What's The Best Thing To Cover PA Speaker Cabs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter stevieb
  • Start date Start date
S

stevieb

Just another guy, really.
We have a pair of JBL Professional AS2215's. Excellent speakers, came out of a church that was upgrading and garage-selling these. 15" drivers, horns, bi-amplifiable, certified flyable from several points. Only thing is, they are multi-ply, stained birch, and every time we take them out, they come back with yet another nick in them. They will get very ugly, very soon.

I'd like to cover them with something, but what? I hate rat fur- association with amateurs, not very durable, and leaves ugly when removed or redone- which will need to be done, pretty shortly after being put on, I am afraid. Commercial truck-bed liner appeals, but it's way too expensive. I have considered DIY bedliner, but have read it can soften on hot days- we are in Georgia, so that's not good. Tolex is WAY too easily damaged. Does anyone know of something that would work- durable, professional looking, fairly easily removed if needed, easily repaired if damaged, and cheap? Or maybe I am mis-informed about one of the coverings I have considered? Yeah, I know, I want the moon. Doesn't everyone?

Thanks.
 
You have a few of options one is porch paint which is very durable and can be found a home depot.
Next is the paint that they use to coat pickup trucks beds and there are a few different name brands the most popular goes by the name of *Ryno* I think is spelled with a y maybe an I. But very durable you 'll be able to toss the cabs down a flight of stairs and get not a scratch!

Or you can just cover them with what all live PA cabs are covered with.............BEER :drunk:



(:cool:)
 
There are many sites dedicated to cabinet building and most of them have recommendations on which fabric to use. Just do a quick Google of "Speaker Cabinet Design" and you'll come up with something you like.
Two things though.
1) Black fabric is easily brushed, vacuumed and hides abuse. It's also what people expect to see so in that sense, is invisible.
2) If you use a black fabric, be sure to paint the cabinets black before you apply the covering. This as well as protecting the wood, helps to hide your seams.
 
moresound said:
Next is the paint that they use to coat pickup trucks beds and there are a few different name brands the most popular goes by the name of *Ryno* I think is spelled with a y maybe an I. But very durable you 'll be able to toss the cabs down a flight of stairs and get not a scratch!
Click to expand...

^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^


It's super durable and if you DO manage to nick it you can just brush on a little and it'll fill the ding like nothing ever happened.
It's NOT cheap but probably the best and easiest to get a professional looking job with.

Carpet .... is that what you mean by ratfur?
I don't agree that it looks unprofessional ....... lots of good cabs come with carpet.
And if it's done right and you use the right carpet it can be very durable.
But, IMO, moresounds suggestion is the best way to go.
 
I have gotten into making my own finishes from a tree behind my house. I treat speaker cabinets like a guitar. Violin makers found out a long time ago that the finish you put on a violin is one one the main ingredients in the sound.

For some reason, $, all the speaker companies have refused to embrace that, and speakers are finished for durability with pretty much total disregard to sound. They are made (talking about the exterior) like shipping crates.

But for quick and dirty, your best fix is probably black automotive trunk "spatter" paint, and touch it up every once in awhile. I just had to give the speil above because it is perhaps the biggest improvement in sound (covering my speakers in homemade organic varnish) that I've come across - ever! Way more than all the improvements everyone talks about. But it isn't mainstream and people generally follow what's being done as opposed to carving new paths.
 
I would still just cover them with - HIC - beer. :drunk:



:cool:
 
dintymoore said:
I have gotten into making my own finishes from a tree behind my house. I treat speaker cabinets like a guitar. Violin makers found out a long time ago that the finish you put on a violin is one one the main ingredients in the sound.

For some reason, $, all the speaker companies have refused to embrace that, and speakers are finished for durability with pretty much total disregard to sound. They are made (talking about the exterior) like shipping crates.

But for quick and dirty, your best fix is probably black automotive trunk "spatter" paint, and touch it up every once in awhile. I just had to give the speil above because it is perhaps the biggest improvement in sound (covering my speakers in homemade organic varnish) that I've come across - ever! Way more than all the improvements everyone talks about. But it isn't mainstream and people generally follow what's being done as opposed to carving new paths.
Click to expand...
Most of the time that's just not gonna be the case.
Thing is ..... a violin is made to vibrate. Every surface on it is specifically intended to vibrate and, in fact, actually produces the sound like on an acoustic guitar. If the bodys and tops didn't vibrate there would be almost no sound at all. So the characteristics of the finish and how it affects the vibration of the top and body will make a significant impact on the sound 'cause the vast majority if the sound comes from the vibration of the body.
In something like a PA speaker ..... the vibrations of the cab are a small percentage of the sound that comes from it. And, in fact, in many good cabs the enclosure vibrates very little because they're braced specifically to prevent that.
What you cover them with is gonna have almost no effect at all on the sound.

In monitors it's somewhere in the middle but most high end monitors are braced and built to be as inert as possible. In those the finish is gonna have negligible effect on the sound also.
Cheaper ones MIGHT have a lively enough cab to where the finish will have an effect but it's gonna be a very small one.
Acoutically, the situation of finish affecting the sound of a violin and affecting the sound of a speaker cab are two very different things.
 
Not only that but a PA cab has all frequencies resonating through out it.
Not like an acoustical instrument, and the volume is a lot more extreme.



:cool:
 
Lt. Bob said:
... In something like a PA speaker ..... the vibrations of the cab are a small percentage of the sound that comes from it...
Click to expand...

I think that that is the common thought. It isn't as true as you might think - vibrations come off of all sides of the cabinet and the carpet, plastic handles and all have frequencies that screw up the sound pretty bad.

The cabinets I made with my JBL pa speakers completely changed the way I thought.

In a musical instrument speaker, I think it's better to embrace the sound of the cabinet and make it with the care you'd make a string instrument, not try to deaden it as much as possible and get all the sound from the speaker. That, to me, is the old school thinking I've found is over.
 
dintymoore said:
I think that that is the common thought. It isn't as true as you might think - vibrations come off of all sides of the cabinet and the carpet, plastic handles and all have frequencies that screw up the sound pretty bad.

The cabinets I made with my JBL pa speakers completely changed the way I thought.
Click to expand...

You would need to build two cabinets with the exact same dimensions and porting for the same two drivers to validly compare solid wood with plywood or MDF, damping techniques, the effects of handles, etc. If you simply built a different cabinet of wood and tossed the drivers in, it's highly likely they will sound different by virtue of the volume and porting of the cabinet being different than their previous housing, not to mention baffle size and other such effects that have nothing to do with materials.

Those such effects are well described by standard physics, whereas your claims of the resonant properties of wood with respect to cabinet construction are well on the fringe of pseudoscience. You're going to need better evidence than the usual audiophile canard of "try it and see" to convince me. YOU are the advocate, YOU do the controlled experiment.

Even if you manage to construct a resonant cabinet, why would you want to do that? You will be changing the performance of the driver in a negative manner at the resonant frequencies.
 
mshilarious said:
You would need to build two cabinets with the exact same dimensions and porting for the same two drivers to validly compare solid wood with plywood or MDF, damping techniques, the effects of handles, etc. ...
Click to expand...

Not really, if you use your ears, the difference is so dramatic that common sense will tell you that there's no experiment needed. It would be like thinking you need a scientific test to prove that Snickers taste better than dog shit. You're common sense kicks in and there's no need for a test.

mshilarious said:
... You're going to need better evidence than the usual audiophile canard of "try it and see" to convince me. YOU are the advocate, YOU do the controlled experiment...
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just sharing my real life experience. Right now I have two JBL's, one factory and one homemade, and if you checked with 100 pro musicians, I'm positive all 100 would say mine is drastically more musical. The stock one is not even close.

mshilarious said:
... Even if you manage to construct a resonant cabinet, why would you want to do that? You will be changing the performance of the driver in a negative manner at the resonant frequencies.
Click to expand...

Because it sounds better, and not by just a bit.

It's probably better to think of my comments as those of a musician as opposed to a scientist. What I'm saying is based on what I've done in real life, there's nothing theoretical about it.

Think of me as a musician who is saying that his guitar is better sounding than others, and you're asking him to prove it by scientific theories. I don't need to, I know it sounds better and enough seasoned pro's have heard it and agreed that I know it's true. End of story, get back to songs, everything else, including eating, is a sidetrack.
 
Fair enough but I did an incredible amount of research while buying speakers recently and what I found was that much of the planning goes into preventing the resonance inside the cabinets from altering the sound of the speakers.
Just keeping in mind that the speakers create the sound and project from the front of the box. Tweeters are set back in a horn to help project their sound.
 
Jim Lad said:
Fair enough but I did an incredible amount of research while buying speakers recently and what I found was that much of the planning goes into preventing the resonance inside the cabinets from altering the sound of the speakers...
Click to expand...

That is the misconception that all companies are going along with. The main reason is money, to make speakers like I've made would make the cost go through the roof.

The whole concept that you want the speaker cabinet to be inert is wrong. You can't ever get it to be inert so you're better off accepting it. The sound doesn't come from the speaker alone, it comes from the whole box, much moire than most people would think. Just like an electric guitar, the wood has a dramatic effect on the end result.

I don't expect many to get what I'm saying because the world is based on people following what others have told them. There are very, very free thinkers.
 
Ironically, free thinkers are known for their ability to think outside the box.
I've added some points to your reputation for the help you gave me when I upgrade my PA recently.
Thanks :)
 
dintymoore said:
That is the misconception that all companies are going along with. The main reason is money, to make speakers like I've made would make the cost go through the roof.

The whole concept that you want the speaker cabinet to be inert is wrong. You can't ever get it to be inert so you're better off accepting it. The sound doesn't come from the speaker alone, it comes from the whole box, much moire than most people would think. Just like an electric guitar, the wood has a dramatic effect on the end result.

I don't expect many to get what I'm saying because the world is based on people following what others have told them. There are very, very free thinkers.
Click to expand...
there's NO ONE that's a freer thinker than me and very few that have had as much experience as I have with speaker cabs including very many that I chose to build and experiment with myself over the last 40 years and there's no way that finish choices make a dramatic impact on how a PA speaker sounds.
It's just too small a percentage of the overall sound.


But you're free to believe what you want.
There are many that really still believe that the Earth is flat. They are also free to believe what they want ........ doesn't make it so.
 
Lt. Bob said:
there's NO ONE that's a freer thinker than me...
Click to expand...

Quite a claim!

Lt. Bob said:
... there's no way that finish choices make a dramatic impact on how a PA speaker sounds.
It's just too small a percentage of the overall sound...
Click to expand...

That is the common misconception. I believed it too until I proved it wrong in the real world.
 
Look, if undamped cabinets were such a great idea, why would anybody want room treatment? Nodal response creates peaks and nulls, reflections create reverberation. These are similar effects to what you'd experience with a undamped speaker cabinet.

Further, if speakers should be mounted on an undamped surface, then the best solution would be a driver mounted in a large, thin baffle that was then suspended in the room. That will be much freer to vibrate than a cabinet of any construction.

So go ahead and try that, and let us know how it sounds. You might love it, but I can guarantee you its impulse response will be terrible. Basically, you would be building a plate reverb onto your speakers. Heck, go all the way and make it metal! It could be a cool effect . . .

Usually one strives for accuracy in playback systems . . . guitar cabs are an exception; PA systems, not so much.

Cost an issue? Maybe for Yamaha, but you priced a Meyer lately? I think they could spring for solid wood if it really helped . . .

I wonder if you believe there is a minimum size this effect applies to? If not, I'll bang out a matching solid-wood cab for a 4" full-range driver I already have mounted in an MDF cab, and we'll have ourselves an experiment ;) Is pine OK, or do I have to use a hardwood? Poplar? Oak?
 
mshilarious said:
I wonder if you believe there is a minimum size this effect applies to? If not, I'll bang out a matching solid-wood cab for a 4" full-range driver I already have mounted in an MDF cab, and we'll have ourselves an experiment ;) Is pine OK, or do I have to use a hardwood? Poplar? Oak?
Click to expand...
ooh ooh ....... please!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top