Focal Egg Project
Designer: eggproject
Project Time: 1-8 hours
Project Complexity: Hobbyist
Project Cost: $100-$500
Driver Selection
Woofers – max frame diameter – 187mm Tweeter – square frame 120mm max I was considering having an aluminum plate or wood baffle cut to fit the front of the egg enclosure to facilitate mounting drivers and not having to deal with matching the existing mounting points/frame shapes. (see photos)
Enclosure Design
The Egg is .46 cubic foot volume with a 2″ rear vent pipe that can be trimmed to tuning frequency. The rear also has a terminal cup with gold binding posts. They are painted gloss black and look amazing when polished…
Amplifier/Crossover Configuration
Since the terminal cup is removable, bi-amp designs are within the realm of possibility.
Conclusion
The Focal Eggs were reviewed in the 3/86 issue of Speaker Builder. The author commented, “the vented Egg is the best-sounding small full range speaker system I have heard.” I hope that with new drivers and electrics it will be possible to bring them back to this high level of performance.
I remember seeing these back in the 1980’s in Speaker Builder Magazine. A very cool design that is ridged with a small frontal area. Definitely a sweet vintage project. Damn those French folks are so F’ing clever, just think about the Citroen DS.
Two friends of mine had a custom speaker building business in Phoenix. They were also dealers of Focal’s line of drivers used for custom auto installation and had a very good relationship with the American representative, Kimone Bellas. Bellas designed a speaker in the shape of an egg. The inclosure was as closed to egg shaped as possible and so had absolutely no parallel surfaces on the inside and therefore few, if any , internal standing waves. The drivers were specially chosen by Bellas. A 7″ (double voice coil) Woofer/Midrange and a 1″ inverted tweeter made up the driver compliment. The crossover was also a unique design, where unusual advantage was taken of the woofer’s DVC. Each VC had its own network, one for mids, and the other for bass. This created a sort of (quasi 3 way system) actually a 2 1/2 way system when the guys decided to move the business, I offered to buy the Eggs. I’ve owned them from to ’80s to the present. They are the best sounding stand mounted speaker I have ever heard, to this day.
I got a couple of new drivers for my eggs from Kimone about 10 years ago. these are dvc za
cast baskets so I had to cut a new baffle out of 3/4 marine plywood and epoxied it to the face of the egg. If someone needs it I have a template for the baffle that can be printed actual size.