cabs - creating the new beast

my bass gear motto ... "i cant get what i want ... build it." (it couldnt be all that difficult)

i've wanted one of those seismic audio 2X15 cabs but they have been backordered forever.

the mesa vintage 2X15 is nice ... way, way, way too expensive nice.

i really like the old sunn 2X15 and reflex cabs (chek out the ones entwistle had!). i cant find or afford anything like that!

i've decided to start learning how to build bass cabinets. no, its not all that difficult if i have the correct tools (and i dont ... but enuff to get the job done). i can build the cab with the features and look that i want, and even tune them to resonate at the frequencies that i want them to.

my first experimental project is going to be modeled after this .........

http://www.markbass.it/products.php?lingua=en&cat=2&vedi=28

i've played thru this cabinet (and other markbass stuff) and it was decent. i dig the markbass ... i just cant get over that flat orange. i also cant get over the $999 pricetag.

i'm using cheap plywood (birch, 6 ply, 2 middle plys are particle), 1" X 1" in the joints, drywall screws and 2 carvin ne15-8 for a 1200W 4ohm cab tuned to 38 - 42hZ with 4 2" ports. as the speaker specs are different and i'm going for a different tuning, some of the dimensions will change. not going much further than that as this is a prototype.

this probably wont work out exactly as planned, so i'm gonna keep buildning and rebuilding prototypes untill i get it right.

when i do, i'm gonna rebuild it with the ammenities .... .71" 6ply marine grade birch with white oak veneer, ebony tint with royal stain / satin finish, black rail edges, ball corners, grille, handles, polyester blue 3" casters ... etc, etc, etc. my personal cab ... make it sweet.

then i may rebuild the rest of the cabs in my rig ... 2X10 may become a 4X10 and another mid 15". then i'll learn how to do the physics of the reflex cabs and other specialty stuff.

letting you guys know this because if this goes well, i will offer custom work for sale.

i'll keep you up to date.

Sounds like a plan! I've had success myself in building two cabinets, and it really isn't that hard to do.

The one thing that you omitted in your parts layout is some sort of glue or sealant. Trust me on this one. If you simply screw/nail the wood pieces together, you could end up with squeaks and creaks that occur with major blasts of air from the speakers. You will want to seal every wood joint with something like Elmer's Wood Glue, or some kind of silicone sealer. Believe me, it will make a difference.

Are you considering ports?

Before I got my SA cabs, I gave serious thought to building my own.

it got me started on this because the SA 2X15 has been backordered for months.

i dont think the SA 2X15 is tuned to what i'm looking for anyhow.

sealer ... just decided to start all out and use tubes of liquid nails. dont know how ittl work out as a sealer, but if it doesnt, most companies use wood glue and silicone. i'll have to experiment.

was looking at different wood veneers last night ... very nice and quite affordable.

yes ... 2X15 will have four 2" ports ... i think my specs said 4" deep. again ... this is a prototype and we'll see how it works. i'm sure i'll need to tweak and nudge the specs a bit.

i got all the wood cut ... i'll post pics soon.

measuring, measuring, measuring and measuring again ... cut once.

i got all the plywood cut. i worked out a 15" speaker template and i nailed it; theres less that 100th of an inch wiggle of the 15" speaker dropped in the hole. sweet! you can see the template on the floor in the last pic.

started messing around with some finish color ..........






i'm still searching and collecting parts. right now, i'm looking for 3/4" or 1" 90 degree black powder coated aluminum for the edges to match the black corners i'm gonna use.

omg ... look at all the sawdust on my basement floor. i just cleaned it up the night before!

Wow....it looks great!

Metal

changed the design ........

ran the numbers thru BOXPLOT and got better vent mach values at the low frequency with two 4" ports @ 3" depth. two less holes i gotta cut ... i'm sold.

when i originally looked at software, the winISD seemed simpler and easier to understand. it was good for choosing driver specs for ploppin them in the boxes that i have. now i'm desigining cabinets ... and i understand a lot more, the BOXPLOT is better software (they both do the same thing) having more options and more stability as an application. i was having problems with the saved winISD files switchin format of measurements to metric when i re opened them. weird.

if i continue to head down this road, there are better applications and software i'll buy.

so i cut the port holes yeasterday. i have gotten so much better with this router. the port tubes are 4" cardboard with chrome rings at the top ... 1/32" maybe. i measured the 4" holes + machine router width and cut a template. measured again ... looked right. routed the cabinet face and cleaned it up with sandpaper and ... shoop! the ports slid tightly right into the holes. some adheisive and they will be simply airtight. that was easy!

i finished staining the remaining panels. i'll hit the whole thing again with some finishing sandpaper and stain again after i put the box together this week.

and i continue to search for hardware and electical components so i can figure out, base line, how much these cabs are gonna cost. i have also found a decent wood supplier ... great selection of ply, 1" X 1" and veners, cheap and, they deliver.

So....does this potentially mean that we might be able to order custom speaker cabs from you sometime soon?

again ... this is just a test run. lemme explain how ground level this is ........

when amy and i moved into this house, the back of the basement was lined with rotting wooden shelves. yuk. i ripped them down (big sledge!) and discovered a lot of the 3/4" plywood was half decent. i saved it with plans to build a new workbench out of it.

if i bother to build a new workbench, i'm gonna build it out of better wood. this ply was pine, and not bad for pine, but not what a bass cabinet can handle after years of low frequencies and road rash and not the best workbench (too splinterey). i'm using this crapola for experimenting with sound design for a 2X15 cabinet ... porting and tuning with the dimensions to see if i can do it. basicly, its a dry run that costs me very little (i think i spent money on a new router bit, liquid nails, whatever the other 15" driver is gonna cost and some hardware i throw together).

if this goes well, i'll pull the 15" drivers and whatever else i can salvage from this cab and build a new one ... out of birch, with some nice vener out of the old sunn 215 design.

the reason i didnt do the sunn designand did the side by side markbass design originally .... i only had so much scrap wood to work with.

so to answer your question more simply eric ... yes, i'de be happy and proud to build you guys some custom cabinets (at a decent price). its gonna take some time to design, re - design and try different designs so what i sell you, is way better than any mass produced big name (or small name like seismic) cabinet on the market. i hope that i'll be able to be competitive with ear candy and emporer cabs. i am also still busy pricing materials, seeking out vendors and setting up a business model. hopefully, i'de be ready start taking orders by mid / late summer.

having a cabinet built and tuned to specific drivers you want with a custom finish? i think that is something that players are gonna want. i've always just dropped better drivers into whatever cabs i could find with hit or miss results. i want a specific tone and volume ... this is how i figured one could get it.

Sounds like a plan! And now that you've undertaken this venture, it has me thinking about an 8x10 cabinet. I've priced the speakers and the materials, and it looks as though I could build, or have built, a decent cab for slightly less than what the major companies produce.

tell me more eric......
tell me more!

what kinda drivers are you looking at??? gimmie a model number and i'll crunch the specs.

possibly point you in a direction ??? ... i really dig my carvin ne10's. decent spl's with a light weight. the frequency response is kinda high ... but i use 15's for the boom so these work well.

other than that, i've always like eminence.

Well, again, I have to look at things from an economic point of view for the moment. But yes, Carvin has always been a serious consideration. Their neodynium 10's cost $80 apiece, but then they also have their older PS10's for $50 apiece. I used to have one of their PS15's, and it was a killer speaker. So I could go all neodymium for $640 in speakers, or the PS10 route for $400.

Then I found that Seismic Audio also sell raw speakers, and their 10's go for only $35 apiece. Since I am now playing through their 2x15 and 1x15 cabinets, I can tell you that I have not had any problems with their speakers yet. In fact, I can drive my QSC power amp into clipping, and the speakers still won't distort. Not that I'm saying that they compare to something like EV or JBL, but I think they do the the job well considering how cheap they are. So even with 8 of their 10's, that's only $280 in speakers.

Then there's the cost of the wood. Now, you can only get so much information from sites like Home Depot, but it appears that the lumber, the speaker jack, the casters, and a handle can all be had for less than $200.

In total, that has a potential cost of only $480 for an 8x10. The cheapest I see most commercially made 8x10's seem to start around $600. Not a dramatic difference, but it does make me think.

Going back to Carvin for the moment, if I were to decide to replace the drivers in my SA cabs, Carvin would be my first choice by far. The affordability and quality have been set in my mind ever since I bought that first 1x15 driver so many years ago.

yeah ... see? exactly why i started heading down this road.

it is a lot of work doing the research, obtaining the materials and doing the actual work. this is why i'm approaching it from the standpoint of "custom". everyones cabinets are tolex, cheap black carpet or custom wood finish and/or veners at a rediculous price. i think its cool that you can buy the carvin cabs with custom color tolex, but again ... their cab specs are designed for their speakers.

and then theres the custom when it comes to a specific design for a specific driver (or combination of) to fulfill a specific need. for me ... i need more low end boom. it could just be easy (or cheap) and seismic could just have more of those 215's in stock ... but no.

dig this.

i'm trying to find a supplier for black powder coat alumininum angle, .75" x .75" x .125". i wanna run a protective edge around all the 90 degree wood corners of the cab. distiributors either laugh at me because i'm so specific (because they have bright aluminum or annodized) or they want me to buy by the ton.

never easy.

yeah ... i dig the neo's and think its worth a few more bucks to loose the weight. my current 15" cab i can pick up with one hand!

yeah? the seismic speakers are decent? never thought about buying raw speakers from them. their subs are inexpensive too. i remember looking at them and diddnt go that route because they didnt post the drivers thesile parameters. lemme go chek that out again ......

i'll run the numbers for those drivers eric and let you know what the computer thingey tells me. i think i'll use BOXPLOT, because winISD only allows up to 4 drivers.

CRAP! I just got done typing my response after doing a bunch of research the get these specs....AND MY BROWSER LOGGED ME OFF BEFORE I COULD POST!!! STUPID INTERNET!!!

OK....I'm better now. Let me try this again.

Let's do a side-by-side comparison. Since we're talking about Seismic Audio and Carvin, let's compare these to what can be argued as probably the most popular brand of 8x10, Ampeg. Whether or not anyone believes it to be worthy of this distinction, the Ampeg name is by far the one that comes up the most when discussing 8x10's, at least, for me it is.

The Ampeg uses Eminence Legend 1058 10" speakers:

Power handling: 75 watts RMS
Frequency range: 100hz-6khz
Sensitivity: 98.7 db/watt
Magnet weight: 16 oz
Cost: $50

The Seismic Audio Earthshaker aluminum frame 10" speakers:

Power handling: 150 watts RMS
Frequency range: 50hz-5khz
Sensitivity: 95 db/watt
Magnet weight: 50 oz
Cost: $35

The Seismic Audio steel frame drivers cost the same as the Earthshakers, but their frequency response and power handling capabilities are lower.

The Carvin PS10 10" speakers:

Power handling: 200 watts RMS
Frequency range: 60hz-5khz
Sensitivity: n/a
Magnet weight: 80 oz
Cost: $50


The Carvin NE10 10" speakers:

Power handling: 300 watts RMS
Frequency range: 50hz-6khz
Sensitivity: n/a
Magnet weight: 72 oz
Cost: $80

From my perspective, the SA's have better bass response and power handling than the Ampeg's. The Carvin's exceed these specs, but they also cost more.

You can draw your own conclusions from these specs.

yes, yes ... those ampeg have been engineered to be the 8X10 standard. they are capable of handeling just about any lind of tone thrown at it. i have ben happy with just about every eminence product that i've used. bottom line ... cost.

thanx for putting the effort in to find specs eric. i noticed some of the carvin specs you put in NA. i dont understand why, when it comes to replacement speaker specs and thesile parameters, all this information isnt posted in one spot under, around or near the "buy now" box. all of them make sure they have a good picture there (i know what a 10" speaker looks like). the carvin speakers have a seprate page from a link. seismic doesnt have this with their speakers. point is, when it comes to designing a cabinet, or finding a speaker to replace an existing cabinet, in order for it to be properly tuned, the thesile parameters are necessary, esp the Qes ratings and such.

the seismic seem like nice speakers and i'de like to try them ... but i'm not buying them if i dont know what i'm getting.

and i used to decide on a speaker by its wattage rating (higher watts handle more and are louder?). nowadays i match the wattage of the amp i'm using and go for the highest sensitivity rating.

on that note ... i'll do some more research and comparison tonite when i get home..........

this has been slow going for 2 reasons.

its baseball season ... we've been overly busy at work. finding time is tuff.

money ... i just dont have any right now. bills / taxes / house repairs / auto inspection and repairs. its the time in the project where i need to start buying stuff, like drivers, and i just dont have the $200 to move forward.

the box at this point has turned out sweet. taking all the time to measure 2 and 3 times (and cut once) has produced a beautiful fit cabinet. being big and pine ... it weghs a ton. its all together and sealed with ports installed except for the top being put on. i'll do that last for ease of assembly.

i cant find materials. i'm looking for either aluminum, black powder coat preferable in u channel for the front 3/4" plywood edge and 90 degree for the top / back and side edges. i've found aluminum ... but i'm not gonna spend $200 on just edging and i'm not gonna buy 300' as a minimum order. these companies are killing me!

the best deal i've found has been thru ace hardware.

and i would also be able to use u chanel and 90 degree black extruded vinyl.

seems pretty simple to me ... dont know why this is so difficult.

all the other cabinet parts are easy to find.

once this is done, then i can move on to speakers, dish, speakon connectors, castors and grille.

I'm gonna bump this thread for 2 reasons....


#1 is I'm sure all of us wanna know how far along Mike's cabinet is, and #2

since I'm pretty ghetto about what it looks like, and the lack of tools prevents me from making a lot of stuff myself even though I have the knowledge to do it........

here's my new 2x12

A friend gave it to me with 2 300w Pyramid amps, the homemade cab and pyramid 12" speakers out of his car. The speakers are 4ohm, so I wired them up in series to get 8, and GOD**** does it make a huge difference on the 4x10 so it is now part of my "what should I bring" on those gigs I know the PA is gonna suck and I wanna be heard.
Each speaker has a separate chamber, and is ported on the top.

ghetto? ... naw.

you just need to cut the angle wings off the front and hit it with some flat black spraypaint.

2X12? nothin wrong with that. wish i had one.

its really slowed down for me because i'm at the point where i need to start buying stuff.

i think i found the trim i wanna use @ McMaster-carr ... great tools and accessories ... what grainger used to be.

they got cool stamped grill material too.

i still need a second 15"

i need a dish and some speakon connectors.

corners.

casters.

hopefully ittl be done in a few weeks.

the thing is sealed pretty good, no vibrations ( probably cause the previous owner used it for GHETTO music )

no insulation in the thing yet, and I will eventually add all that and cut the wings off of it..hell it was free as a trade for some of my stuff that I didn't need, so I didn't say no even though the thing weighs over 50lbs...

Not bad, Mike! Not bad at all!

I've tried small 1x12 car-cabs before and they always sucked, but this thing was in a SUV and size was not an issue for him to make it big.
I pulled the speakers when I first got it, and each speaker is rated at 300@4ohms so that's good running 2 of them 8ohms with the amp I'm using

So you wind up with a good 2x12 cabinet rated at 600 watts at eight ohms. With 24 inches of speaker area, that's better than a 1x15 at the same ratings. Plus, since the speakers are 12's, you get better mid and treble response.

Yeah, normally boxes made for car applications don't have quite the area or response that a bass rig needs to be effective, but there are those designs that do seem to be large enough. It looks like you snagged a good one there, Mike.

You also mentioned the weight factor, and this is one of the reasons why I like the Seismic Audio cabinet so much since they hardly weigh anything at all. But what the heck. We are bass players after all, so we are normally destined to having to carry around heavy cabinets.

it's 1/2" particle board and heavy..and what bassplayer do you know of in his late 30's to 40's who hasn't carried a 8x10 or a heavy amp and cab to a gig before ?

600 watts? maybe somewhere up there. It takes more volume to get it to the same level as the 4x10 which I assume is 8ohm pairs in series for 16ohms then paralleled at the jack to drop it back to 8ohms.

I'll throw some casters and handles on it and ugly/heavy/ghetto or not, I'll call it a day.

Well, you said that the 12's you used are 300 watts apiece. Ergo, the cabinet is 600 watts....BUT....

The thing is (and I am certain you already know this, Mike) power handling and perceived volume output are two different things. It's not just about the amount of wattage you pump through a speaker, but also has to do with the efficiency of the cabinet. Case in point. You can take a raw, unmounted 15" speaker rated at 400 watts and run max power through it, and it will sound like crap. No volume, no bass response, etc., etc. But you take that same speaker, and mount it in a really efficient cabinet with the proper port, and it will crank like there's no tomorrow. Not only that, but you can hit it with about half it's power handling, and it will still be twice as loud as an unmounted speaker will.

Heck, there are piezos that will handle a 400 watt bass signal, but just because they can handle that amount of power doesn't mean they will work well at producing good bass response. There are plenty of car stereo 6x9 speakers that will handle high bass wattage, but they wouldn't work for live applications in a bass rig.

Since 2 12's are more than enough to produce good bass response, my guess is that since it takes a lot of power to get your 2x12 cabinet up to volume, it's probably related to the tonal efficiency of the cabinet itself. Maybe porting the thing would help so the speakers don't have to work as hard.

And yes. Like you, I have spent years perfecting the art of throwing out my back on lugging around big, heavy bass cabinets!

thus far, looking at building this 2x15 ..... its gonna weigh a ton.

i would like to use neo speakers, but i got limited money and a peavey black widow laying around, so i might as well use it and get another. they are heavy.

i tried to use as little 3/4" ply as possible ... but its still a heavy box.

aluminum grate on the front costs more, but weighs less than steel. i gott look at the cost to weight ratio.

yeah ... this things gonna be heavy.

lemme look and see if the seismic 2x15 is still backordered ...........

EricHaven wrote:

my guess is that since it takes a lot of power to get your 2x12 cabinet up to volume, it's probably related to the tonal efficiency of the cabinet itself. Maybe porting the thing would help so the speakers don't have to work as hard.

you can't see it but the top has 2 ports one for each speaker since it is a split cab and each speaker is enclosed in it's own little "box" within the box....
the "efficiency", well since it was homemade and probably done by a GHETTO-boy, He may have built it to fit in the back of the SUV, and all other considerations were left out.
either way, nothing like the cab Mike is building and certainly not as well planned out.

I told our singer who was over the day I was soldering all the wires that if it did not work I would use the 12" speakers for my home stereo since the amp on my home stereo is a BGW 2ohm stable amp anyway and 4 ohm speakers would not bother it.

I'm still looking forward to Mike's creation, and all the goodnes, time, planning, and work it takes to really build something "NICE"

Ah. I gotcha now, Mike.

And I am also looking forward to seeing what MadMike creates.

since posting started on this thread again, even tho it had to do with mike's 12's and not my cab, i put some work in on it tonite.

i changed the stain color. the original color was a light blue with a gray base to it ... too light. i've had bad experiences with staining wood blue ... it comes up green. yuk. i reluctantly grabbed my electric blue stain to try and darken down the hue of the current light blue / gray stain ..............

perfect!

i also resealed all the joints except the top cause i'm gonna put that on after the whole thing is built. the liquid nails seems to be working great!

ittl be done by the end of may.

Progress is progress! I can't wait to hear how it turns out!

one step closer.

i was boohoohooing about trim; lack of availability, trying to make the incorrect product work, wrong colors, aluminum vs. vinyl and just the rediculous overpricing of such products. i was looking at spending $80 for pvc vinyl and up to $180 for black powdercoat aluminum. way too much for just u chanel around the front edge and l chanel for the 90's.

i found it!

recycled black rubber gardenhose from sears. $8! the recycled hose is rectangular ... like a firemans hose, and quite rigid (not like a green garden hose). it even has a blue line running thru it!

i cut it on the one flat side with a straightedge for the front u chanel edge. i just did the verticles today ... it looks sweet!

i'll cut it on the edge to make the L's for the 90's.

i knew there was an answer. woohoo.

i'll have more pictures soon ........

Now that's innovation!

allright ... i been putting in an hour here and an hour there ... this is taking me forever!

like i was stating about that hartke i'm gonna replace, and i been looking at a bunch of other cabs; mine is built with much more quality and exactly designed to be tuned for the drivers i'm gonna use and ended up pretty much how i wanted it to look.

i still have some more work to do. i got a few more parts i ordered comming in soon. next order i place is for a grille and the other 15" ... then i'm done.

here it is .... the madcab 215 ......



the back .......



whaddaya think ?????????

Woaho-ho-ho!! That's a looker...Gad that's going to kill with a pair of BWs in it...

madmikes cab = a lot of time and money...it better sound correct. ( I said correct ) because if I said "good" my good may be different than mike's "good"

so.........

madmike's 2x15 cab = expensive, nice looking, time and materials.
cheapmike's 2x15 cab = just cheap --lol....

materials from the local hardware distributor ... $60

materials from aftermarket speaker diy design dist ... $100 (corners, casters, t - nuts, grille)

drivers (i had one black widow) ... (with shipping) $160

this is not the ply i shud have used but it was sitting in my basement and i wudda thrown it away. its pine and has gaps i filled with epoxy between the ply's. not my first choice ... but the birch i wudda needed for this project wudda run me $80. i wasnt gonna spend that money on ply that was just an experiment ... i still dont know how its gonna sound.

14 hours.

markbass 215 ... $800 +shipping

mesa 215 ... $900 +shipping

trace elliot 215 ... $700 +shipping

fender 215 ... $800 +shipping

the only one i think i would really want is the mesa.

... or a seismic. i just cant compete with that, but the model you get is the model you get. nothing custom. no casters ... and from what eric reported, no ports either (altho their sales posting sez it does).

now that i got the basics down ... i think if i applied myself, i could turn a cabinet like this around in 10 hours.

so yeah ... sounds good or not ... this was definately worth it. i know a lot more about sound engineering, design and materials now.

plus ... nobody else has a cab like this.

I'll give you a laugh from the Marathon gig......

my 2x15 was on casters but low to the ground and was getting splashed with water. I CAN'T BELIEVE it did not totally ruin the speakers ( cheap pyramid car speakers ) because they were pretty wet by the time we were done. Last night all is dry, and I plugged it in to make sure I could beat on it without the cones cracking....nope

speaker surround foam is still soft and nice and not ruined by the water that splashed up on to the speakers either.
I just got lucky, that's about it.

point being? If it was a thousand dollar cab and got wet I WOULD BE SUPER pissed, but if it totally ruined something cheap, I would shrug my shoulders and use the money we made for 2 new speakers ...lol

having something that has drivers that sound good (tuned to the cabinet and right for the rig), are resonably priced and easy to get and drop in is whats valuable to me. always stuck with the eminence and the peavey drivers ... they have served me well. stuff happens and it pisses me off, but being able to fix the stuff before the next time we play makes that pissed feeling go away quicker.

i had a crate combo with 2 15"s in it at 200W. one was factory and the other a subwoofer i bought off someone for $20. it was 100W. that surround foam actually gave it a nice low end tone. i'de consider mixing speakers like this in in the future for a specific tone.

yes ... dont get your $1000 cab with fostex or celestions wet. this will kill them. the destruction ratio is greatly increaced by price and availability. sunn ... one drop of water and ittl explode!

that cabinet is too nice not to use it tomorrow, go to walmart and buy some made in china 15" speakers for 80 bucks a pair and jam on it --

then when your 300.00 speakers come in you just swap em out and by then you'll know all the air leaks woodbuzz..etc in the cab, and the new ones will make you think you just bought a new cab anyway. If I had an empty box it wouldn't be empty too long, even if just to smell the voice coils on cheap speakers burning the chemical they are painted with when you have your amp loud for a time ---

amimbari wrote:

Go to WalMart and buy some made in China 15" speakers for 80 bucks a pair and jam on it

Does WalMart carry 15" speakers now?

mmmm ... voicecoil burnt bandaid smell. that what i smelt when i cooked my eminence delta 10". i still got the other ... next project.

i'm tempted to drop the black widow i got now in there at 8 ohms and parallel it with my other 15" seismic cab at 8 ohms to run @ 4 ohms so i can crank it and chek for buzz. iddid be nice to chek it and fix it before final assembly.

i think i'm buzz free tho ... i keep banging the panels with the palm of my hand as i put it together and everything feels sound. nothing compares to 40 - 50Hz @ 80dB tho.

i know i'm airtight ... all panels joined with liguid nails and screws, all 90 degree angles run over again with liquid nails bead and pressed into the seams and then ... because liquid nails shrinks as it dries ... all 90degrees beaded with clear silicone. this thing shud hold water for a week.

walmart ... funny. i havent been in a walmart in 12 years!

I just said Walmart because their car audio dept is pathetic with off-brand cheap junk. Hell even our PepBoys and large AdvanceAuto stores have empty car boxes and your choice of Chinese speakers to put in them

Ah, I see.

Well, if someone really wanted to go along a similar route without taking an enormous gamble, there's always this:

http://www.seismicaudiospeakers.com/15-Woofer-8-ohms-200-Watts-RMS-p/quake%2015.htm

$50 shipped for a decent speaker isn't too shabby.

And of course, there's always this:

http://www.carvinguitars.com/products/single.php?product=PS15-8&cid=70

$78 for a really good speaker isn't too shabby, either.

all this back and forth talk...get a pair of cheap speakers and the video camera, and let's see a burning smoking speaker video cause if I had any spare 8's/10's/12's whatever I'd beat you to the video for sure ...lol

Sheesh! No kidding! Mike, you'd be the guy posting video of his own vasectomy if you could! LOL!

well.................


actually like burning car brakes, there is that distinct smell from the lacquer they paint coils with, like a transformer when it overheats..P.U. that s*** stinks.

its done.

problem is ... my 2x10 / 15 rig is 1300W to handle the amps bridged. when i split them, its 600W per chanel ... the amp cant handle all the speaker wattage with the 1300W side .... the 2X15 sounds sweet!

if i really needed it, i can just use a separate amp for the 215.

next project ... 4X10, 600W @ 4 ohms for the second chanel.

i'll post pics of the finished product tonite.

Then we need your catalog, special online pricing, and shipping rates so we can start ordering cabs from you!

i'm a long way from putting together a catalog ... iddid be one page.

i've made a whopping one cabinet.

and a whopper it is .........

215, 600Watts @ 4 ohms, tuned to 38hz, 2 peavey black widows, 2X4" ports, 34" x 24" x 19", 74lbs, 3" rubber casters, black rubber 90 degree trim, parallel chevelle corners, aluminum grille, spring handles centered under weight of speakers, speakon input.



this thing is very low frequency loud! it makes my pants vibrate when i stand in front of it. it blew a soundwave pattern in the sawdust left on the floor in front of it. stuff was vibrating off the bookshelves on the second floor of the house. lets hear it for engineering speaker efficency to its max. i was shooting to replicate a sunn reflex cabinet ... just short because of the tone of the black widows ... i think i nailed it.

downside ... i made it out of cheap wood. i figure this pine will last a year or so.

now that i know i can do it correctly, i'll start using high grade (voidless) birch.

this model as is ........... $450. mainly, thats the cost of the drivers and the parts that i didnt buy in quantities and the time it took me for the trial and error process.

this model isnt for sale ... the next ones i build will be. i need a 4X10, but after that ... i'm open for suggestions. i'de like to build a 210115 3 driver 2 way cab.

future models ... now i know and i can build it quicker (i know what to do and what not to do). i plan on buying parts in quantities and building 3 or 4 cabs at once, i'll be using quality wood and veneers, i plan on using lighter components (neo's, aluminum, anyway i can shed lbs.) and i'll be trying to keep the cost of a high quality custom cabinet under $600.