JeffB Posted March 21, 2021 Author Posted March 21, 2021 Had some spare time to myself and mustered up the courage to have a try at doing the grill cloth. Im happy with the end result but know that next time I can do it better.
rockabilly69 Posted March 21, 2021 Posted March 21, 2021 5 hours ago, JeffB said: Had some spare time to myself and mustered up the courage to have a try at doing the grill cloth. Im happy with the end result but know that next time I can do it better. looks pretty good to me!
Gitfiddler Posted March 22, 2021 Posted March 22, 2021 Your cabinet looks better than some pro shops! Dovetail joints are smooth and uniform and there are no wrinkles in the grill cloth. Well done. Can't wait to see the final result.
JeffB Posted March 23, 2021 Author Posted March 23, 2021 On 3/22/2021 at 2:33 AM, rockabilly69 said: looks pretty good to me! 18 hours ago, Gitfiddler said: Your cabinet looks better than some pro shops! Dovetail joints are smooth and uniform and there are no wrinkles in the grill cloth. Well done. Can't wait to see the final result. Cheers! At first I thought it dipped in the right hand corner and then I realised it raised in the middle. Im going to just let it be what it is. I think. Im getting closer to putting it all together after tonight's testing. I guess this thread should be in the blog section? I dunno. I installed a GB G12M in the extension cab to try it out so I could decide if it was worth continuing with it and wrapping it in tolex.. GB's arent my favourite speaker but it is the only spare speaker I have left. Its also the speaker Im sticking in the cab for the Excelsior amp. I cant do one thing with out doing the other. Ive made a rock box. The bottom end on this cab is great! Tight but deep. I was kinda taken aback by it at first, I didnt like it. I was playing clean with a strat in the neck position and I was a bit disappointed by what seemed a lack of openness. But when I put it neck and middle and started getting a bit funky and percussive I had a "Whoa" moment, it was really great! Next minute, cables, od pedals and power supplies were being dragged out of hibernation untangled and plugged in. I stuck a Jetter Red2 in front and plugged in a SD59 equipped semi and fanged it. I havent fanged anything for a long time, it felt okay. Ive been switched off to gain and overdrive for a while, I just dont like to hear it. I cant explain it, not going to even try. So tonight was the first real time Ive used a lot of gain for a longtime, about 2yrs maybe. The H150 with SD JB antiquity kinda blew me away. Fat and clear, more rock than roll. Bridge pick up and rock. Thats the sort of cab I made. I dont think a speaker swap will alter that because the G12m doesnt do that when its in my combo. When the ext cab and the combo run together they compliment each other pretty well. The wide open sound of the combo with added bottom end "thunk" and depth of the extension cab. I will have to figure out what speaker to put in the ext cab, G12m is a wattage mismatch, the amp is rated at 60w. Theres no rattles or weirdness going on with the cab. I was worried about that. Any way, I can proceed with finishing both the combo and the cab. Im a bit nervous about doing the tolex tbh.
JeffB Posted March 24, 2021 Author Posted March 24, 2021 Yay. I finished something! I put it all together and played through it a bit. Then I walked and fed the dogs. Then I played some more. It sounds better than it did with the stock cab and stock speaker. Its louder with the more efficient G12M. But, y'know, it is what it is. Its a boisterous low fi sounding amp. I do hear the characteristics of the G12M coming through and I kinda wish I had some other speakers to play around with. I dont think there is any way the amp is worth putting this much effort into rehousing in normal circumstances. But this was never about the amp, it was all about me , the amp just happened to be a handy vehicle. Im happy with my work, even the mistakes and dodgy short cuts.
Steiner Posted March 24, 2021 Posted March 24, 2021 Looks beautiful! Congratulations - your first heirloom.
JeffB Posted March 25, 2021 Author Posted March 25, 2021 On 3/24/2021 at 9:22 PM, Steiner said: Looks beautiful! Congratulations - your first heirloom. Thanks Greg. Thanks for your help and encouragement also, I reallyappreciate it. I played through the cabs some more today. I havnt played this much for 3yrs or more. Whats kept me engaged in playing is comparing the bottom end in the excelsior and ext cab vs my Fender Concert II. Ive been swapping the two speakers between cabs. I have a G12M and a G12H100. In the Excelsior and ext cab both speakers have a deeper bottom end than in the Concert!! cab! Between 3 cabs and 2 speakers Ive tried every combination and more than a couple of times. I made long speaker leads off each speaker so I could run one combo into the other etc. Ive played quietly and annoyingly loudly and right through the volume range the concert cab has a less deep base The main difference I can see is the ConcertII has a speaker baffle that is glued in and fixed into a dado joint on the two sides and base, it floats on top. The speaker baffle is structurally part of the cab. The cabs I made have a kind of floating speaker baffles and are fixed by screws at equal(ish) intervals on all four sides. The ConcertII has a 16mm baffle and the cabs I built have 18mm baffles. Another difference is the cabs I built are 1/3 open or 2/3 closed backs, which ever way you want to look at it, where the ConcertII is a standard blackface combo design, maybe 1/2 open/closed. In all the years I gigged and jammed with the concertII I never once had any issue with the bottom end getting out of hand, even with the bass turned right up. It always stayed tight and punchy. Occasionally I wished it had more bottom end and I did end up just running it with a 212 or 112 ext cab and that ended a lot of amp and od pedal gas. I guess there is a question in there, not sure how to word it. Maybe, do tweed style cabs or cabs that dont have the baffles fixed in by dado have a deeper bass than black/silver face type cabs? I dunno if thats the right question tbh. Any insight, thoughts or opinion would be great.
Steiner Posted March 25, 2021 Posted March 25, 2021 I enjoyed your voicing concerns about ghost sounds from the cab. Been there. There's nothing like the relief you get when first firing it up to find you've done well! If I understand it, using good, voidless plywood for the baffle is key. I too screw the baffle to the cabinet. Every cab has a resonate frequency. There are many formulas out there that help define a range of bass vs treble. I tend to make cabs twice as deep as the boards I have for the project - generally 16 to 18" deep, about the same as a 4x12. There's a minimum size for 2x12 cabs but I try to keep the DxWxH dimensions proportional for aesthetics; it is furniture after all. I also build 3 back boards for each cab. I then install T-nuts to make them removable. With the back 2/3 removable, you can influence the bass. And you thought dovetails were a deep rabbit hole.
JeffB Posted March 27, 2021 Author Posted March 27, 2021 And thats it. Done. Arranged my pedals on the pedal boards. Tolex'ed the ext cab and put new grill cloth on it and the combo. Picking up a s/h G12H100 on Monday to put in the cab. I dont enjoy doing tolex. I thought I might like doing it, I dont. Its not as hard to do as I thought it might be but I just didnt enjoy the work. The ext cab was easier than the little pedal board because all the corners are covered, you could be quite lazy about the finish if you wanted. I ordered the wrong corners btw, oh well. All things considered, I had fun.
rockabilly69 Posted March 28, 2021 Posted March 28, 2021 Congrats on learning new skills and knocking out some cool cabs and pedalboards!
JeffB Posted March 30, 2021 Author Posted March 30, 2021 On 3/28/2021 at 3:05 AM, Steiner said: Success! On 3/29/2021 at 2:29 AM, rockabilly69 said: Congrats on learning new skills and knocking out some cool cabs and pedalboards! Im actually pretty happy how it all turned out. It was a slow motion sort of thing. Started at the end of November and finished at the end of March. If I had to do ithem again it would take about 3 or 4days labour. To do ten of each item wouldnt take much longer. Would definitely need dust extraction and more space . Im not feeling the desire to repeat the process though.
Steiner Posted March 30, 2021 Posted March 30, 2021 4 minutes ago, JeffB said: Im actually pretty happy how it all turned out. It was a slow motion sort of thing. Started at the end of November and finished at the end of March. If I had to do ithem again it would take about 3 or 4days labour. To do ten of each item wouldnt take much longer. Would definitely need dust extraction and more space . Im not feeling the desire to repeat the process though. I often make two copies of projects simply to improve my chances of getting a good one. Couple that with making additional cuts with the tools already set, and you reduce the effort almost in half.
JeffB Posted March 30, 2021 Author Posted March 30, 2021 1 minute ago, Steiner said: I often make two copies of projects simply to improve my chances of getting a good one. Couple that with making additional cuts with the tools already set, and you reduce the effort almost in half. As I was working through each stage I kept thinking I should make multiples. Some of the setting up is so time consuming it seems a waste for just 2minutes work. I made jigs that took over an hour to figure out and make and I only used them once for 30seconds. Now the jigs are in the off cut bin. Im putting together a prototype out of pine for a new project. Once Ive seen if the design and construction ideas work and Ive figured out the manufacturing process Im going to make 10 of each, its cheaper in materials and gets xmas 2021 gifts out of the way.
Steiner Posted March 30, 2021 Posted March 30, 2021 10 minutes ago, JeffB said: As I was working through each stage I kept thinking I should make multiples. Some of the setting up is so time consuming it seems a waste for just 2minutes work. I made jigs that took over an hour to figure out and make and I only used them once for 30seconds. Now the jigs are in the off cut bin. Im putting together a prototype out of pine for a new project. Once Ive seen if the design and construction ideas work and Ive figured out the manufacturing process Im going to make 10 of each, its cheaper in materials and gets xmas 2021 gifts out of the way. I like the way you're thinking; sans the pine. Pine loads up and contributes to tools burns on the hardwoods. Be prepared to clean after the pine project. Machine/tool setup and test cuts usually eat 3/4 or more of the overall project time. When making multiple projects make sure you can replace tooling should the worst happen. One project I worked on required changing the dovetail router bit TWICE. Changes of 0.001" will have detrimental outcomes; I got lucky... I adore detailed pieces most, yet, try as much as I have, still haven't found a base project that (even though proportionally correct) draws the eye as much as details. So far I've rested on overall proportions, material color contrast, dovetails and routered contours. It works for me but I'm always on the watch for the next best thing. Your designs are superb looking. It seems you're well on your way. (I'll be watching )
Gitfiddler Posted March 30, 2021 Posted March 30, 2021 1 hour ago, JeffB said: As I was working through each stage I kept thinking I should make multiples. Some of the setting up is so time consuming it seems a waste for just 2minutes work. I made jigs that took over an hour to figure out and make and I only used them once for 30seconds. Now the jigs are in the off cut bin. Im putting together a prototype out of pine for a new project. Once Ive seen if the design and construction ideas work and Ive figured out the manufacturing process Im going to make 10 of each, its cheaper in materials and gets xmas 2021 gifts out of the way. Great idea looking for ways to scale up your woodworking projects. Maybe you could start building multiple Speaker Cabs along side your Amp Cabs? Speaker Cabs might sell better than amps in my view. However, that's your decision. It looks like you are really enjoying the process...and are darned good at it from what I can see. Here's a 2018 article entitled "Anatomy of an Amp Cab" from Andy Ellis of Premier Guitar that might interest you. https://www.premierguitar.com/gear/anatomy-of-an-amp-cab
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