A coworker of mine was impressed by the sound of my Emerald Towers, so he decided to build his own speakers using the same Cubicon D tubes. When he received his tubes however, they were of noticeably reduced quality than the ones I had received many years earlier. He decided to go with a similar but much more stury product, and I ended up with his Cubicon tubes, what a deal! I thought they would make the perfect pillars for a computer desk, and better still, being hollow, I could use them for speaker enclosures. Wanting to have rather inexpensive and simple speakers, I chose the Dayton 5.25" woofers, magnetically shielded just in case the monitor or other sensitive computer parts were next to the speaker. I tried looking for a low cost shielded dome tweeter at the time, but just could not come up with anything. So, I went with a cheap piezo tweeter instead, which not only has no magnet, but doesn't require a crossover. Of course NOW, four months later, there are oodles of cheap shielded dome tweeters around. I had some 23" plywood rounds that I scavenged from work which would be perfect on the bottom of the tubes. I made a front baffle out of particleboard, and painted it as well as the base with hunter green hammered paint. I find this paint is pretty durable and looks a lot nicer than any kind of non-textured spray paint. Some nice gold binding posts I also grabbed from spare parts at work, and found some fabric at Jo-Ann Fabric in the discount upholstery bin, which matches my couch quite nicely. I added some 2 x 2's inside the Cubicon tubes, not really for strength, but so that I would have something to which I could screw the top and bottom caps. The top caps for my new table used to be on the bottom of my Emerald Towers, before I upgraded them. I really wanted to do no crossover at all, but I found that the sound of the 5.25" Dayton was poor if I did not use an inductor to roll off it's high end. Still, a crossover having one component isn't so bad. I chose a ported design so that I wouldn't need to use a subwoofer to get good bass, and they small Daytons do not disappoint in that regard! I did not permanently attach the front baffle, but rather secured it with some nice brass machine screws, so I could always make a different baffle later.



Here you see a comparison between my new table pillars and the Emerald Towers. I cut the tubes to a height such that the top of the desk would be just over 29" from the floor. Now that I had some legs, I needed to decide on a top for my desk. Keeping with the theme, it had to be simple to construct, solid, and relatively inexpensive. A solid core interior door from Home Depot fit the bill perfectly, at only $43. I can't remember anymore whether I got oak or mahogany. I put on many layers of dark cherry stain, so the original wood is barely visible now. The edges were not finished, so I painted them black. I found a protective screen (slightly damaged) from a big-screen television at work, and am using it in the center of the desk as a protector. It also tends to act as a mirror and fingerprint magnet, but it looks great when it's clean. Initially, I thought the desk might be a little wobbly, because it is only supported in two places in the middle, not at all on the edges. I knew weight wasn't a problem, as I had pretested it before assembly by standing on top of it. After using it for several months though, it is plenty sturdy enough that I am not planning to add any additional support which could ruin the appearance. It's a bit odd not have any drawers or shelves underneath, but I have adapted. I also built a stand for my computer case on the far right side of the desk, required so that it would fit over the circular desk pillar. The foam and cover on the side and back of the case is to reduce noise from the computer.

I am fairly impressed by how good the speakers sound. The bass is quite excellent and goes very loud for only two 5.25" woofers. The midrange is pretty good, though I wouldn't say great. The high end definitely could use some tweaking. It's not bad, and these ARE only $4 tweeters with no crossover. I am not going to fiddle with that as I will rarely be listening to these speakers critically. Also, 99% of the time I will be listening to them quite a ways off-axis. My initial plan was to use these as main computer speakers, but I have since upgraded to a new surround receiver which includes a center surround channel. So, these speakers are now being used for that extra channel (there are two channels, but they carry the same signal). I'm currently working on some type of switching configuration which will let me use them either for the computer sound or the center surround.