. They are also quite cheap and available at your friendly neighborhood hardware store :) Anybody know how brass is as a conductor, especially as it oxidizes?

The crossovers came pre-assembled from Madisound. They did a good job of constructing this somewhat complex 4th order crossover. They built each crossover on 2 boards, one for the low pass section and one for the high pass section. I mounted these boards on the rear and top of the enclosure with wood screws and plastic standoffs. Circuit boards definitely make crossover mounting easier. The results are tidier that direct-wired parts all over the enclosure, but the inductors tend to be rather close to each other which can cause them to interact, which is bad. Always mount inductors at right angles to each other to minimize this interaction. All internal wiring uses solid core 14g copper wire. I have read enough bad things about stranded wire to stay away from it when possible. (ok, so the speakers are wired to the amp with stranded wire, but that is temporary!)

The sound is similar to other minimonitors in detail, but the bass, while not terribly extended and by no means full power is tight and sufficient for most smallish rooms. When set on the floor, the bass gets a bit more robust, but perhaps a bit sloppier as well.