anyone used an isolation cabinet? (i.e. randall)

T

toobalicious

New member
ive never had a chance to mess with one, but i am strongly considering seeking one of these out, or simply building one myself with one of several extra speakers i have. very often i will only close mic, especially with dirty stuff, so taking the room out of equation isnt a huge deal, or at least it doesnt *seem* to be a huge deal. how well do they work? obviously, there is no way that it will be able to contain ALL of the sound, but can you, say, monitor in the same room as one? or have it in the room while tracking something else?

my iso "booth" is really little more than a glorified closet with sound absorption. it works *ok*--- sounds kind of like the amp is upstairs and coming through the floor when it is cranking. i can monitor over the speakers while recording, but it isnt a true representation, as i can still hear the cabinet a little, especially the lowest frequencies. if i dont go crazy with the volume, i can also track, say, drums with very little bleed save for rooms mics, etc, but it is far from perfect. i could never isolate an acoustic guitar enough to track, for example. save for the iso closet, my room is one big space, with no division between control and tracking areas. blah blah blah.

has anyone seen any plans for one of these on the net somewhere?
 
Check out
http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/sho...hlight=iso+box

and
http://www.homerecording.com/bbs/sho...d.php?t=224357

I've done a lot of thinking/work on this. I liked the benefits of mine, that it was a way to play loudly and not disturb the whole house, but micing a speaker in a real room, preferably a treated one, is hands down better in terms of tone.

That said, i think i would like to
a. have time to rebuild one and try options and get it right.

or
b. Buy one from manufacturer that one could assume has alreadyu done some R & D and have a decent product.


Last point, i also ended up going the route of buying an attenuator, which has been a great investment, does just what i want. Even if you had a great iso cab, i would recommend it- gives another option for tone in any situation, and one i tend to find a plus rather than a minus. I am not as satisfied with my low volume recordings yet, tone in the room is great, but it doesn't have the volume to make a sm57 really represent the tone. I am currently looking to find time to do some experiments with condensers, LD dynamics, and ribbons which i have available, and with diff preamp options as well.



daav
 
heya, thanks for the links. could you repost them or pm them to me? i get:
Oops! This link appears broken.
HTTP 404 - File not found.
Click to expand...

i do have an attenuator (a weber MASS), and i do use the crap out of it. one of the most useful things ive bought in awhile, actually. unfortunately, to get some good speaker crunch (especially depending on the speaker), you have to feed it some power. maybe i am a wussy, but i feel like speaker breakup is a large part of "my sound", as gay as it sounds to say that.

i will do another search here and see if i have better luck.
 
I use a Grendel cab that I got early in the year. I love it. It's built like a tank and does exactly what you'd want it to do. I am not skilled enough to build such a thing but if you are, please share the results. Despite all the impressive wonders of emulators and the like, you can't beat real amp tone. Generally speaking, of course.
 
try

If you're not worried about playing and just worried about cutting out room sound then you should try putting a heavy blanket over your amp and mic. I have found that this sounds just as good as an isolation box. Just..... louder.
 
I've gotten excellent results using the amp case from one of my larger combo amps to mic a much smaller amplifier in...crank the little guy to 7 or 8 slam an sm57 close to the sweet spot...not a professional isolation box but i think it works excellent for something i did for free
 
oh no, a bunch of crappy pictures

the grendel cab looks very nice. that is obviously the exact sort of thing i am talking about. thanks for reminding me!

i already do the small amp thing---
STA73756.jpg

champ
STA74845.jpg

a 60's kit amp that ive modified with a speaker jack and a weber sig 8. dig the cardboard baffle.
STA74846.jpg

the frontman amp, as posted about recently, with a homebuilt 1x12 (16 ohm greenback)
STA74847.jpg

classic 30 with 25 watt emi legend 122A, and ghetto-rigged mini-mass featuring an AMD heatsink.... and another homemade cab with a V30.

i am not afraid to try weird shit to get where i want to go, either.

STA74848.jpg

i "built" this from the lid of an old sewing machine box (3/8" ply), featuring 2x8" cutouts, but currently loaded with a single G8L-35 @ 4 ohms in the previous fad of a "detuned" cab. the mics are a beat to hell 57 and a no-name dynamic i lovingly refer to as "snap crackle pop". wonderfully thin and cutting sound to mix with the fatter 57. with the mass i can drive this with almost any amp i own.

this one was pretty fun, too, but not very useful in the studio :D
STA74841.jpg

laney AOR @ half power, homemade W-horn with a peavey BW. obscene for a 50 watt "bass" amp (which it of course is not).
 
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I looked at a couple on youtube a couple of weeks ago, including a couple of vids that show you how to build one. Just search iso cab, or how to build iso cab and they should come up.
 
I built one heres some pics http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/ind...viewPicture&friendID=38195612&albumId=1794585

It works great I cost me about $200 plus speaker (maybe I should have just bought one)
It doesn't block the bass fequecies very well but it is pretty amazingly quiet. Sounds pretty good. Weights a TON. Mine is 2 layers of 3/4" MDF and a layer in the middle and inside of some noise barrier stuff I got from homedepot. And acoustic foam in the lid.
 
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