DIY kickback bass cab

DankStar

DankStar

Her Little Mojo Minion
This taking me a bit longer than I thought it would! I'm finally down to where most of the shell is complete. I had to sand the heck out of the last piece to get it to fit into place on the tilt. I still need to do the baffle; that'll be hard with a jigsaw I'm sure. And as of the photo, the tilt doesn't have its support braces installed yet.

At any rate, it's coming along - here's a shot of the cab. I basically wanted something sized in between a Hartke A-25 and A-35 combo but no electronics, and with more power handling. Its profile is more like a peavey TKO tour series - I wanted to limit the number of weird angles given my amateur woodworking status. This will have an aluminum 10" speaker rated for 100 watts (max)/70 RMS. It's basically 14 inches tall by ~13 inches deep, as a fully sealed enclosure (i.e., no ports), able to be used tilted, or placed on its broadest side flat.

Most of it is 3/4 plywood, except the tilt, which is some type of wooden board cut down to size. The baffle will be 1/2" MDF.



Once it's all together, I'm going to try and do an arctic camo paint job with aerosol cans and stencils/tape cutouts. I'll probably use a dark grey grill cloth I saw on ebay.

Another shot (might be oriented wrong on some devices). I doubt I'll use it like this, but it balances on its skinny side too:

 
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Re: DIY kickback bass cab

Very nice box. Going to port it? And why the aluminum 10"? Will it be a bass extension?
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

Demanic said:
Very nice box. Going to port it? And why the aluminum 10"? Will it be a bass extension?
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I looked up port calculation information and it got way over my head in technical jargon so I thought I better go with a sealed box. There's an equation that uses speaker specs that can roughly estimate if a speaker is better for a ported or sealed enclosure. So I narrowed the speaker choice down to speakers that work better in sealed enclosures. Also, with a sealed box I was able to go a bit smaller (possibly at the sacrifice of some bass thump).

The aluminum ones seemed to have the largest frequency range (this one does 45Hz~10KHz), plus that's what's in the Hartke A-series that I demo'd and liked. I saw one thread on a bass forum that speculated the MCM speaker I got may be used by Hartke in some of their cabs but I couldn't confirm that. I wanted 10" due to size constraints.

It's mainly to be used with my low-wattage PAs with my bass guitar and maybe a pedal or two (EQ and bass fuzz), or my carvin 100-watt power amp and maybe I'll find a good bass setting with my digitech gsp. Last resort is to get a little MXR bass preamp pedal and use that with the carvin.

I do want to try it with my 6-string guitar though, both by itself and as a bassier cab run stereo with one of my typical guitar 1 x 12 cabs that are a bit more on the midrange/treble side of things.
 
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Sounds like a plan. Though I tried my Hartke 410 cab with aluminum cones with my guitar and didn't like it. Way too shrill. For bass though, it's great.
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

Demanic said:
Sounds like a plan. Though I tried my Hartke 410 cab with aluminum cones with my guitar and didn't like it. Way too shrill. For bass though, it's great.
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Yeah, I wasn't holding out too much hope for guitar but hoping it can handle my bass ok. Thanks for the heads up.
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

If you're having problems calculating size of boxes, ports, etc. there's an old (Win 9x/NT) freeware program that might be helpful.
Believe it or not, it still works.

LinearTeam WinISD link

They also have some online calculators, for drivers that weren't released at the time of the original program, port lengths, conversion from feet/meters, etc.
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

dude got to the Auto Parts store and get the spray in bedliner stuff
coat it in that

durable and cool
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

that's a good idea! I think I'm going to scrap the camo thing. Too hard, and the results are too meh. Everything bleeds into another, and if I do it by hand (like the black below) then it's even more hillbilly looking:



I did like the looks when I shot it with straight gray paint though; that might be how I do it, but the bedliner idea ain't bad.

I did a rough thing in microsoft paint that I wouldn't mind spraying on the cab (I was shooting for half tiger stripe/half arctic camo), but again, it would be super hard to do and wouldn't come out looking like this:



Antique Electronic Supply has a nicely priced arctic camo tolex ($5/yd), but even aside from my horribly cut corners and edges that will look like crap tolexing over, I know I'd make a monstrosity out of it since it'd be my first go-round.

Edit: I'm going to paint it gray, but order the camo tolex, and when I get up the nerve (and after some trial runs on scrap wood) I'll try and cover it down the road. The gray will serve a purpose at that point to help hide imperfect seams.
 
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Re: DIY kickback bass cab

Since last update, I finished bracing all the sides; cut, pre-drilled, primed, and painted the baffle; drilled and installed T-nuts for the handle and speaker; cut the hole for the jack; filled in gaps with wood putty; caulked gaps in joints; and sanded and primed the box.



Still need to lightly sand & add another layer of primer, do a coat or two of satin granite paint, staple in the batting material, solder up the wiring and install the hardware. Oh, and make a frame for the grill and staple on the grill material to it (waiting to see if I'm going to use tolex because that will change the perimeter size of the frame a bit).

I'm still on the fence about adding rubber feet, arctic camo tolex, and corner protectors. Hartke sells their corner protectors for $2/ea, including the 135 degree angled ones. I'm just not sure if they're designed for rounded over edges (I think they are), which wouldn't work on mine.

As far as feet go, I'm thinking a bass speaker would work better with a nice solid surface on the ground versus feet, but most companies seem to use feet.

I'm not thrilled about trying to tolex a cab for the first time on a weirdly shaped cab without a removable back. Pretty much every single tutorial out there is for a box with no front and no back, or at least a back that comes off and is wrapped separately. But if I can find corner protectors that are for sharp edged cabs I may still do it.
 
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Thanks TO - not the industry standard type thing but should serve its purpose. Takes me forever to do stuff a lot of guys would bang out in a day.
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

DankStar said:
Thanks TO - not the industry standard type thing but should serve its purpose. Takes me forever to do stuff a lot of guys would bang out in a day.
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Well, multiply that time by 10 and add two severed fingers and a finished product that looks like it was assembled by a 4 year old and you would have my work! :)
 
Re: DIY kickback bass cab

I believe I have made a mistake on the color choice. The gray isn't looking so hot now that I've got it on. Coupled with some weird drip issues, I'm wanting to change the color now to a metallic black (http://www.amazon.com/Rust-Oleum-7250830-Metallic-Spray-11-Ounce/dp/B000ZYUWQ8). Not sure if I'll sand all the way down to the primer; I'll probably just make sure it's smoothed out and try again. I love gray in general, but it just looks too drab, and almost like it's just a primer-ed box.

I thought gray would have been a nice choice if I decided down the road to do a gray camo tolex on it, but I've talkied myself out of messing with tolex, and it doesn't look like putting tolex over paint is such a hot idea so I'd have to sand off the paint anyway.

 
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Re: DIY kickback bass cab

Why not sand it down and use some textured black spray paint over it?

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