Inside a 5150 cabinet?

N

notCardio

I walk the line
OK, just got an empty 5150 cab for dirt cheap. Pretty beat up, but it's a project anyway so I don't really care.

A few questions:

There is no batting inside, and of the other pics I've seen, there never was supposed to be. Would it improve anything if I put some in? If so, where? Around the sides, sides and back, what?

The stiffener that goes in the center from front to back was just laying in the bottom and I can't tell how it was attached. I'm assuming then, that it's supposed to be glued?

I would like to make this have stereo capability, or if necessary, dedicated stereo. Do I need to put a baffle in to separate the sides?

I've seen guys put different sets of speakers in, 2+2, but if I want 4 different ones, how much is their different efficiencies going to muck up the situation?

More questions, but let's get through these first.

Also, there's a 99.9% probability that this will never be used live. Just me, recording at home. (Hmm, maybe I should start a website dedicated to...nah.)
 
Should be a nice project, you have some interesting ideas in respect of the stereo option. I can't answer most of your questions but I can add some thoughts regarding the potential need of a dividing baffle. If it's a closed cabinet a consideration if using 2+2 for stereo is this. If situations arise where left and right signals vary greatly you'll have a push pull going on with one pair of cones pulling the other back and forth in a passive manner. This would greatly reduce the stereo effect as both pairs if delivering separate signals would act upon their opposites. So in short, personally I'd seal each pair off to a large extent and have them behaving like two cabinets albeit in one. It's not such an issue at the higher frequencies as less air is moved. This I know from the days when I was heavily involved in Hi-Fi audio fot a living and had a lot of dealings with Celestion speakers, their factory being very close to where I lived and worked. They developed cabinets with passive radiators which were basically fully loaded chassis minus the magnets and voice coils, the cones filled with poly to offer a flat front to move air in conjunction with a low/mid driver sharing the same cabinet. The passives had a calculated amount of mass to encourage them compliment at lower frequencies. Your drivers won't have that added mass so they'll excite at mid range too. Food for thought.....

Regards

Tim
 
speakers003.jpg

Batting won't make it sound any better. The "stiffener" should be screwed on to another piece of wood that is screwed to the front baffle boards. No you don't need to separate the cab to run stereo. As long as the speaker efficiencies are not drastically different it will not be a problem.
 
Tim, that's exactly what I was assuming, remembering my days involved (as an amateur) in audio. I remember the cabs your talking about, or some others very like them, with passive radiators. My concern with dividing the cab (I could even divide it into 4ths) was that the interior dimensions of each segment wouldn't be compatible with each speaker's frequency response (or resonant frequency) as that's what I though was the determinig factor for cabinet volume. On the other hand, guys change speakers all the time without altering the cabinet volume, so maybe those rules are overkill for guitar cabinets.

Ocnor, (love the name Mr. P.) I'll have to look again, but don't I see glue on the stiffener in that pic? Mine has come apart from the piece that's screwed into the baffle board. Btw, I think this is the image I saw when I googled it.

In another thread, I'm going to ask about how to wire them up so that you can have stereo OR mono. I know how to do one or the other, but not the combination like a Marshal, at least not without putting a switch in.

So, do Marshal 1960s have an internal baffle separating the sides?
 
Well, I guess they don't have baffles either.

It also looks like they have switches, too. I thought they didn't. Oh well, live and learn.

Now, does anybody know where I can get one of those recessed input plates with a switch?
 
notCardio said:
Well, I guess they don't have baffles either.

It also looks like they have switches, too. I thought they didn't. Oh well, live and learn.

Now, does anybody know where I can get one of those recessed input plates with a switch?
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I disabled the stereo function on all of my Marshall cabs. They are hard-wired mono.
 
notCardio said:
I understand you wanting to run mono, but why disable the stereo capability? What's the advantage to that?
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What's the advantage of one stereo cab? None that I can see. What do you want a stereo cab for?

There's a huge advantage to disabling Marshall's version of a stereo cab though. Their stereo switch is a piece of shit. When it craps out, and it will, your amp head will be left with a no load situation. It happened to me, and it happens to a lot of people. I got lucky. Nothing bad happened. But I immediately yanked that shit out of all of my cabs. They're all mono. If I want true stereo, I just use two cabs.
 
The advantage to having a stereo cab for me is that I can run stereo effects and record them mic'ed. I can also use different heads on one cabinet, which is what I think most guys use the stereo option for.

I just realized something that all of you 4x users already know.

Now I'm gonna have to get 16 ohm speakers, which means I can't use the two 8 ohm speakers I already have. Oh well, I'm gonna build this thing slowly anyway.
 
notCardio said:
The advantage to having a stereo cab for me is that I can run stereo effects and record them mic'ed. I can also use different heads on one cabinet, which is what I think most guys use the stereo option for.
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Does your amp head have stereo outputs? Using stereo effects into a stereo cab doesn't mean the result will be stereo unless the power amp feeding the cab knows to send the signal in stereo.

Are you going to use two heads at the same time? That's about the only actual advantage of a single stereo cab.
 
P.S. - I'm not trying to dissuade you. I'm just wondering if you actually need or want a stereo cab and/or the inherent limitations of having a stereo cab.
 
notCardio said:
Now I'm gonna have to get 16 ohm speakers, which means I can't use the two 8 ohm speakers I already have.
Click to expand...

You don't necessarily need 16 ohm speakers. If you wire the two 8 ohm speakers in series they will be 16 ohms.
 
Greg, yes I am going to use two heads. I heave a really nice stereo Univibe and I want that sound. And yeah, I could have achieved the same thing with two cabs, and probably get better results, but where's the fun in that?

And ocnor, I don't think I want 16 ohms per side, but now you've got me thinking - maybe I do. That way, I could drive the heads that much harder at a lower volume.
 
notCardio said:
Greg, yes I am going to use two heads. I heave a really nice stereo Univibe and I want that sound. And yeah, I could have achieved the same thing with two cabs, and probably get better results, but where's the fun in that?
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The fun is the better results. :D

But yeah, I get what you're saying.

And ocnor, I don't think I want 16 ohms per side, but now you've got me thinking - maybe I do. That way, I could drive the heads that much harder at a lower volume.
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Wait, what? Are they solid state heads?
 
Btw, the main sound I'm going for by running stereo is something akin to Robin Trower's Bridge of Sighs album.

I'm sure I'll run a stereo flanger and chorus from time to time, as well as ping pong and stereo reverb.

This is strictly for me at home, not playing live out anywhere.
 
notCardio said:
I'm sure I'll run a stereo flanger and chorus from time to time, as well as ping pong and stereo reverb.
Click to expand...

It's not something I do regularly, but I've messed around with feeding two separate halfstacks with a stereo effect. It's pretty wild. I'll split the guitar signal through my flanger or delay and send it to two amp rigs. Pretty huge. A lot of hassle though.
 
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