TLl;DR:  I’m gonna show you have $8 bucks worth of 2-By’s will change your life.  Then we plan for the Post Christmas Speaker Scrounge – which leads to phased speakers.  (And maybe permanent hearing…what????)

Get 2-by-4s for Christmas

Um, after you buy all my books, and buy a Peoplenomics subscription for everyone in your state…ahem…

Step out to the shop.  Look at the bench.  Carefully edited out,.  See the two 2-by-4s that overlap and are virtually free storage over the bench?

Maybe not a perfect picture, then.  At either end, there is an 8-inch round heavily-creosoted pole. For my shop is a pole building.  Between said poles hangs two overlapping 2-by-4s.  The middle has about ten  2 3/4″ wood screws and on either end four or five 3 1/2 inches into the poles.

A quick peek at the handy Glover Ref Guide led me to undestand this week why it looked like it was beginning to sag in the middle.  And that’s when I remembered: cheap lumber teaches expensive lessons. Even if I pretend the span is only 15-feet…

• Bending limit (No.2 SPF ballpark):
• Deflection limit (L/360, typical comfort/sag criterion):

If you try this in your shop use a 2-by-6 or better. Mine hasn’t broken, yet. But I have a “disaster placeholder” on the project list.

Here’s the Lesson on “Free Storage”

“Project creep” bites your ass every time it can.  See, this was going to be a simple 2-by-4 span.  I just wanted to put a screwdriver rack up where it could be grabbed on the fly.

• Then a week later, I got to thinking “A power outlet would be nice…”  So I ran wire.
• The next week saw a properly wired grounded outlet.
• “Well, as long as I have this, how about a 2 foot fluorescent?”  And it was so.
• A week or two later, I though “You know, I could hang a cordless drill up there.”
• A week later and I was putting the impact driver up, too.
• And the week after, an 8 tool rack for the zip saw, grinder and….
• After that I was done. Well, until the next year.
• That’s when the strip tube went out.  “Hell, I will mount a big-ass flood LED!”
• But it was  a pitch to turn on and off, so a voice-control outlet was installed.
• I rested about a month.  “Yeah, it would be be nice to be able to turn on the central vacuum with a voice command…”  So, that happened with an Amazon Dot living on top of what used to be a light glare box.
• Then G2 was here for a while – he liked the fire and dispatch radio receiver in the shop so not to miss a call, so up that went, too.
• He took off to build server farms (six-figure jobs are a rarity in the woods, but time off and moonshine are not).  So with no helper, I got one of those fancy DeWalt gyro screwdrivers.  Which came with a charger…and so up it went, as well.

The back side didn’t stay bare for long either:

OMG…more screwdrivers, star and Torx live there, punches, markers, squares, half a dozen hammers and more…

Our first tale is nearly done now…get more coffee. I’ll shut up and we’ll move along.

After Christmas Garage Sales

I have had “build the best-ever Garage Sound:” system – ever – anywhere.  On my list for 10-years+.   Sources are not as particular as speakers…and now we’re sneaking up on something.  I’m old, but not that old that I don’t “crank it” now and then.

Old Speakers: The Best Hundred Bucks You’ll Ever Hear

I can’t think of a more overpriced and underappreciated chunk of electronica than speakers. They’re the orphans of the audio world—big, heavy, not shiny, and too honest about physics to fit modern marketing. Yet, when people upgrade their home theaters or spring for Bluetooth doodads at Christmas, the old speakers—the real ones—get tossed aside like last week’s wrapping paper.

Which is fine by me.  It’s something to shop on Craigslist and OfferUp and eBay and…..

Come January or February, if you’ve got a hundred bucks burning a hole in your pocket (or five twenties that don’t), go treasure hunting. Estate sales, pawn shops, thrift stores, Craigslist, even the curb on trash day—there’s gold out there wearing walnut veneer and a layer of dust. I’ve rescued more than a few.  Look at the Free! listings every day.  Even if you don’t find speakers, you can find furniture, sometimes fencing – all kinds of valuable stuff.

Speaker Checking 101

There’s an art here.  A dime store (inflated to Dollar stores now, huh? Economic miracles, anyone?) Cheapest little multi-meter you can find.  You want to find out if the speaker your considering has “continuity”.  If it does, go to the physical inspection part.

Pull the grille, check the cones, very gently pushing while listening to the surrounds. That;’s the foam (or other material) ring.  Half the time, all they need is new foam or a solder joint touched up. For the price of lunch, you can have a pair of vintage boxes that’ll rattle your rib cage and make your neighbors nostalgic for Led Zeppelin.

Youtube and lots of DIY sites can walk you through “cone rebuilding” and I won’t kid you, for an electronics geek in high school, this can be a very nice side business.  I had my old University Presidios  rebuilt in about 1972 and it cost a fortune.  But your grand kids speaker cone kits.  Re-coning speakers (por moi) is a lot like fly-tying.  You need to do it once in life (and catch a fish on it).  Re-coning speakers is like that for me,.

The funny thing? People think they need 500 watts per channel to sound “good.” What they really need is efficiency. Most of those ‘70s and ‘80s speakers—Advent, KLH, Pioneer, Sansui, Cerwin-Vega, AR, Polk—were designed for real-world amps. A clean 20 watts per channel from a decent receiver will make them sing. Even cranked, average listening only uses a couple of watts most of the time.

The rest of that “100-watt RMS” bragging power is just headroom for peaks—like a safety margin for drum hits and thunderclaps.  In a real sound room, it’s nice to have a measured +110 db but that’s maybe for a 6 AM shot of Stones.  Sure, if you’re doing Wall of Sound for the Dead heads…then whatever.

I’ve run tests in the shop with a wattmeter on the amp. With the volume at “comfortably loud,” the meter hovers between 1 and 5 watts. Crank it until the windows threaten divorce? Maybe 20. That’s it. So when someone tells you they need a thousand-watt amp for “punchy bass,” smile politely and remember: decibels are logarithmic, not linear. Double the power gets you just three more decibels—barely noticeable. If you really want louder, add another pair of speakers. Or better yet, get them in phase and positioned right.

Phasing of Speakers – the Short Course

“In phase” and “out of phase” describe how the two stereo speakers move relative to each other when driven by the same signal. It’s all about timing and polarity of the sound waves.

In Phase

Definition: Both speaker cones move forward and backward together when a positive voltage hits the terminals.

Result: The pressure waves from each speaker’s field reinforce each other.

• Sound:
• Centered vocals (voices seem to come from the middle).
• Full, rich bass.
• Normal stereo imaging and depth.

Polarity check: Red to red, black to black (positive to positive, negative to negative) from amp to speakers.

Out of Phase

Definition: One speaker’s polarity is reversed — when one cone moves forward, the other moves backward.

Result: The pressure waves cancel each other, especially at low frequencies.

Sound:

• Bass drops dramatically or disappears.
• Vocals sound diffuse or hollow, as if “outside” the stereo field.
• The stereo image loses focus and seems to come from everywhere or nowhere.

Polarity check: One speaker wired backward (red to black, black to red).

Simple Listening Test

• Play a mono recording (or switch your receiver to mono).
• Sit centered between speakers.
• If the sound feels centered and solid, speakers are in phase.
• If it sounds hollow or spatially vague, they’re out of phase.

There’s something satisfying about bringing those old boxes back to life. You can feel the air move, the music breathe. No DSP algorithms pretending to know better than your ears. Just electrons, magnets, and a good cone doing what it was born to do.

So next time you see a sad pair of speakers sitting by the road, don’t think “junk.” Think “potential.” They may be old, they may be heavy, but they’re probably waiting for someone who still remembers what real sound feels like.

And if you ever wonder how much power it takes to shake the rafters—remember: not much. Just enough to move a little air and a lot of soul. 85 db for a long term listening max.  But a cheap meter on Amazon.  Stuff that in your stocking.

Assaulting Battery

A simple D cell.  Two clip leads.  Two speakers where you can see the cones.  E.G. grills off.

Black lead to bottom of D cell (that’s the ( – ) side. Goes the ground or ( – ) speaker terminal,.

Now as the battery is attached, the speaker will make a “click” and the cone will move *(usually out).  The behavior of the “matching” speaker should be the same.  If not, remember that when wiring.  Make sure your speakers are in phase.

There – ready to help around the house?  We have turkey thawing and after scallops last night, maybe on to teriyaki chicken tonight.

I’m still debating if we will have a column Thursday.  The guilt-ridden protestant in me says “Hell yeah!:”  The reductionist in me says “If you have to get up, thanksgiving seems like false advertising, don’t it?

Can’t please everyone, guess.

Write when you’re ready to gobble.  I will restrain my ADHD pun driver which is screaming for a ref to  George Gobel?  Shh. We don’t want to trigger the Huna Pun Police – his brother deserves a day of rest.

And so we march, 2-by-4, into the unwritten future just past the past ure…

Write when the voices pass,

[email protected]

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