Building your own custom cabinet

[freeze]

In search for a new guitar cabinet, I started thinking about building my own 4x12" speakerbox. A friend of mine has got some experience building PA boxes and would help me out. Has anyone built their own cabinet or does anyone have tips about the construction, choice of speakers, wood, standard/slanted, ...?

 

[Ironbird666]

I don't know much about building cabinets, but I know for a fact that Celestion Vintage 30 speakers sound pretty damn good. I recommend them for their nice, warm, full sound. If I were you I would try to find out what kind of wood big name companies use for their cabs, like Marshall, Mesa Boogie, etc. Good luck with your project, I'm curious to see (or hear ) how it comes out.

 

[freeze]

Yes the Celestion V30 are used the most it seems: Marshall, Mesa, Randall, Diezel, ... all have models with these speakers.

Most companies don't tell which kind of wood is used, except Randall, they use three-fourth of an inch thick, 7 or 11-ply, void free birch plywood (multiplex).
I'm pretty sure some other companies use MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard) for some sides, but these aren't water resistant and should be covered with those black sheets they usually paste onto the wood.

First I'm gonna try to find out what kind of wood and speakers would suit and hopefully it will be affordable.
I'll be glad to let you know how it turns out!

 

[Nostalgiaplatz]

V30's are usually a lot expensive, but very good sounding speakers.

Here's a nice article about structure of cabs
http://www.colomar.com/Shavano/cons_structure.html

 

[Ironbird666]

Yes, they are pretty expensive speakers, but I figured if someone wanted to construct their own cabinet the price wouldn't matter much. It will still be cheaper than buying a Marshall cab out of a shop, and you can decorate it the way you want.

That was a pretty nice article about cabinet building!

 

[freeze]

Nice article morningstar, didn't read the whole thing yet but it sure seems helpfull! Thanks a lot!

Those Celestion V30 speakers are pretty expensive indeed. At the official Mesa Boogie site they sell 'em for 109$ a piece (Black Shadow Celestion V30 12", 8 or 16 ohm). I'll check how much they ask for them here where I live.

Thanks for the replies guys!

 

[freeze]

For those who are interested or when the search funtion on the forum gets sorted, some usefull things concerning cab building:

http://home.earthlink.net/~etunstal/diy.htm
Contains reference material, links to discussion forums, software to calculate the volume of the box (with frequency-respons of your speakers as input),...

Also some nice tips on the Celestion site about guitar cab building: http://professional.celestion.com/guitar/features/drdecibel/index.asp

 

[Iced In Flames]

Avatar Speakers...

use google....

 

[97reb]

That Celestion site was pretty good!

 

[freeze]

Thanks for the tip Iced In Flames, but since I live in Europe, they won't deliver