Ahhh...success

Have you ever had that feeling of elation when you finally complete a really cool project? I've been swearing for years that someday I was gonna build a guitar speaker cabinet and when I was done it was gonna sound good.....really good.

Well, my buddy Brendon and I finally did it. We got to talking a few months ago about building our own 2x12" cabs and a few weeks ago we actually got off our butts and committed ourselves.

We drew up our plans and headed out to Home Depot to buy the necessary toys, er....uh...tools. We chose a couple of nice 4x8' sheets of 7-ply birch plywood and some 1" square stock to reinforce the inside corners. Originally we were planning on dadoing the speaker baffle in place and using double rabbet joints on all the corners, but we kept having trouble getting the whole router situation to work for us. Brendon inherited a nice router table and router, but the router only accepts 1/2" shank router bits and all we had were 1/4" shank bits in every possible shape. Also, the router table mounting plate won't allow us to use our Craftsman 1/4" routers. Grrrr... So, we threw up our hands and said "screw it". No, seriously, we decided to use screws and wood glue (you didn't really think we'd give up that easily did you??)

Anyhow, we got all the wood cut in one day and spent today assembling everything and wiring up the speakers. Brendon decided to buy a pair of Weber 12" 8ohm 30 watt ceramic magnet speakers (one Blue Dog and one Silver Bell) for his cabinet. He's running a highly modded 5-watt all tube Epiphone Valve Jr. amp (another one of our mischievous projects, more on that later) and wanted a cabinet that would be responsive to a lower wattage amp and yet sound punchy and full. Well, we were able to get his cabinet done today, but mine will have to wait until we get some more wood from Home Depot.

We couldn't believe it when we were able to actually plug in our newest creation and hear our handicap...uh handiwork. The speakers actually produced sound, and it was good. We both stood there with silly grins on our faces as we played every cheesy rendition of "Smoke on the Water" we could muster. Ahhh, good times, good times...

Tomorrow we will try and finish mine. Should only take a couple of hours since we have a better idea of what 'not' to do. All told, Brendon's cabinet cost him around $275-ish. Mine will be much cheaper since I'm going to reuse the Celestion Black Shadows I already have. We still have to buy the Tolex covering and grill cloth to finish the aesthetics on the cabs, but at least we can play through them in the meantime. I'm anxious to hear the difference that speakers make in identically designed cabinets. My speakers are rated at 90-watts at 8-ohms each with heavy dope on the surround, whereas the Weber's have light dope. We are wiring the speakers in parallel for a total load of 4-ohms.

We discovered a really awesome product made by Weber speakers, called 'Beam-blockers'. Basically, they are a dome shaped sound diffuser that is mounted in front of the speaker to disperse the high frequencies. We installed one in front of each of the speakers in Brendon's cabinet and they sound great. I'm planning on putting them in my cab as well.

I'll be posting some pics of the cabinets in a few days as well as some sound samples of the two A/B'd so you can hear the sonic differences.

Until then...

Tube swapping (part 1)

In my never ending quest for tone I decided to do a comparison of different tubes on my 93' Fender Blues Deluxe. It came stock with 6L6GC's which produce approximately 40 watts RMS @ 8ohms, but it was too much power for bedroom playing. As all tube amp lovers know, the amps sound their best when they're cranked up, but you can't always stand to be in the same room with 'em.

Anyhow, being that this amp was designed with a glaring flaw in it that prevents you from being able to bias it without having to change capacitor values, I used my bias-probe to check the bias with the generic tubes it came with to see where it was registering. It should have been around 38-42 mA to keep it idling properly and out of crossover distortion, however my reading was around 23mA! Waaaay too low. It was no wonder the poor thing sounded anemic. I ran out and bought a hotter duet of Groove Tubes 6L6GC's which biased at a more respectable 30 mA. Better, but the amp was still running too cold. (I have since purchased a do-it-yourself kit to allow me to bias the amp with the simple turn of a potentiometer, but that's another story...)

So, the GT tubes made the amp sound much better but I was pretty sure there was room for improvement. I scoured the Internet forums for some other possible solutions and discovered that by using 6V6 tubes you can lower the wattage of the amp by as much as 12 watts while still maintaining a respectable amount of clean headroom. With that in mind I ordered a re-tube kit from www.eurotubes.com and installed them in the amp to see what the difference would be.

The kit came with a matched duet of JJ 6V6 power tubes, a balanced JJ ECC 83s for v1, a hot JJ ECC 83s for the distortion channel in v2 and a standard JJ ECC83s for the clean channel in v3. I noticed right away that the volume knob was way less sensitive than before (a good thing) and I could turn the amp up to 3 before it blasted me out. The clean channel still had tons of headroom, but the dirty channel was still brittle and useless. Bummer. All said and done I was very pleased with the new power tubes. It comes in handy to swap the tubes based on what gig you're going to play. If I'm playing someplace where I need the extra power, then I drop in the 6L6GC's, but if I'm practicing at home or playing at church then the 6V6's are the way to go. I have yet to explore the myriad possibilities of swapping preamp tubes, but again, that's another story...

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment in my tube swapping adventures... (rolls eyes)

Gotta get this...

Well, after another maniacal trip through Guitar Center to twist every knob on every amp and pedal within my reach I finally found something that I actually can't live without. Honestly. It's the new Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Classic Overdrive/Distortion pedal which sells for around $190. This stomp box has two channels each powered by a 6021 minature vacuum tube with separate volume and gain controls. The only other controls are a master bass and treble control. Very simple, but effective. My friends Brendon and Dan went to the NAMM (North American Music Merchants) convention in Anaheim, CA last weekend with me and we saw the demo of this pedal at the SD booth and were pretty amazed. But, until you actually play one for yourself you never know whether or not it's as cool as it seems. I can honestly say that this little gem is waaaay better than I had expected. I'm currently playing my guitar through a 1993 Fender Blues Deluxe amp which has the most amazing clean channel, but the dirty channel is really anemic. It's really only suited for adding a bit of growl to your sound, which is great for blues, but if you're looking for true overdrive crunch or a smooth sustaining lead sound the dirty channel leaves you disappointed. So, with this in mind I tried out the new Twin Tube to see if it would bridge the gap in my sonic palette. All I can say is, WOW! It's so smooth and warm sounding and has the most effective tone controls I've ever encountered. The bass knob actually affects the type of gain the pedal creates, for instance if you back the bass control to around 9 o'clock you get a smooth Marshall JCM 800 type overdrive, whereas at 12 0'clock it becomes more Tweed-like and full on it gives the characteristic Mesa-Boogie growl. Truly a versatile pedal. I have yet to compare it to the Radial Tonebone Trimode Classic and the Fulltone Fulldrive 2. I'm anxious to see how they all compare to each other. Stay tuned for the results of the shootout!