Grateful Dead Music Forum

I'm interested as well.....

zambiland wrote:

Rusty the Scoob wrote:Count me in as curious, I'd be very interested in a sealed-back cab designed around something like a Weber Neomag 15" with the ribbed cone and aluminum dome, even if it never turned out as practical for stage use as my current cabs. I just don't really have the motivation to do the carpentry or especially the design myself.

It would be interesting to try it out with construction techniques such as those used in the fEARful designs, where they used carefully braced 1/2" plywood, resulting in a very lightweight cabinet.

Yeah, 3/4" would be weigh a ton. I'd even consider doing unbraced 1/2" as an experiment in tone, since I doubt I'd be moving it as much as my more conventional cabs.

The problem with unbraced 1/2' bass cabinets is the resonance of the cabinet. bracing keeps the resonance to a minimum, letting the sound of the speaker be uncolored. 1/2" MDF would work unbraced, but then you have a heavy and unstable cabinet.

ugly rumor wrote:The problem with unbraced 1/2' bass cabinets is the resonance of the cabinet. bracing keeps the resonance to a minimum, letting the sound of the speaker be uncolored. 1/2" MDF would work unbraced, but then you have a heavy and unstable cabinet.

One interesting method of bracing is to use cross pieces in the middle of each panel, i.e., side to side, up and down and front to back, which force each wall to its maximum excursion, instead of a bracing system that just tries to keep them from moving.

Anything that stiffens the walls. The purpose of bracing is not strength, but removing the tendency of the cabinet to carry sound waves in an organized manner. I might be a little suspicious of bracing that forces too much pressure on the sides, as I would feel that eventually it would fail at the points of pressure. I could be very wrong, but I wouldn't build one that way. I would almost think that that might create its own resonance problem.

I could see that type of bracing acting like the soundpost on an upright bass and causing resonance due to the tension. But I'm far from an expert!

Rusty the Scoob wrote:I could see that type of bracing acting like the soundpost on an upright bass and causing resonance due to the tension. But I'm far from an expert!

I guess that's a potential, but I haven't heard any of the Acme cabinets have any problems like that.

That's because Andy is a professional, and I am a jackleg!

zambiland wrote:

Rusty the Scoob wrote:I could see that type of bracing acting like the soundpost on an upright bass and causing resonance due to the tension. But I'm far from an expert!

I guess that's a potential, but I haven't heard any of the Acme cabinets have any problems like that.

That's how Acmes are built? Then I'm sold. I used to drool over those in college, with a Walter Woods head. Never owned either one.