unlimited supply of pine, spruce and birch - which cabinet to build?

MentalSharps

I'm currently in a unique situation of having both a free supply of wood from a forest, and a family member with a workshop who is willing to help me out as long as it's not too complicated a build.

So I'm just wondering what I should have built to make the most of this opportunity? And in particular which wood would be best.

I'm thinking maybe I could have the wood cut for a 1x12 cabinet (or 1x8 or 1x10) to take back to the UK in a suitcase and assemble it back home (or not, if that's a bad idea?)

I usually play with a tube amp into a reactive load/IR's/headphones, so the Celestion "Flat Range Live Response" speakers sound intriguing - designed to get the "amp in the room" feeling and dynamics, when using IR's into the flat(ish) guitar speakers housed in a traditional guitar cabinet. 

Celestion specced a 1x12 ported design for the F12-FX200 : LINK

Or maybe something else would be better to build with the wood available? I'm keen to build a kit amp sometime, so any speaker cab that would be good for home use, moderate volume would be useful.

Funkfingers

Marine birch ply has been the choice of Marshall for decades.

I suspect that gluing plies with their grain in opposing directions increases the strength to weight ratio compared to solid panels. 

The 1x12 ported cabinet design should be fine. Hopefully, its dimensions are in suitable proportion to your amplifier head.

LordOxygen

Birch ply is very stable, I'd go with that. 

normula1

I've a pair of the F12-X200s in a Hughes & Kettner 2*12 cab. They sound great even at low volume in fact I reckon it's the best sound I've ever had either real amps / load box / IR loader or Helix. Both into a lowish power clean valve power amp.

Tannin

Ply and particle board are the standard speaker cabinet materials for the reason you mention, @MentalSharps - they don't have a resonant frequency that anyone would notice. (The multiple bits are a factor, also the glue is a damper.) But if you damp the timber appropriately, I don't see why it wouldn't work. 

MentalSharps

Making plywood (I assume) would be considerably much more work? 

Maybe gluing a few boards or doing a veneer would help, to have some layers of glue?

Or maybe the "Live Response" type speaker speaker isn't a good choice, and I should build something more Fendery -  It seems solid pine cabs are well regarded for Fender tones, so maybe I should just build a cabinet for a future amp build like a 5e3 or something.

I probably should have phrased the title "You have an unlimited supply of pine, spruce and birch - which cabinet do you build?" 

elstoof

This free supply of wood from a forest, do you have to go and cut it down? Or is the timber seasoned and ready to go?

Funkfingers

MentalSharps said:

I probably should have phrased the title, "You have an unlimited supply of pine, spruce and birch - which cabinet do you build?" 

MESA/Boogie has a history of building solid wood cabinets. 

Your chosen wood must withstand the machine cutting involved in creating the tongue/grooved corner joints.

Pine would benefit from pre-treatment to prevent rot.

Winny_Pooh

Building a special cab for a modeller doesn't seem exciting.

A 1x12 combo for a fun Diy kit like a 5e3 or 18watt marshall will be cool.

Again, unless you have cut seasoned wood or a big dryer and the ability to get wide thinnish pieces (thinking re a baffle) you're better off making a guitar stand or amp stand.

MentalSharps

elstoof said:

This free supply of wood from a forest, do you have to go and cut it down? Or is the timber seasoned and ready to go?

For pine it would have to cut it down fresh. I think the other two in the sizes I want there might be some cut down a few months ago.

I'd have to check what size I need and what is already available. Should the wood be cut and then left for 6 months for seasoning?

elstoof

6 months is pushing it, I’d want softwood like that left for about a year if possible 

hywelg

elstoof said:

6 months is pushing it, I’d want softwood like that left for about a year if possible 

At least. 

ICBM

Unlimited, you say?

You want to build something like a Marshall flare-front PA column or a Trace Elliot BLX combo, both of which seem to have been designed to combat a worldwide oversupply of cabinet materials…

The TE in particular has the advantage of being quite omnidirectional at bass frequencies, although the Marshalls aren’t actually bad, for guitar.

MentalSharps

hywelg said:

elstoof said:

6 months is pushing it, I’d want softwood like that left for about a year if possible 

At least. 

Yeah thanks for the comments guys. On looking into it further, pine would need way too long, and also, there aren't that many older pine trees in the forest. But there's plenty of spruce milled boards available that have been dried for a couple of years, so that is definitely an option for solid wood.

Can't find much in the way of people building guitar cabinets with spruce though. From what I came across, it seems pine works well with Fender style amps, because the pine doesn't resonate within the frequency spectrum of electric guitar, but does produce overtones that warm and fatten the sound.

If that's accurate, would it be true of spruce too? Spruce is used for acoustic guitars, so I presume it shouldn't be a problem?

If not, I think there's actually plenty of plywood available I could use, though it seems a bit boring to do that. Am I right in thinking that either way, the baffle should definitely be birch ply no matter what?

MentalSharps

ICBM said:

Unlimited, you say?

You want to build something like a Marshall flare-front PA column or a Trace Elliot BLX combo, both of which seem to have been designed to combat a worldwide oversupply of cabinet materials…

The TE in particular has the advantage of being quite omnidirectional at bass frequencies, although the Marshalls aren’t actually bad, for guitar.

Wow, that Trace Elliot cab looks really interesting. Comments seem to consider the sound to be huge, just impractical due to weight of the speaker and amp head. 

Would that make an interesting 1x8 guitar speaker design I wonder? Apparently Quilter used Celestion PA 8" LF drivers (TF0818) for their combos and people view them favourably. Wonder if a speaker like that could work for a huge sound from a small TE style box.

ICBM

MentalSharps said:

Wow, that Trace Elliot cab looks really interesting. Comments seem to consider the sound to be huge, just impractical due to weight of the speaker and amp head. 

Would that make an interesting 1x8 guitar speaker design I wonder?

For bass, they’re amazingly omnidirectional - they really fill a space uniformly, with only a relatively low-powered amp. If they have a fault - apart from the astounding weight for something that small - it’s that they lack punch in front of the cabinet compared to a conventional design. More of a ‘jazz’ or ‘acoustic band’ sound than a ‘rock’ one, if that makes sense. (But they do work very well for those sorts of gigs.)

I’ve never tried putting a guitar through one, but since I find 8” speakers are usually too boxy and directional, it might be worth a try.