VH-1 speaker cabinet
© Valutronic, Gothenburg, Sweden
drawing and list of materials

IMORTANT! The front is situated recessed 10mm into the cabinet. The reason for this is that the speaker membranes should be protected if the cabinet would be placed on the floor on its front. If you don´t care about this, you can make the box 390 mm deep instead, placing the front in line with the edge of the sidewalls. In that case change all 400 mm measures below to 390 mm. (Sidewalls 1350x390mm, top & bottom 390x250mm)

If there is anything about this design you don´t understand, you can contact us by email. Our email address is, in this case, email@valutronic.se.
If we don´t get too many questions, we will answer as soon as we can. But please read carefully before writing to us. There is a lot of info on our HSV-1E and VH-1 pages, and the information you seek may already be there.

List of material (ALL parts are made from 16mm = 5/8'' hard fibreboard or MDF) for two VH-1 cabinets = one stereo pair:

The building of a VH-1 horn cabinet is very simple.
First of all: If you haven´t done it already, make the holes for the speakers on the front plate, and drill the holes for the speaker terminal on the back plate before you start glueing the parts together.
The figures you see on the drawing show the distance between the middle of the holes and the edge of the front plate. 85mm=3.35'', 710mm=27.95''
The depth from the back of the front to the front of the 840mm/33.1'' inner part is 150mm=5.9''

The cut-out for the bass/midrange speaker should be 185mm, and for the tweeter 75mm if you use the original HSV-1E speaker kit. (Click here for more info about the kit.)

A) Start by glueing the 90x250mm (3.54 x 9.84'')and 840x250mm (33.1 x 9.84'') inner parts together in a straight angle in this way. Notice how the two parts are put together (no glue on the 90x250mm/3.54x9.84'' surfaces):

B) Lay one of the sidewalls (1350x400mm / 53.15 x 15.75) on a table or on the floor. You glue the parts for the rest of the cabinet on this sidewall, and finally glue the other sidewall on top of the other parts after putting in the damping felt.

C) Glue the other parts onto the sidewall in this order:

1) Top (400x250mm/ 15.75x9.84'')
2) Front (1000x250mm/ 39.4x9.84'') – notice that the front is recessed into the box 10 mm (0.4'')!!!
3) Back (1300x250mm/ 51.2x9.84'')
4) Bottom (400x250mm/ 15.75x9.84'') – notice that the bottom is about 18mm above the bottom of the sidewall. The loudspeaker rests on the floor only on its sidewalls.
5) Inner parts (The parts you glued together at the start.)
6) The ”mirrors” (200x250/ 7.88x9.84'' and 110x250mm/ 4.3x9.84''), both at a 45° angle.

D) Before glueing the second sidewall on, put in the damping material. Use a simple felt material (4-8 mm, 0.15-0.3'' thick). This is just to stop a standing wave resonance, so a simple felt surface is quite sufficient.
Damping the horn itself (by putting loose damping materieal in it) would destroy the horn charachteristics, so don´t do that. Just do this:

Cut out and glue pieces of felt to cover one sidewall completely, down to the horn opening (light grey area in the drawing), and one 250x1400mm (9.84x55'') rectangular piece that goes from top/front corner and covers the top and the110mm (4.3'') mirror and the back down to the opening (the dark grey line you see in the drawing).
You don´t need to dampen both sidewalls, one is enough to stop the resonance.

When all the felt is in place, fit the second sidewall, and the cabinet is ready. But of course – some paint wouldn´t hurt...

Now you just put in and connect the speakers and other components, and start enjoying the music!

If you are using the original speaker elements (the HSV-1E kit, click here for more info) you will immediately notice that the sound is very life-like. This is real hifi. No matter what kind of music you play, the sound will come out without restraint. It is a bit difficult to explain if you haven´t listened to good hifi horns already – it sounds present, right in front of you, not closed in, inside or behind the speaker.

But even if you will enjoy the sound right from the start, it will get even a bit better after a few hours. As with most other speakers, the suspension is often a bit stiff directly after manufacturing. It will take a few hours of playing music at normal listening level to soften the suspension to get that really deep bass that these speakers can produce. Then connect a DVD to your hifi, and put on a movie with a thunderstorm, church organ or cannon fire, and you will hear exactly what we are talking about! (Beware of one thing, however. Don´t do this with small children in the room. We did once, demonstrating the sound of a thunder storm, and the parents had to comfort the child for quite a while afterwards. The sound is very realistic.)

One of our customers had a sound engineer measure the VH-1´s with the original HSV-1E loudspeakers, and according to him the VH-1 was FLAT down to 30 Hz. Unfortunately we didn´t ask how the speakers were placed, but our own experience tells us that it is best if the speakers are close to the wall if you want full bass response.

There is also a straight voigt horn, VH-2, using exactly the same principle, but not folded.
We haven´t translated this page yet, but you can still have a look at the design.