About Caritas 

The name Caritas is Latin for Charity.  The charity is community radio station, WYCE.  Thus, what we have for you is an entry level speak kit that gives two ways.

This kit fulfills a good number of needs, but before I expand in more detail, I’d like to tell you the story behind this kit.

The Premise I’m a huge fan of our local, community radio station and give faithfully during the twice yearly funds’ drive, but wanted to do more. Brewing in the back of my mind for the past several years was an entry level kit in which part of the proceeds would give by to the station.   I knew the kit had to be inexpensive to get most builders involved and that parts had to be decent as well.

The Parts  I knew the only way this would work is if I could find some quality units on the surplus market.  The tweeters came first and turned out to be an easy find.  The BC25TG-15 is a respected, low-cost unit from Vifa/Peerless.  The quirk that made this a surplus unit was that these are magnetically shielded.  With CRT’s extinct, the shielded driver became expendable.  Once the first batch of these kits was sold, I search for more surplus and David came through again with the guys at Outlaw Audio.  They were scaling back the speaker side of things and had a bunch of custom, OEM SB tweeters.  These are also magnetically shielded and have an odd shape faceplate.   It will be a challenge for most to flush mount these, but Jeff says surface mounting will be just fine.

The woofer tuned out to be harder to find than I ever thought.  I sifted through countless units that came on the market, either find them un usable for the cabinet size targeted, the wrong impedance, or the response so bad that crossover design would be a nightmare.

I made a call to David Stephens at SB Acoustics to see if perhaps that had anything – a mistake, overrun, or cancellation.  After hearing my story, David said “what do you need, we’ll make it for you”   SB was kind with the price too.  A made to order woofer at the surplus price!

Having all the drivers on hand we set out to design the network.  When Jeff Bagby heard the story he wanted to be part of the process, so he chipped in and came up with a pretty simple design that works very well and keeps the parts cost low.

Here’s what it will do for you.   I wanted this kit to fulfill the needs of many.

The first time kit buyer wants to start with something safe and inexpensive.  I know you’re a bit apprehensive about spending a lot of time and hard earned money on a project that you might not be sure on the outcome.

The seasoned builder looks for that go-to kit for friends and relatives.  The build is easy and the recipient is always grateful to a custom system that is hard to come by at a retail level these days.   The time working on a project like this with a Son or Grand Daughter is priceless.

The school project is another great idea.  We’ve had a number of Physics and shop teachers offer their students the kit ideas as a senior class project.

The side benefit.   A good portion of what you pay for this kit goes to WYCE.  You did something nice and didn’t feel a thing!