guitar cabinet

[ericanderson]

My brother wants me to build him a guitar cabinet. He wants something different his own sound. He has a Mesabogie 50w head and a VOX tube preamp-processer. I followed the 2x12 build by Killersounds and at the end of the thread they were talking of a vertical cab maybe with 6.5" speakers. Maybe you pros could help me out here please? Ideas wanted.

[killersoundz]

Hi Eric. I think a design for distorted guitar with smaller speakers is possible but would be harder to pull off without being able to do a lot of R&D on it. Because of that I would have to personally suggest sticking with something more proven if you want to get satisfying results first time out.

The voicing for distorted guitar is actually pretty particular so anything too outside of the norm will sound a bit funky. The problem with using a smaller driver is the extended presence, it will come out sounding far too bright. This could be corrected with a passive filter but IMO that would take a lot of trial and error, time and money, to get right.

Eminence makes some 10" guitar speakers that are voiced very traditionally and sound & record nicely. Maybe look into some of those if you want something a little different.

Also something 'different' is to use a ported box for guitar. It can be rather difficult to design a bass reflex guitar cabinet around many of the traditional guitar speakers but it can be done.

A lot of guitarists that make their own ported guitar cabinet will just stick some stock long port in the box and be like "yeah I just made a ported box, awesome!" NO. That's not how it works!! If you stick a long tube in a box with regular guitar speakers, the tuning freq. is going to be way too low, 20-30hz. With a ported guitar box you would want to aim for 60-70hz tuning freq. Often this ends up as just holes in the baffle and no port tube at all.

[50 watt head]

With a ported guitar box you would want to aim for 60-70hz tuning freq.

IMHO, that's still a bit too low for a guitar cab. I would shoot for more like 85 Hz, which is right around the Fs for most 12" Celestions. You won't gain anything by tuning below the Fs of your driver.

+1 on the ports with no tubes. They sound good for such a minimum of fuss :)

[killersoundz]

IMHO, that's still a bit too low for a guitar cab. I would shoot for more like 85 Hz, which is right around the Fs for most 12" Celestions. You won't gain anything by tuning below the Fs of your driver.

+1 on the ports with no tubes. They sound good for such a minimum of fuss :)

You're right 80hz would be more like it...but just in case someone with a 7 string tuned to A or something tries to play through the cab...the lower tuning will help keep the speakers from exploding. But I agree if you're playing in standard E shoot for 80hz or so :)

[ericanderson]

Thanks, This is exactly the feedback I was looking for. Bill Fitz has a design for a 2-10 cab that would probably be perfect for this. Which eminence drivers would you use? http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=290-828 Killer where did you get the vinyl covering for the cabinet and the grill cloth?

[billfitzmaurice]

. Bill Fitz has a design for a 2-10 cab that would probably be perfect for this. Which eminence drivers would you use? Ask XF210 owners on my forum.