I had always wanted to try sugar cube speakers after seeing what Kevin had been achieving with them, unfortunately DigiKey, Farnell, Element14 etc etc charge a lot for shipping so it wasn't worth it to use them to get some for experimenting.
For those of us over the duck pond from the US we have RS Components, where I found these; with free shipping to boot!.
http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/miniature-speakers/1176049/http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/miniature-speakers/1176047/As luck would have it though they were out of stock on the smaller one and I had to wait over 2 months for them to become back in stock. When that happened I duly ordered 5 of each for experimenting purposes; not all speakers being equal.
Today I installed a pair of the longer ones in an Austrains CLP. This loco previously had a single iPhone speaker in it which was not all that impressive. The difference in sound from a single iPhone speaker to two of these "sugar cubes" was phenomenal!
I chose the longer speakers as the model is set up for two 28mm round speakers (which you can only use one as steps in the body prevent using any baffle for the front speaker).
I built the enclosures the same way as Kevin has described, though on the long sides I did laminate two strips of different height of styrene together first, to make a ledge for the speaker to sit on - to help to keep the speaker level when I glued it in.
As there are no openings in the bodywork I made a narrow base with rounded ends for the enclosure so the sound could escape back down through the weight and out the bottom, as had been originally designed by the factory.
There's a lot of work to go on this model, like redoing all the wiring (it's shabby), upgrading the ditch lights, new coupler mounts, seeing if I can add working marker lights and weathering but right now I'm happy with the sugar cube speaker experiment. I'll be ordering more of these speakers for sure.
- Tim
