Mekasonic Loudspeakers - Initial Developments

Initial developments of Mekasonic Loudspeaker

In my previous post I wrote about how I started my venture of making  mekasonic loudspeaker.

After the ball started rolling, the next focus was up gradation of product quality with better look and improvement of technical specifications. It involved a lot of experiments spending time and money to get results.

Initially I started finding out the users -both individuals and commercial , who were looking for good quality speakers. That was through my friends, relatives and other contacts.

It was hard to convince people that I have made a good quality Loudspeaker here which can be compared with branded products. I used to visit them with prior appointments and arrange for live demonstrations.

One of my observations was that the individual users were interested only for high fidelity speakers - woofer and tweeter for using with their high power stereo amplifiers. Most of the amplifier and speaker systems were imported brands. I used to try out my speaker by comparing with the international rivals when I could easily assess my discrepancies to upgrade and modify my speakers as much as possible.

mekasonic 12 inches foam surround woofer, midrange and tweeters

On other hand I started visiting commercial users mostly sound system hirers and small auditoriums who had requirements in quantity but they were difficult to deal with.  I found most of them were using speakers for PA application.They used to prefer horn units instead of speaker boxes.

A mekasonic 12" speaker with enclosure for small auditorium and Public Address systems.

 

At this point I decided to give priority to PA type speakers as I felt the selling possibility would be more for these speakers. I ordered for some general purpose  fixed edge paper cones instead of rubber or foam surround cones. I had chosen three sizes - 8", 10" and 12" cones.

A popular mekasonic 10" General purpose speaker model GP 10

Here I should mention about the names of speaker components which are common for all sizes : 

1. Basket
2. Paper cone, spider & dust cap
3. Magnet
4. Pole plates
5. Coil
6. Gasket

Above items are assembled together with special adhesive and hardware in proper manner and skill to achieve desired sound output from the speaker.

Most of the Speaker basket manufacturers of Delhi were making mild steel sheet basket. I preferred to use those baskets for 8 inch and below.

8" MS basket from Delhi

For higher sizes I preferred cast aluminium body. Aluminium casting can be either pressure die casting or sand casting. Pressure die casting is like plastic injection moulding which requires an expensive mould. Get up of product is very attractive but until the quantity requirement is very high, it is not worth it. Sand casting is much cheaper. Casting is made from a wooden pattern and after proper machining as per drawing it takes shape as required. So, I had to find out good pattern makers and lathe workshops for getting a good quality speaker basket. After many trials, some good presentable models were finalised.

12" , 10" and 8" cast aluminium baskets developed in Kolkata.

Finally, it is the market place where you have to sit for an exam. After making a few speakers of different sizes and capacities and many hours of testing and trial, I decided to contact electronic component dealers of Madan street and Chandni chowk area (Kolkata) and some of them took interest in mekasonic speakers. This is where the journey starts.

In my next post I shall try to cover that episode.