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...
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