Homemade Gobos

[keith.rogers]

I've had 4 batts of Roxul Safe'n'Sound taking up floorspace in the garage since last summer so just bought some wood and screwed these together over the past week. I was going to build some kind of height adjustable stand but couldn't come up with a cheap and easy way to do it so just used a couple 1"x2" boards. They ended up a bit tall, but their main design constraint was to fit on top of some "cubbies" I'm swapping into my little mix room for tall bookcases. Anyway, quick camera pix of the process.

 

[Gtoboy]

kewl

 

[spantini]

[sniff!] .. ahh.. freshly sawed wood

 

[miroslav]

Nice build...but explain it again why you have them up so tall off the ground...?
I didn't understand your reference to "cubbies" and all that.

The gobos really need to be down on the floor or just high enough on wheels to move around...assuming you're going to move them around.

Also...did you make one side "hard surface"...?

 

[keith.rogers]

Nice build...but explain it again why you have them up so tall off the ground...?
I didn't understand your reference to "cubbies" and all that.

The gobos really need to be down on the floor or just high enough on wheels to move around...assuming you're going to move them around.

Also...did you make one side "hard surface"...?

The height off the ground was a mistake of sorts. I had planned something adjustable but cheapness overtook so I got a couple boards and, not wanting to waste anything, made stands that used up all the wood! I'll redo them at some point, but the main job of getting rid of the insulation and doing some furniture rearranging got accomplished. One (or two) things at a time...

"Cubbies" are places the kids had to stash their stuff in grade school. These are IKEA storage boxes (name long forgotten) that were on top of another IKEA unit downstairs, while I had some tall bookcases in my music/mix room. I wanted to change things around for a couple of reasons, so having the gobos be able to sit on top of these things was a design (floorspace conservation) constraint. Obviously I could have made the stands shorter, and in fact I didn't measure and came within 1" of not being able to fit the dang things there...

No wheels needed - small space and some rugs so they will just get picked up and moved if needed. There's no solid back, just the same fabric covering, though it's a little more "bottom of the chair" kind of view with staples showing. I might clean that up or do something different later, but probably not.
View attachment 102011

 

[miroslav]

In the end....do what works for you, I'm just tossing out ideas.... ...but you do want them on the floor without the large space underneath.

You can make them free standing by simply adding a piece of wood at each end to the bottom of the frame...perpendicular, and so that you get about 6-8" sticking out front and back....that way the gobo sits flat on the ground.

The other option, with no legs of any kind, is to hinge them together, but so that the hinges are the kind where you can just lift one of the frames up off the hinge to easily separate them. When they are hinged, just set them with a small angle, and they will stand. In most recording situations, you are probably going to want to do that anyway with the two frames. You can even include the kind of legs I mentioned above, so when if/when you separate them, they can still stand individually....and/or you can put those legs on one end, but make it so the hinges work with the frames flipped, and the legs end up on top, with only a single screw/pivot point...and then you just twist/turn the legs out of the way, on top.

Oh...AFA the back...I would definitely add at least a 1/4" piece of plywood, or even better, 1/2"...because for gobo use, you are looking for some isolation.
With the gobos open/soft on both sides...you wont get much of that. just a dulling of the sound that passes through.
With one hard side and one soft, you can choose how to place them...isolate what's coming in or going out.
Plus...you will at the same time, cover up that rough looking backside...so they will be 100% finished looking all around.

Check some pro gobos...they almost always have one hard surface side. If you are worried about reflections off the hard side, you can add some cloth or a piece of indoor/outdoor carpet....etc.

Anyway...you do nice work.

 

[mjbphotos]

Instead of those funky stands, you could just hang the gobos off the wall or ceiling with hooks and wire.

 

[keith.rogers]

Instead of those funky stands, you could just hang the gobos off the wall or ceiling with hooks and wire.

Well, part of the idea was to have them so they could be used on the floor - the rest of the room has panels mounted to the walls. They have to have something on the bottom so they don't topple over when free-standing.

I'm probably going to just make some new, shorter feet for them in a few weeks, or simply make the ones on them shorter, which is probably easiest. For now they'll be okay until I get the clutter that was in the other bookcases rearranged (upstairs and downstairs both). I've got some other things I have to do in the room in the next week or two so will have some time to think about how to proceed. If I put a solid back on, it will probably make some differences in how they might need stabilized too. So, more things to let percolate for a while.