Concert System Project

The four original metal clasps that hold each speaker in place say: Made in Southend on Sea, Adam Hall. And they’re well old. That clinched it for me. All the same one knows an A.S.S cab from a copy. Copies are nowhere near as solid or built to such a high standard. The frames of the covers were built just as well as the cabs. But there is a funny story in how I came to acquire these cabs that Tony A.S.S played a direct part in without him knowing.
I bought these cabs around February 2008. I saw them on E-bay. But within less than two days the listing disappeared. I was gutted, so I contacted the seller as he had another listin, and I said what happened to the Concert System cabs ,did you do a deal with someone? He replied no, the man who ran A.S.S., Tony had contacted E-bay and told them to pull the listing as they weren’t cabs his company had made ,and were being falsely advertised.
So I emailed the guys selling them this photo of one stack of Froggy’s rig that I had taken a couple of years before and said to them, maybe this will help you convince whoever’s blocked your sale your cabs are A.S.S cabs. They didn't bother to re-list the auction but contacted me a month latter and said make us an offer we need to shift them. Which I did.
I’m pretty sure if they had of ran the original auction I wouldn’t have won them as I didn’t have much cash. But thanks to Tony’s ’interference’ they came my way.

Mental, check the blue backdrop that's hanging behind the lens on Froggy's rig. It's my user profile image. I'd never noticed it was behind Froggys' stack until just now. I'll do a thread at some point showing these backdrops, they're done by the guy who sprays the McCarran Formula 1 cars. I have a good thirty drops done by him.

Here’s some images of me making the cabinets for the large radial horns. It was only because the Concert Systems original catalogue spec sheet had been posted on the other site I was able to do this, as the spec sheet gave the measurements of the systems cabinets, and as said before JBL made a near identical sized horn eons ago and I was able to compare the measurements of the JBL horns and the missing A.S.S fibreglass ones.
When two JBL’s came up for sale from one of the people on Squat Juice, I was like - I’ll be having those, thank you very much!
Up until then I’d never bought a sheet of birch-ply before. It’s such good sturdy wood. I do like the smell of timber.
These were made Feb 09, and as I don’t have a workshop, my flat has to double for that purpose on occasion, especially when it’s really cold and there’s little daylight to work in the garden.
The way I went about making these was to work out how deep the cab needed to be and then make a template for it out of paper, which you can see on the sheet of ply. To make the template, I put the ally horn on the paper and ran a pencil along the horns radial curve to get the curve on paper. I wanted a tapered cab to match the same angles as the taper on the A.S.S lower mid the aluminium horn sits on. Once I had drawn the aluminium horns cabs largest surface on paper with perfect angles either side, I cut out the paper template, so it was just a paper version of what I was aiming for in wood, I then marked its outline on the wood. I did that twice. Then I cut those out, and then did that again on a second sheet of ply for the second cab. And added rebates.
Then I made the sides for the cabinets, then glued each cabinets four pieces together. Once together out comes a jack plane which is the bit I find most fun as that’s when the cab starts to look nice, as you round off the sharp right angled edges.
I had bought some handles, and held them to the cab where I wanted them to go. I drew around them, cut out the middle hole for the handles bulge to fit through, and then routed the rest so the handles fitted slightly sunken below the level of the cabs wood.
It’s a similar story for the lens cabs and the smaller top flare. These kinds of cabs are not that difficult to make, but getting them right involves meticulous checking and rechecking of your measurements, and only ever cutting when you are 100% certain that when you cut your wood the individual pieces will be symmetrical and identical, as paired pieces. Therefore when you start to put them together they won’t be wonky. (just writing, and seeing the word wonky is almost frightening)
I’ve never made anything with a jig, and I’m not even sure what a jig is, other than a dance. I think jigs have something to do with when you are making loads of the same thing.
I look forward to the day I set foot in a professional speaker manufacturing workshop and see the specialized tools that are used for the mass production of speakers.

using a router in your kitchen man it must of took you weeks to clean up all the dust smiley36
loving your refurb project keep the pics coming..... smiley32

Yeah Bee you are right, a kitchen isn’t ideal, but if it’s all you’ve got then one’s thankful for that. It’s not the mess that bothers me it’s the noise a router makes. What the neighbours must think I don’t know. Actually I do the neighbours are well cool here.
At present the lounge has got an MX600 plonked in the middle that I’m stripping. Darn thang keeps getting in the way of the TV remotes beam.
I stumbled across this image on the net of one stack of a Concert System being used at an outdoor party (the best), on a disused gnarly old industrial area in Hackney. I’ve heard a Concert System outdoors once, and that one had its lens’s. It was nestled at the bottom of a steep V shaped valley, I sat up on one of the lofty slopes totally absorbed in the clean solid bass the system was chucking out. Can’t believe I own one of these systems, I’m so looking forward to the day it too is outdoors doing what it does best. There's few years to go before that’ll happen, but can’t wait! In the meantime I’m working on a nice little A.S.S system that uses just one MX450, an MX1200 and an MX121RT. That’s going to be my little party system to go in a van and drive somewhere beautiful with some mates, pickle ourselves in psychoactive yummyness’s and have a most bally-hoo time listening to music, which is what it’s all about.
However I’ve come up with a completely nutty idea that I’m going to do with the mentioned system. I recently bought a para-gliding wing - you know those parachute like devices you attach to yourself, along with a powered propeller, and sore up high where the eagles roam. Well how’s this for a first, I’ll lay my MX450, MX1200 and MX121RT on their backs, on the ground so they pointing up to the clouds, and are throwing the music upwards. I’ll put a favourite C.D on, then glide up into the air a few hundred feet. Then turn the props engine off, and float around.
If we have the toys for the boyz they have to be played with! smiley14

lol i know what you meen. My partner has banned me from building in ower new house.....Boooooo, so im designing a work shop im going to build in the garden 20x15 feet, a brick base about 6 high then a timber frame on top. Cant wait to get it done, mind you ill use it for my day work first then building cabs at the weekend. Ill post up some pics when its built. You gotta let us know when the system is ready to take out would love to hear it. Ive only heard from other what they sound like, but they allways sound better when your in front of the base bins smiley16