Dayton BR-1 cabinets on clearance

Is this the end of the Dayton BR-1? The price increased substantially over the years. Its end may be near.

Parts Express has put the BR-1 kit and cabinets on clearance sale.

Many years ago, Loudspeaker designer Dennis Murphy created this updated crossover design for the shielded tweeter version of an “affordable accuracy monitor BR-1”. Here I’m building a set of speakers off of that. I had bought the cabinets before to use as a test bed for other 2-way designs. Eventually I decided I should try building this out as a reference point that other designs would have to improve upon.

Driver D11 is the Dayton DC160-8 woofer.

Driver D21 is the Dayton DC28FS-8 shielded tweeter.

In the woofer circuit the R1011 spec is part of the inductors value meaning probably a 16 AWG air core coil. I wouldn’t use less than 18AWG here and probably would prefer 15 AWG or 14 AWG air core. A lower gauge inductor here can sometimes help a speaker sound more solid.

In earlier versions He spec’d C1211 as a bipolar electrolytic capacitor, but after swapping one out with paralleled crosscaps of equivalent 47.0uF, I feel a reasonable quality film cap should be used instead. I have some Audyn Q and Jantzen crosscap 47uFcaps on order to evaluate the available budget friendly choices. (Dayton and Jantzen Z standard 47uF back ordered at this time)

Note C1021 value is 6.2uF, a value not so commonly available in audiophile grade parts, so you might have to parallel a 5.6uF with a 0.56uF or 0.68uF or similarly to achieve a close value depending on the make and sourcing — or live with the slight crossover mismatch from available but incorrect value 6.8uF parts.

In the tweeter circuit L2021 has the additional 0.5ohm resistor in series so Dayton 18 AWG air core is probably good. A Jantzen 18 AWG air core is currently in the woofer circuit. I intend to try a 14 AWG Dayton.

I got Dayton DPR10 resistors for the BR-1 build.

While I’m prototyping this particular BR-1 crossover with cheap clip leads, preliminary findings are tentative due to occasional bad connections and slightly off value parts use, while I await some orders to be fulfilled.