[Elecraft] Outboard Speaker for the K2

[ron_w]

Hi
     Recently a friend sent me all the parts for the "SP2 Companion 
External Speaker for the K2" ( by Dave VE6DRW) as he was unable to find the 
time to assemble it. I made it up pretty quickly and was most impressed 
with it's performance, even though the speaker wasn't mounted in the 
recommended enclosure. The extra filtering it introduces as well as the 
small amount of audio gain made listening to CW just that much clearer that 
I had to make one for myself.
I have done so, but being a cheap-skate from way back, I have enclosed the 
speaker in mine in an old re-vamped PC power supply case ( with solid end 
caps to cover the cooling ports on it) and once again, it seems to be doing 
the trick just fine. The speaker is mounted on a wooden panel attached to 
the inside-front of the case and the insides of the case are lined with a 
rubberised foam.
In fact mine has probably got too much filtering as the 82mh inductor is a 
hard item to get here, and while I wait for it to arrive from Elecraft I 
have manufactured my own on a small ferrite bobbin, but it sure cuts the 
noise off the edges of a signal. I will put the proper inductor in when it 
arrives though.
I have never had an issue with the amount of volume the K2 supplies, but I 
find the small speaker on the top of the KPA100 rather "directional" and 
with my poor hearing I have to hold my head aligned with the K2 at the 
correct angle to hear a weak signal. Until this outboard speaker 
arrangement came along, I was using an angled baffle mounted above the 
speaker to direct the sound towards me. However this latest gadget seems to 
surround me with sound and I find it a great help.( probably the neighbours 
can hear the CW better too?)
Anyway......although the speaker has been mentioned in the Reflector 
before, I thought there might be some new kindred spirits out there with 
crook hearing like mine who might be interested? Just pop "SP2 speaker" 
into a Search Engine if you want to look at the article....it's probably on 
the Elecraft site as well??
Cheers.......Ron ZL1TW


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