I had been wanting to upgrade my vinyl listening setup but couldn’t justify spending a ton of money on speakers, considering I live in a loft with thin walls. So naturally, I built my own from the highly acclaimed Overnight Sensations kit designed by Paul Carmody. A fun, basic woodworking project.

With one of the smallest footprints of any speaker available, the tiny Passive Aggressive speaker kit will amaze you with its output, clarity, extension and room filling capabilities. This kit is ideal for a small desktop or room where a subwoofer will not fit or is not required. Utilizing the Dayton ND91-4 active woofer matched with a pair of ND90-PR passive radiators, this kit plays to an incredibly deep 50 Hz in a very small package.

I don’t know what any of that means, but building a box and soldering some basic connections isn’t terribly difficult and they sounded (to me) a major upgrade over my previous pair of very-nice-hand-me-down JMLab’s.

Build Process

Crossover

The crossover design is extremely simple, but to make it even easier & a little more professional I got a pair of PCBs. I’ve learned that for any semi-popular DIY project there is nearly always some random guy on Ebay selling custom PCBs for cheap out of their garage. Always worth checking.

Assembly

I did have some minor issues during assembly, not realizing the rear baffle holes were very slightly different sizes, I accidentally glued one rear panel in place upside down. It all turned out fine with the application of some sawdust & wood glue though.

Finishing

I’ve already got a bare wood U-Turn turntable so I didn’t really do any finishing other than sanding and a few coats of poly.

They sound really crisp and have a great range even at low volumes, it’s definitely a level of detail I was not getting before even from “nice” speakers. So for the price I would say this was well worth the effort.

Future

It seems hard to beat these Parts Express kits. The Passive Aggressive is the smallest design I can find that would work for my desk or possibly my small upstairs TV area. Some of their Bluetooth speaker kits look fun (and would probably get a lot of use).