Wow, I could go on for days about this...
I build two way speakers as a hobby, and I also run hand made 3-5 watt
tube amps for playing music exclusivly. This is my "listening setup" to
give you an idea of how nutty/serious about audio.
Generally my setup goes Denon solid copper chassy CD player with some
minor mods, 99.999% pure silver braded interconnect, tube amp with
copper or silver hand braded speaker wires that are run INTO the speaker
tower soldered directly onto the speakers with nothing but a capaciter on
the tweeter to filter out low frequency.
I would use the same "as direct as possible" method for building guitar
cabs. I've not done it yet, but I suppose I would build something like this:
If this was a gigging cab I would build a typically sized 4X12 out of pine
plywood. It would be cross braced in all X/Y/Z directions, and it would
probably have the backs of the drivers braced with 2" dowels againsed
the back of the cab for better highs. the ONLY cutouts I would have on
the cab would be for the four speakers! So I would have flush-mount
metal carrying handles, flush mount casters, and the speaker wire
would be some nice 10 gauge wired DIRECTLY to the four drivers with
about a 50' lead coming out of a silicone sealed hole in the back of the
cab. NO PLUG. Directly soldered.
For drivers I would probably use
Celestion Vintage 30s at 16 Ohms
wired in series/parallel to keep them at 16 Ohms. Most heads seem to
like the higher impedence (Assuming
tube head). And it would have
a steel grill rather then cloth covering the face of the drivers/cab.
Now that I'm thinking about this, I might make a variant for really hard
core metal players where the 4X12 cab would be (internally) divided in
half horizontally, so it would be like two seperate cabinets in one. The top
one would have an optional removable back, and be loaded with Vintage
30s, and the bottom would have a sealed back and be loaded with EVM
full range PA 12" drivers much like the old Mesa Boogies.
If I was building a "Studio Only" cab. I would probably build a stereo
pair basically following the same design of the above mentioned cab,
again using pine, vintage 30s, braced speakers, cables soldered directly
to the drivers, and these would most likely be a "half back" design with
a sealed cab on the bottom, and open cab (option) on the top. Oh, I forgot
to mention, the "studio 2X12" cabs would also be oversized. They would
be a 2X12 verticle cab, but they would be almost the size of a 4X12 so
you get "a bigger sound" out of them.
As a backup and for some voicing differences, I would have a typical
but slightly oversized 2X12 horizontal cab (think Legacy 2X12) that
wouldn't be braced, but would be oversized and still have the metal
grill. The idea would be to have a spare cab that you would "quick-change"
drivers for different tone while you were in the studio, and the cab
would NOT be heavily braced like the two above ideas because you would
want the "cabinet resonation" to be part of the tone! IMHO blending a
"doubled recording" of this cab with the studio 2X12 cabs mentioned
above would give you a VERY full sound that would sound GREAT on tape!
Ok, that's it for now. You're all probably really worried about me now or
considering stealing my ideas and starting your own companies! LOL
