hartke ... do yourself a favor.

recently, i've been education myself about cabinet design, as i continue to learn about speakers. i'm learning about tuning cabinets and calculating that tuning using different construction techniques. i'm learnig about the different resonant frequencies of different materials and why some are good for bass cabs and some arent.

heres some simple stuff i know.

birch is the proper ply to use to build a cabinet.

mdf is ok, is lighter, theres different grades and some dont work (they crumble under the vibrations) and none resonate consistently or at a consistent frequency (or next to nothing at all).

marine grade birch is the best. solid. consistent density, no spaces or pockets. water proof. lasts forever. real expensive.

i wondered why some cabs like hartke can be 300W, 8 ohm and $250 and other cabs can be 300W, 8 ohm and $1000. this marine grade birch is why.

i been using this hartke vx210 for about 3 years now. i killed the crappy samson speakers in about 3 months (i was abusing them and planned on replacing them). i went sheffield, then eminence and now carvin. over the last 6 months i've noticed that this cab just doesnt sound good. it lost any low end it had and started buzzing a bit, then more and then enuff so that i just decided to drop new speakers (the carvins) in to see if it would sound better.

it did ... then got worse and worse and worse.

i ripped this thing apart after practice tonite to try and firm it and seal it up again.

there are sections of the ply on the front baffle where sawdust and splinters are crumbling out of the speaker and hf driver holes. i started poking around at it and just realized ... OMG! this thing is a REAL POS! i got out the sawsall and just took the whole baffle out. it crumbled to bits in a few places. i couldnt believe it.

so do yourself a favor ... spend the extra $200 and make sure you buy a marine grade birch ply cabinet. i'm sure there are some low end cheaper cabs that are decent (seismic) but without taking the thing apart, building your own or spending the extra loot, you wont know.

i hate people selling me junk.

after i posted this thread, i went and looked and seismic has 10, 215 cabs in stock.

i think i'll just keep building my 2x15 ... its almost done. waiting for speakers, handles and speakon connector / dish.

i replaced the front baffel and this fixed this problem ... but this cab is getting retired soon. with the 10" eminence that i thought were going (they are fine) and the new carvins i bought, i can build a 4x10, 1000W @ 4ohms. with the 2X15 and the biamp system running, my rig can be reduced to 2 cabs and probably sound better.

Dude! I was cruising the Seismic Audio site just yesterday, and when I saw that they had the 2x15's again, I almost sent you a message! But I also knew that you were in the process of building a cabinet yourself.

today there are 8 left...and the countdown begins

Urp!

I'd just buy one for the hell of it, and dump that homemade one I just put together but I JUST bought 4 new summer tires for my honda, and another washburn WRB46 and I'm broke

I know --- why do I want another Washburn after having one for over 10 years?
I paid 100 for it 10 years ago, this one was also 100 BUT comes with the footswitch, something that I have wanted for many years, and now I have a spare in case it blows up

( I say I'm broke every week huh? ) --lol

time to sell another guitar on ebay BEFORE Seismic runs out .....

It really is an amazing 2x15 for the price. Actually that, and the 1x15 both are. I am still impressed with how well they work. And they are so bloody lightweight! We were transferring equipment from one studio to the other, and Doug grabbed my 2x15 out of the back of Andy's truck. He was expecting it to weigh a lot more than it did, and it looked like he almost fell backwards when he used a little too much "oomph" to lift it out. He was like "Dude....this thing is light as a feather!"

i love my 115. with the carvin neo 115 in it ... its super light.

yeah ... i'm gonna figure out a way to nuy one of these this summer sometime. i am building my own, but again ... its just an experiment. it may not work. it will definately have a different tone than this seismic; better or worse ... i dont know yet.

i'm also gonna be looking at a 4X10 soon and dump the 2X10 / 15 2 cab set up ... so iddid be 2 cabs, 410 and 215 instead of 3, 210, 115, 215. again ... gotta do the tone trial and error and see how it works.

ultimately, i'm glad i did the cab building project. i now know what to look for in a quality cabinet and how to avoid the junk.