This project continues by taking a step forward, then two steps back...

First, let´s talk about the step forward, which is the damping. It´s not a secret that computer speaker boxes from the 90s are acustical nightmares. They vibrate like crazy even in low volumes and low frequencies sounds hollow and inaccurate, generally just awful. I used 1,8 mm thick STP Silverline damping mat to add some weight to the surfaces, and on top of that I added 8 mm thick STP Splen 08 for noise absorption.

In addition to deadening, my original plan for these speakers was simply just to improve the aesthetics of the boxes, and keep the original tweeters and woofers. I painted the boxes bright white and the label in silver.

I managed to rip the label of the passive unit in half, so I decided to fill the remaining holes with plastic putty. After drying a couple of days, the surface looked smooth and flat, nearly perfect. But after the paint had been settling for a week, the line between the putty and the original surface has become clearly visible...

And this is where it all goes to shit. The passive speaker unit came together very nicely but the active one gave me really hard time. Attaching the amplifier required me to take off the label that I had already glued on. Very carefully, I tried to pry it off but these labels being ~25 years old, they may have gone somewhat brittle. So, the label ripped, the paint on it chipped and also the white surface got damaged around it. Nonetheless, I still tried to put it together. It turns out that the buttons with their thin paint coat are too thick for their mouting holes. On top of that, the ribbon cable of the amplifier was ripped off. FUCKING HELL!

You can probably imagine that at this point I was extremely frustrated and agitated, and wanted to burn these speakers in the yard. But after I sat myself down and had glass of single malt, I realized that I have an opportunity to do something really cool these boxes. Even though it adds over 100 € on the original 30 € budget, I really think this project will be more creative and satisfying. To be continued... 😀

Looking forward to seeing what happens next! I think we've all had small, fun projects get out of hand and turn into expensive epics but they're the ones I remember best 🐱‍🏍

Thanks! It´s obvious at this point that this project is a slow one and isn´t even nearly finished. But there´s progress:

I added a little more dampening. There´s a little paint on the dampening of the front panels because I had to paint them again.

Due to setbacks of the previous post, I had to rethink this whole project and decided to turn both boxes into passive speakers. I filled the holes with plastic putty, trimmed them with spray putty. This isn´t as easy as it seems, it takes a LOT of patience! I took my time with the prep work and it finally paid off.