JackPine Audio

05/29/2026

The JackPine 12Qube

Sometimes good ideas come from unexpected places.

The 12Qube traces its roots to an unlikely source: a pair of XAM Korvette 3D loudspeakers from another era. Not famous. Not particularly collectible. But possessed of something increasingly rare:

Character.

I originally brought them home simply because I admired their proportions. There was something about the cube form—honest, understated, and undeniably mid-century—that caught my attention. I suspected that even if the speakers themselves proved unremarkable, the cabinets might deserve a second life.

That instinct proved correct.

The originals were eventually rebuilt and sent on to a new owner, but the idea stayed behind.

Standing in the workshop, I found myself asking a simple question:

What if this concept were taken seriously?

Not copied. Not reproduced.

Reimagined.

The result became the JackPine 12Qube.

A modern interpretation of the classic cube loudspeaker, enlarged slightly to breathe easier and speak with greater authority while preserving the visual charm that sparked the idea in the first place.

Wrapped in walnut and dressed in woven grille cloth threaded with subtle gold, the 12Qube was designed to feel less like consumer electronics and more like part of the room itself.

The proportions are deliberate.
The shadow-line grille reveal intentional.
Every surface finished—including the back—because people look there too.

Beneath the cabinet lies a carefully voiced two-way system centered around a twelve-inch low-frequency driver and soft-dome high-frequency unit mounted in a shallow flare for relaxed, room-friendly presentation.

The crossover network was developed through months of measurement, listening, revision, and the sort of patient experimentation that rarely appears in brochures but ultimately matters most.

Math gets you close.

Then the real work begins.

Jazz. Rock and roll. Bluegrass. Background listening. Intentional listening. Living with a speaker long enough to learn whether it invites you into the music—or merely asks to be admired.

The goal was never laboratory perfection.

The goal was something far more difficult:

A speaker equally comfortable filling a room during conversation or pulling a listener into the center of a late-night record.

The first pair has already found a home.

Others may follow.

Built by request.

JackPine Audio
Northern Michigan

05/09/2026

This guy seems to know stuff...

So I’m finishing up this table and several thoughts and avenues of thought come to mind.

A lot of modern craftsmanship, across nearly every medium, seems obsessed with removing evidence of humanity. We flatten, polish, compress, quantize, noise reduce, pitch correct, level, filter, revise, optimize, and smooth until the thing we’re creating no longer carries any trace of the process that brought it into existence. We remove the breaths from the vocal. We remove the room from the recording. We remove the grain from the wood. We remove the asymmetry from the photograph. We remove the silence from the film. We remove the scars from the slab.

And yet, oddly enough, those imperfections are often the very things that make us emotionally connect to an object, a song, a voice, or a piece of art in the first place.

This table has chainsaw marks. It has a dent left by a log dog at the mill when the slab was cut. It has voids, asymmetry, tension, and evidence that it was once part of a living thing before it became an object in someone’s home. A lot of people would remove those things. Fill them. Sand them flat. Make them disappear. I chose not to.

Not because I’m against refinement or craftsmanship. Quite the opposite. The challenge is knowing where to stop.

To me, the base of this piece is not simply “legs.” It’s a presentation. An offering. The slab is the object of attention, and the undercarriage exists to elevate it, both literally and visually. That’s why I invested as much thought into the structure beneath it as I did the slab itself. The goal wasn’t to build a perfect table. The goal was to build something that still remembers being a tree.

Some people will look at it and think it’s beautiful. Others will think it looks unfinished or hacked together. Neither reaction is wrong. Art, craftsmanship, music, writing, photography — all of it is ultimately a conversation between the creator and the observer. We each decide for ourselves where the line exists between refinement and sterilization, between perfection and humanity.

I just happen to believe that a little evidence of the human hand — and the imperfect world it lives in — is worth preserving.

04/26/2026

The Pioneer That Got Fixed

There’s a particular kind of disappointment you only feel once—pulling a pair of vintage headphones out of a box, putting them on, and realizing memory lied to you.

These started there.

Pioneer SE-305s. Late ’70s. Honest, affordable, a little forgettable. The kind of thing a kid saved up for and swore sounded like the future.

Time wasn’t kind. The drivers went soft. The coiled cord—the same one that used to survive being stepped on, rolled over, and occasionally chewed on—became the weak point.

So it’s gone.

In its place: a proper 1/8" TRS jack. Clean. Replaceable. No more being tethered to a forty-year-old liability. Included is a coiled 1/8" to 1/8" cable—about four feet in the coil. Short enough to stay out of your way. Long enough to reach what matters. Not recommended for dental use.

There’s also a 1/4" adapter, because somewhere out there is a Pioneer receiver with a brushed aluminum faceplate and a volume k**b that still feels like it means something.

But let’s not kid ourselves. That’s not why you’re here.
The original 42mm drivers have been retired with dignity. In their place: 52mm Audio-Technica drivers. 32 ohms. Modern authority where it counts.

Now they hit.

Not the bloated, overfed bass of plastic consumer headphones. This is tighter. More deliberate. The kind of low end that shows up on time and leaves when it’s supposed to. Highs that crack just enough. Mids that don’t need to shout to be heard.

They don’t impress your friends across the room.

They impress you five minutes in, when you stop thinking about them entirely.

And then you notice something else.

They feel right.

There’s weight to them—just enough to register, not enough to wear you out. The kind of weight that suggests something is actually inside doing its job. The earpads seal without suffocating. Substantial, not spongy. The headband’s stitched—not leather, but close enough that you understand the intention. Pioneer knew what they were going for.

They just let the bean counters get a little too involved.

Of course, if these had cost $200 in 1978, most of us wouldn’t have had them at all. So maybe that compromise was the point.

Now it isn’t.

Of course, none of this matters if they don’t work.

Every pair is gone through completely. Not “plugged in and hoped for the best.” Opened up. Inspected. Every joint, every wire, every moving part either passes or it doesn’t—and if it doesn’t, it’s replaced.

You’re not getting a gamble. You’re getting a 50-year-old object that’s been brought back into service.

The kind of thing that, if treated with a little respect, will outlast most of what’s being made today.

Another 50 years wouldn’t be unreasonable.

By then, they’ll be pushing 100.

There’s a Bluetooth receiver in the box. Because eventually you’ll want to stand up, walk across the room, and keep listening without dragging a cable like you’re tethered to 1978. Pair it. Pocket it. Say nothing.

And when you’re done, they go back where they belong.
A solid oak and Walnut stand. Hand-built. Blackened, but not buried—the grain still comes through like it refuses to be ignored. A Pioneer badge across the front, as if someone in 1976 had the good sense to make one of these.

They didn’t.

Which is why this one exists.

$200 built to order.

04/16/2026

Something pretty sweet coming soon...

04/16/2026

There was a time when these cabinets sat quietly in a living room, wearing their walnut with dignity, asking very little of the world.

Late 1960s. Early ’70s.
Fisher XP66C.

Respectable. Honest.
And—if we’re being candid—not especially memorable.

But the cabinets…
Real walnut. Properly built. Still solid after more than half a century.

That’s where this begins.

When I first opened them up, the story was familiar.

Time had taken its toll:

woofer surrounds gone
capacitors well past their prime
a midrange on its way out
and a paper tweeter that had simply... not aged well

They made sound.
But nothing to write home about..

So we started over.

Not cosmetically—philosophically.

The crossover was rebuilt from the ground up. Every aging component replaced. Every weak link addressed.

Rather than looking at an aging mid with a coil rub as a setback, I used it as an opportunity.
A modern, high-efficiency midrange driver took its place—properly damped and integrated so it supports, rather than shouts.

The original paper tweeter gave way to a soft dome design with a controlled wavefront—clean, extended, and effortless.

And the woofers…

Refoamed first, out of respect.
Listened to. Evaluated.

Then replaced.

Because respect doesn’t mean compromise.

Modern Dayton Audio drivers now anchor the low end—tight, controlled, and capable of real authority when the music calls for it.

What remains is balance.

A bottom end that shows up when it should.
A midrange that carries weight without boxiness.
A top end with just the right amount of bite.

No hollowness.
No smear.
No excuses.

Visually, they’ve been brought forward without losing their roots.

The original grilles are gone—replaced with a coarse, open-weave fabric reminiscent of early Acoustic Research and classic British hi-fi.

Clean. Understated. Intentional.

They don’t shout for attention.

They earn it.

Each cabinet is mounted on custom Oak stands, built from Amish hardwood, planed and finished by hand.

Cork-isolated.
Balanced.
Stamped with the JackPine Audio mark.

These are not Fisher XP66Cs anymore.

They are something else entirely.

A second life.
Done properly.

And ready for a system that deserves them.

01/10/2026

It ain't just audio...

01/10/2026

Another JackPine creation!

12/27/2025

These Ohms are VERY impressive! Recapped, refoamed and the cabinets refreshed. Stop by Rotten princess records east in Grayling to demo them. Be prepared to take them home!

12/25/2025

Coming your way soon! Meet the JackPine 12³, a 12 inch two-way full-range modular speaker which not only presents a unique MCM standalone system, but will also be the basis for the upcoming JackPine Lowboy console. These are incredibly efficient (over 100db at 1 watt!) and play down well into the mid-thirties (hertz). I'm still doing last-minute crossover tweaks but this one is pretty much in the bag and sounds AWESOME!

12/11/2025

Here's where the fun starts...