Haldane Cabinet & Coil

A two‑way standmount, drawn to your room

Every pair we build starts as a sheet like this one. Move a dimension and the consequences move with it, because the box is the loudspeaker and the numbers below are what the box does. Nothing here is hidden behind a quote form.

Scale 1:5 · third angle

Front and side elevation of the configured loudspeaker A scaled orthographic drawing of the cabinet, dimensioned in millimetres, with the bass-mid driver and tweeter positioned on the front baffle. The drawing redraws whenever an option changes.

Haldane, Cabinet & Coil Hebden Bridge

Nine, 165 mm sealed

Sheet HAL/N/165/S

Internal volume
15.9litres
Low corner, f3
70Hz
Sensitivity
87.4dB / 2.83 V
Nominal impedance
8ohm
Crossover
2.60kHz LR2
Mass, each
12.1kg

Per pair £3540

Lead time 6 weeks

Send this sheet to the bench

Dimensions in millimetres. Tolerance on external faces ±0.4 mm.

Model
Bass‑mid driver
Tweeter
External dimensions
230mm
420mm
300mm

Height on the Twelve includes the integral plinth. We will not build a cabinet whose internal volume fights the driver, so the sliders stop where the maths does.

Loading
Finish
Grille

What the box is doing

The trace is computed from the cabinet you have just drawn, using the driver parameters we measure on arrival. It is the alignment, not a marketing curve, and it stops where the alignment stops. The dashed trace is your previous specification, held so you can see what the last change cost you.

Modelled axial frequency response of the configured loudspeaker A logarithmic frequency plot from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz. The current configuration is drawn as a solid line and the previous one as a dashed line. A live readout of the low-frequency corner and sensitivity is given in the specification table below.
Modelled half‑space axial response, 2.83 V at 1 m, smoothed to 1/6 octave. Room gain below 80 Hz is not included, because your room is not ours.

Revisions

Every change to a sheet gets a letter. Yours are below, newest first, so the order you arrived at your cabinet is legible to the person who builds it.

    Derived

    Baffle area
    0.097 m²
    Panel material
    18 mm birch ply, 13 ply
    Bracing
    One shelf brace, 40 mm aperture
    Port
    None, sealed
    Damping
    240 g long-fibre wool
    Baffle step
    Compensated at 500 Hz
    Terminals
    Single pair, 4 mm copper
    Veneer requirement
    1.9 m² per pair

    Eighteen millimetres of birch,
    and a great deal of arguing about bracing

    A cabinet has one job, which is to not join in. Everything we do to a box is an attempt to keep the panels quiet enough that you only hear the drivers.

    We use 18 mm birch ply, thirteen plies, cut on a sliding table saw and rebated so the joints take load rather than glue. Ply rather than MDF because it is stiffer for its mass and because the edge is worth looking at, which is why the plain birch‑ply finish is the cheapest one we offer and the one we build for ourselves.

    The front baffle is doubled to 36 mm around the bass‑mid cutout. That is not for stiffness alone. It puts the driver's motor further back in the box, which shortens the reflection path off the rear wall and lets the shelf brace sit where it wants to sit rather than where it has to.

    Panel resonance is a mass and stiffness problem, so we tune it rather than damp it. A single shelf brace with a large aperture, placed off centre, moves the first panel mode above 400 Hz where the ear is far less sensitive to it and where the driver is no longer asking the panel for much. Two braces would move it higher and add 900 g. On a cabinet this size, that trade is not worth it, and we will say so if you ask for it.

    Veneer goes on with a cold press and hide glue on the show faces, book‑matched across the pair so the two cabinets read as one object in the room. English walnut comes from a mill in Cumbria who let us pick the flitch. That is the reason walnut adds three weeks and not three days.

    Sectional drawing through the cabinet A cutaway section showing the doubled front baffle, the off-centre shelf brace with a large aperture, long-fibre wool damping on the rear and side walls, the crossover board mounted low at the back, and the rebated corner joints. Doubled baffle, 36 mm Shelf brace, off centre Long‑fibre wool Crossover, rear mounted
    Section through a Nine. Hatching is birch ply. The brace sits off centre on purpose.

    Two coils, three capacitors,
    and no chips

    Crossover schematic for the configured loudspeaker A two-way passive crossover: a series inductor and shunt capacitor forming the low-pass to the bass-mid driver, a series capacitor and shunt inductor forming the high-pass to the tweeter, and a resistor attenuating the tweeter. Component values update with the configuration and are also listed in the table beside the drawing.
    Values shown are for a Nine with the 165 mm driver, second order Linkwitz‑Riley acoustic at 2.6 kHz.

    A passive crossover is a filter you can hold. Ours are wound, cut and soldered on the bench behind the saw, and the values on the drawing beside this are the values in your cabinet.

    Air‑core coils on the tweeter high pass, because an iron core saturates and a saturating core is audible on transients. On the bass‑mid low pass we use a laminated core, since the coil there needs a lot of turns and an air core of that inductance would have enough series resistance to eat a decibel of sensitivity. That is a real trade and we have made it in the direction that keeps the loudspeaker efficient.

    Polypropylene film throughout on the signal path. No electrolytics anywhere, not because they sound worse on day one, but because they drift, and a loudspeaker we build in 2026 should measure the same in 2046.

    Every crossover is built as a matched pair against the measured drivers, not against the datasheet. Two drivers out of the same batch can differ by half a decibel in sensitivity, so the tweeter attenuation resistor is chosen per cabinet. It is the least glamorous part of the job and it is the part you would hear if we skipped it.

    L1, low pass
    0.98 mH
    C1, low pass
    3.8 µF
    C2, high pass
    7.6 µF
    L2, high pass
    0.49 mH
    R1, attenuation
    2.2 Ω

    General notes

    1. All dimensions in millimetres. Tolerance on external faces ±0.4 mm, on internal volume ±3 per cent.
    2. Modelled figures are modelled. Every pair ships with its own measured sheet, and where the two disagree the measured sheet is the one that counts.
    3. The low corner is half‑space with no room gain. Your room will add somewhere between two and six decibels below 80 Hz depending on where the cabinets end up standing.
    4. Sensitivity is 2.83 V at one metre, not one watt. On a six ohm cabinet those two differ by 1.2 dB, and the industry tends to quote whichever is flattering.
    5. Prices are per pair, including VAT, excluding stands. We do not make stands and we will point you at someone who does it better.
    6. Lead time starts when the deposit clears and the veneer is booked, not on the day you order.
    7. We will not build a cabinet whose internal volume fights the driver. The sheet tells you as you draw it, and we will tell you again on the phone.
    8. Drivers are measured on arrival and matched into pairs. Nominal figures are from the datasheet, everything else is from our bench.

    Nobody leaves without a sheet

    Every finished pair is measured in the workshop before it is packed, and the measurement travels with it. Not a family curve from the model page. Yours, from your two cabinets, on the day.

    • Gated axial response

      1 m on the tweeter axis, 5 ms gate, both cabinets overlaid on one plot so you can see how closely the pair matches. We hold ourselves to 0.5 dB between 300 Hz and 10 kHz.

    • Nearfield and merged low end

      Driver and port nearfield, scaled and merged, which is the only honest way to get below the gate in a room with a ceiling. This is where you see the real f3 rather than the modelled one.

    • Impedance and phase

      Swept, so you know the minimum your amplifier actually sees. We print the minimum, not the nominal, because the nominal is a marketing number and the minimum is the one that trips a small valve amp.

    • Distortion at 90 dB

      Second and third harmonic, 90 dB at 1 m. If a cabinet has a joint that is going to buzz in three years, it usually shows up here first, and that cabinet does not ship.

    Measured and signed by whoever built it. There are two of us, so it is one of two handwritings.

    Three cabinets, drawn to the same scale

    Actually to the same scale, on one baseline, from the same dimensions the configurator uses. Each is a starting sheet rather than a fixed product, and the sliders above will take any of them somewhere else.

    The Six, the Nine and the Twelve drawn to a common scale Front elevations of all three cabinets on one ground line at the same scale, so their real relative sizes can be compared. The Six is 320 millimetres tall, the Nine 420, and the Twelve 980 including its plinth. A one metre datum line runs across the drawing and each cabinet is dimensioned. The same figures appear in the table below.

    1. Six

      190 × 320 × 250

      A 130 mm two‑way for rooms under twenty square metres, sealed as standard. It will not do the bottom octave and it does not pretend to. What it does is disappear, which is the whole point of a small box built properly.

      From £2,450 per pair

    2. Nine

      230 × 420 × 300

      The cabinet we build most. A 165 mm driver in eighteen litres, sealed or ported, and the one we would put in a mastering room. Ported takes it to the high thirties. Sealed keeps the timing, and most people who hear both in the same room choose sealed.

      From £3,280 per pair

    3. Twelve

      260 × 980 × 340

      A 200 mm two‑way on an integral plinth, ported as standard, for rooms over thirty square metres or for anyone who has stopped wanting a subwoofer in the picture. High thirties sealed, low thirties ported, and 89 dB means a twenty watt amplifier is plenty.

      From £4,650 per pair

    How an order actually goes

    There are two of us and we build about forty pairs a year, so the queue is real and we would rather tell you about it now than in week nine.

    1. You send the sheet

      The specification you have drawn, plus the room. Length, width, ceiling, where the cabinets can physically stand and how far from the wall behind them. We will tell you if the box you have drawn is wrong for that room, and we will tell you before you have paid anything.

    2. We draw it properly and quote

      A dimensioned sheet with the veneer layout marked, and a fixed price. Two working days, three if the veneer needs a phone call to Cumbria. The quote holds for sixty days.

    3. Half up front, and you go on the board

      Fifty per cent starts the clock and books the veneer. The board hangs in the workshop and you can ask where you are on it whenever you like.

    4. Six to fourteen weeks

      Carcass, veneer, crossover, measurement, in that order. You get a photograph at veneer and the measurement sheet at the end. If we slip, you hear it from us first.

    5. We deliver them ourselves in the north

      Anywhere within about three hours of Hebden Bridge we bring them, unpack them, and help you position them, at no charge. Beyond that it is a crate on a pallet, insured, and a phone call about placement instead.