Speaker isolation box

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timthetortoise

MADE OF SANDALWOOD
Anyone built one of these for recording yet? I'm thinking about doing it for a few upcoming sessions and was wondering how the construction of it differs from that of a standard cabinet aside from the acoustic padding and dimension differences. How many speakers did you use, which brands work best for warm vintage tones, how did you compensate for it not being able to move as much air, etc.? I'm really curious about any pitfalls in terms of sacrificing dynamics for soundproofing. Okay, that's my dumb question. Thanks!
 
Wow, that looks real solid. What method did you use for mounting the mic stand? Is that the bolt near the top in pic 6? What wattage is that speaker? Thanks for these pics, this gave me some great ideas.
 
it is very solid. I gigged with it for years.

a mic plate is secured to the top and a gooseneck to that

on the back at the top is the XLR for the mic and about 2/3 down is the speaker jack.

I've had various speakers in it and presently it's a Greenback.
 
Hahaha awesome, I'm really excited about doing this now. I just finished building my first speaker cab so this project should be a nice extension and a little more experience with cabinet making in general. Thanks for all the info!
 
Oh, actually I've got a totally unrelated question too relating to impedance. I've got two 8 ohm cabs that I want to run from my Music Man head. However, the two outputs are wired in series and max impedance on the amp's side is 8. Could I splice two speaker cables to one input for a parallel impedance of 4 ohms, or would that cause me problems?
 
the two amp outputs are series wired? sure?

yeah, you can wire a cable to put them in parallel for four ohms, if your amp supports it.
 
Yeah, Music Man amps are pretty odd. Series outputs, 700V plate voltage, etc. Makes it hard to find a tech that know what they're doing on it, but the tone more than makes up for it.
 
I just finally (almost) finshed mine this weekend actually.
Long ago I built one to house my amp (Fender Blues Deluxe), 40 watts of loud when cranked up. Made it BIG so it could hold the amp inside with room for mic, and some absobsorbtion.

it sucked, horribly. It kept some sound inside but when turned up at all, it just cut through, and was insanely loud. So i read up a bunch more and became convinced of a few things:
1. Keeping a tube amp in a box is stupid, it will get hot fast and melt soder connections or who knows what else.
2. A box within a box is the only way to really cut down on the projected noise from a 10 or 12 inch speaker pushed hard.

So months went by while i moved and worked on my house, and got most of the studio space set up in the basement. Then I got around to setting up the tools for my workshop (some medium intensity woodworking). And then i picked up a bunch of plywood for next to nothing from the cull lumber section at home depot. Built a smaller box that is big enough for a speaker and mic. Mounted the speaker by itself inside the box, left the amp itself (now a head, essensially) outside so i can twiddle knobs while it is all fired up, but with the speaker locked away inside the box.

Last, i hooked up a longer cable to go from the amp to the speaker and powered everythign up and... beautiful!
I can crank the damn thing to kingdom come and it just sounds like someone is listening to the radio in the next room. stuck a 57 in there and fired up cubase tweaked knobs and instant nice tone at my fingertips day and night without fighting the room, my girlfriend or the neigbors.

I could still seal all the edges, especially of the original outer box, and perhaps try to build some more speration between the boxes, but for my purposes right now, it rocks.

Oh one other idea you could add to yours, i took the speaker and mounted it to a piece of 3/4 inch plywood, and then built a simple slot to feed the plywood into the smaller box and hold the speaker. Now, if i choose, i can pick up some different speakers (matching impedance of course) and just pop them out or in depending on what i might want for a tonal effect. Soon as i can afford to buy some speakers, i'll try that out.

hope this helps a bit,
Daav
 
daav said:
1. Keeping a tube amp in a box is stupid, it will get hot fast and melt soder connections or who knows what else.
Click to expand...

Heh, my head tends to heat up a room even when out in the open, with 3 fans aimed directly on the tubes. I\'d never even consider putting it into a box.

daav said:
Oh one other idea you could add to yours, i took the speaker and mounted it to a piece of 3/4 inch plywood, and then built a simple slot to feed the plywood into the smaller box and hold the speaker.
Click to expand...

I was going to do this with the next cab I built anyway, so might as well do it with this for a test run. I like the idea of being able to convert to different sized baffles, in case it ever needs to sub as a bass or keyboard or PA cab. I think that Sunn did this on one of their cabs and apparently it made the sound a lot more dynamic with richer transients and harmonics. Of course, this is coming from a Sunn aficionado, but we\'ll see. Thanks for the tips.
 
timthetortoise said:
Heh, my head tends to heat up a room even when out in the open, with 3 fans aimed directly on the tubes. I\'d never even consider putting it into a box.



I was going to do this with the next cab I built anyway, so might as well do it with this for a test run. I like the idea of being able to convert to different sized baffles, in case it ever needs to sub as a bass or keyboard or PA cab. I think that Sunn did this on one of their cabs and apparently it made the sound a lot more dynamic with richer transients and harmonics. Of course, this is coming from a Sunn aficionado, but we\'ll see. Thanks for the tips.
Click to expand...

No prob, for my little input. Once thing i am still going to work on, all that flat playwood in both boxes seems to like to vibrate with the speaker. I haven't really treated the interior of the smaller box with auralex or anything yet like some of the nice examples above, it is pretty much still an empty box.
I would suggest trying for as compact a setup as you can manage, with that im mind perhaps.

Daav
 
Way cool recording box....Kinda reminds me of a fake leslie that I built for recording about 25 years ago. It sounded like shit but your design looks to be more solidly built than mine. I agree with the faction that feels that it's not a good idea to enclose a tube head, and Ithink you've got the answer.

chazba
 
daav said:
No prob, for my little input. Once thing i am still going to work on, all that flat playwood in both boxes seems to like to vibrate with the speaker. I haven\'t really treated the interior of the smaller box with auralex or anything yet like some of the nice examples above, it is pretty much still an empty box.
I would suggest trying for as compact a setup as you can manage, with that im mind perhaps.

Daav
Click to expand...

For me, the only problem with a more compact setup is that this is going to be pushing a lot of air for this session. This is basically a doom metal project tuned to standard G (yeah, lowlowlow) and the amp is going to be pushing the hell out of this speaker, which will be a minimum of a 200 watt bass speaker. For the magnet section, I\'m going to try to make it small as possible, but for the actual cone section it\'s going to be very long, to get some strange effects out of it as well as the bulk of the tone right there. I don\'t know exactly how the extended length is going to affect the tone at the main mic location (probably about 6 inches in front of the speaker), so I\'m going to design some diffraction baffles and hopefully those will keep any weird overtones that may come out of it from getting back to the mic, in addition to the acoustic foam. Hopefully a simple design will in the end come out with better-than-expected results, as my last cab did.
 
Oh yeah, quick question on baffle construction. On the cab I just built, the speaker is rear-loading and I\'m using slotted 10-24 machine nuts and bolts. In the front, the screws are totally exposed. I\'m never going to take these out, so what would be a good way to cover them up and secure them? I\'m thinking just countersinking and cutting a dowel to size + filling with epoxy would do the trick but I want to know any other methods!
 
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