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 :
LINKOr 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.
Comments
I suspect that gluing plies with their grain in opposing directions increases the strength to weight ratio compared to solid panels.
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?"
Pine would benefit from pre-treatment to prevent rot.
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.
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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?
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.
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.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein