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Author Topic:  Cabinet material
Stephen Williams

 

From:
from Wales now in Berkeley,Ca, USA
Post  Posted 20 Jan 2017 9:37 pm    
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Does a cabinet have to be rigid? I have a 15" speaker and want to build a cabinet. I want to reduce the weight to absolute minimum and as i can't find any super light strong materials i may just experiment with sandwiching cardboard honeycomb with mica.
BUT if it is not super resonant, (i think it will be dead sounding) will it matter if there is plenty of power and a 15" speaker?
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 20 Jan 2017 10:50 pm    
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Sound is vibrations. I suspect that if lighter weight stronger materials like metal or fiberglass made good cabinets, they'd have gained traction in the century or so of sound reinforcement.
I really suspect your cardboard idea wouldn't hold up to a couple hundred Watts of shakery power.
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Ian Middleton

 

From:
United Kingdom
Post  Posted 21 Jan 2017 12:21 pm     Cabinet Material
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You should head on over to Greenboy's site (http://http://greenboy.us/fEARful/)

He's designed light-weight cabinets for bass players, using 1/2 inch plywood. To rid the cabinet of resonance, he advocates judicious use of bracing. Best of all his designs are FREE (which appeals to this Scotsman!!)

He also provides a cutlist for your chosen cabinet.
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Tony Prior


From:
Charlotte NC
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 3:37 am    
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I had been using 3/4 plywood with bracing but switched to 1/2 plywood with the exact same bracing.

The only thing that changed was the weight of the cabinet .


Don't tell anyone this, but about 6 months ago I built a S-15 cab from 3/4 ply, 18" cubed, it was one of my finer builds , wood glue, pre-drilled screw holes, bracing, Mr Woodwright would have been proud of me. It was a great cab , until I realized how much it weighed , so I took it apart and used the wood for something else. My wife thought I was nuts, I didn't argue.


This ones 3/4 but I should have used 1/2 , it's a tad heavy for a S-12 cab.






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Bill Ford


From:
Graniteville SC Aiken
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 5:08 am    
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Here are mine that I used 1/2" birch plywood, cab carpet,grill cloth and hardware from parts express, glued everything,
reinforced all inside corners with 1" X 1", sprayed inside flat black (black sounds better) BF


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Jack Stoner


From:
Kansas City, MO
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 6:37 am    
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The 15" cabinet I've used for several years (with an Eminence EPS-15C) is made from standard 1X12 (good quality) pine. I've made them from plywood, Baltic birch and even particle board (recommended by some for its density). With an open back, as my cabinet is, I don't hear any difference between the different wood cabinets I've built over the years.



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Georg Sørtun


From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 8:12 am    
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For a light weight, open-back, speaker cab, one of these cut down to size and opened at the bottom, will do just fine...



Is plenty strong enough to be thrown around and take the strongest vibrations a speaker can expose it to, comes with wheels for ease of transportation, is slightly "tapered" (reduces standing waves), and is square enough to be stacked. It only needs a baffle, minimal bracing, and a very thin layer of carpet or similar glued on the inside.
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John Swain


From:
Winchester, Va
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 9:27 am    
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For inspiration check out a Marrs cabinet like Paul Franklin used to use. Made of 3/8" plywood with 1x1" pine bracing. I think Show Pro has them on their website.JS
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Dyke Corson

 

From:
Fairmount, IL USA
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 12:22 pm    
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I've got Marrs cabs and Walker's cabs - The Walker might sound a tad better to my ear (it is deeper) but the Marrs with a neo speaker weights nothing and still sounds pretty darn good. Lately I've been using a Rick Johnson pine open back 12" cabinet which is a whole different kind of sound, but a still really good one.
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Carl Mesrobian


From:
Salem, Massachusetts, USA
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 4:08 pm    
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Jack Stoner wrote:
The 15" cabinet I've used for several years (with an Eminence EPS-15C) is made from standard 1X12 (good quality) pine. I've made them from plywood, Baltic birch and even particle board (recommended by some for its density). With an open back, as my cabinet is, I don't hear any difference between the different wood cabinets I've built over the years.




Nice!
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Godfrey Arthur

 

From:
3rd Rock
Post  Posted 22 Jan 2017 11:29 pm    
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The ideal enclosure for a speaker is cement as the more acoustic work a speaker has to do on its enclosure, the less it can act as a speaker.

But of course cement is impractical to carry around.

Anything rigid will work.

I like the idea of the Marr's cabinets with the 3/8" but braced.

You don't need 3/4" to make a good box.

You can also use Phenolic ply 1/2" as these are made as cement mold forms as well as to repair boats and the resins inbetween the plies is some heavy duty stuff basically waterproof ply. Phenolic material is bowling ball material. Tough stuff. It will dull a saw blade or router bit in a few seconds. But it is rigid and will last longer than birch ply which will start to flake if not protected with good varnish.

It is a little on the heavy side hence using a thinner ply 1/2" will get you a sturdy good sounding/resonating box.





The speaker you use as there are lighter ones will also help reduce weight, like the neodymium jobbies.

12mm is 1/2". There are different grades of phenolic ply but any will work for a speaker box and the tone is more focused than using solid wood as the board is more consistent than plain natural wood.

You won't be able to get that rustic look but if sound is what you're after instead of asthetics...

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Douglas Schuch


From:
Valencia, Philippines
Post  Posted 23 Jan 2017 3:55 pm    
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I'm with Jack - solid pine is hard to beat. The cabinet grade birch ply is probably better acoustically (very rigid) but you pay every time you have to pick it up. I built mine out of solid meranti - a wood that is common in SE Asia. It is lighter than pine, with no knots. I also used epoxy resin to glue it up as this forms a very solid, rigid joint with 1x1 in each corner - screwed and glued. There are few materials that give the rigidity of solid wood without weighing a good bit more or costing a fortune! honeycomb-cored carbon-fiber/epoxy laminates would be ideal.... but at 10x the price for 1.05% better rigidity is a poor tradeoff! I am not sure anyone would hear the difference!
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Georg Sørtun


From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
Post  Posted 23 Jan 2017 5:20 pm    
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For a traditional open-back cab you only need a strong and rigid baffle/speaker-mount. The rest of the cab is just there to increase distance to lower the frequencies at which wave-canceling between front and back of the speaker starts stealing audio output, and to keep the speaker in position - not to mention to make the cab look traditional.

Closed-back, ported or TL constructions do of course need more rigidity, but not necessarily all that much more weight.
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Godfrey Arthur

 

From:
3rd Rock
Post  Posted 23 Jan 2017 8:50 pm    
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Georg Sørtun wrote:
For a traditional open-back cab you only need a strong and rigid baffle/speaker-mount..


This is true for any cab. The better (rigid) the baffle mount the better your speaker likes it.

If you even just replace the baffle board where your speakers mount, making that the best piece on the box, you're ahead in the sonics game.
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Stephen Williams

 

From:
from Wales now in Berkeley,Ca, USA
Post  Posted 23 Jan 2017 11:50 pm    
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Thank you gentlemen for illuminating me.

So the board with the speaker attached seems most important and to be as rigid as possible , either by stiffness of the board itself or bracing so it cannot move out-of-plane.

I actually did build a concrete box for my studio and put a speaker and a mic in there. Purpose was to record guitar.
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