Akai/Foster JMI FE103 Open Baffle completed

I got the Akai/Foster 12" with the JMI FE-103 clone 4" completes today on baffles that have seen lots of different speaker configurations in them.

This set up seems to sound sweet to my ears, the last modification I did was I added a single 22uf capacitor in line with the 4" speaker in first order to roll it off at 900hz. The little 4" woofer was working to hard to reach the lower bass notes and had cone breakup.

I opted to mirror image this pair.

Next Open Baffle Project: Akai/Foster 12" woofers with Foster FE-103 4" clone full range

My next open baffle project will be this Akai/Foster 12" woofer matched up with a JMI Japanese Machinery and Metals 4" full range speaker.

The JMI full range resembles a Foster FE-103 speaker in every fashion. The JMI and Akai are both ferrite magnet speakers. Presently I have them set up on a temporary baffle until I make some new baffles. I am running both speakers without a crossover, relying on their natural roll off, so far this combination is the one I like the best out of the three I tried today.

Of course the finished product will not look like this, this was just a temporary set up to get an idea of matching the speakers and the sound.

I tried these 4" alnico full range also and found I needed to croos them over with a 15uf capacitor, still the 4" speakers shouted louder than the woofer and the bass was mismatched to the woofer output.

Last I tried a pair of Foster FE-163 speakers, these too were much more efficient than the 12" woofers and sounded unbalanced. I think the Foster Fe-163 will saved for a back horn loaded speaker build in the future.