DrNewcenstein
He Did the Monster Mash
Who here has used both an ISO cab (where the box IS the cabinet) and an ISO box (where a cab goes into the box)? What's the primary tonal difference between the two, if any?
Isolation cab vs Isolation box
- Thread starter DrNewcenstein
- Start date
DrNewcenstein
He Did the Monster Mash
Re: Isolation cab vs Isolation box
That's what I was thinking. I mean, from what I've seen of the isolation cabs, the speaker is suspended, rather than mounted to a baffle? May have just not been looking close enough. I've always heard you want to capture cabinet tone, not just speaker tone, so a cabinet that's built primarily to suspend a speaker rather than work with it seems to me that you'd just get speaker tone, whereas with a cabinet inside a box, you get all the cabinet tone with none of the crying about the volume.
Then again, maybe it's all horse-hockey.
That's what I was thinking. I mean, from what I've seen of the isolation cabs, the speaker is suspended, rather than mounted to a baffle? May have just not been looking close enough. I've always heard you want to capture cabinet tone, not just speaker tone, so a cabinet that's built primarily to suspend a speaker rather than work with it seems to me that you'd just get speaker tone, whereas with a cabinet inside a box, you get all the cabinet tone with none of the crying about the volume.
Then again, maybe it's all horse-hockey.
Re: Isolation cab vs Isolation box
Building an Isolation Guitar Cabinet ISOCAB DIY H…: http://youtu.be/QfADkkUav1Q
Building an Isolation Guitar Cabinet ISOCAB DIY H…: http://youtu.be/QfADkkUav1Q
DrNewcenstein
He Did the Monster Mash
Re: Isolation cab vs Isolation box
Nice. I saw that green glue stuff elsewhere but it was dealing more with typical household use, and promoting it for new construction of apartments. However, this guy should've had a clip of the cabinet in use from the outside.
I've got plans made up to build one from another vid I saw a while back, but then if a straight isolation cab would be just as well and cost the same....
Nice. I saw that green glue stuff elsewhere but it was dealing more with typical household use, and promoting it for new construction of apartments. However, this guy should've had a clip of the cabinet in use from the outside.
I've got plans made up to build one from another vid I saw a while back, but then if a straight isolation cab would be just as well and cost the same....
TwilightOdyssey
Darkness on the edge of Tone
Re: Isolation cab vs Isolation box
Iso cabs usually have 2 chambers to reduce this effect; the speaker driver sits in the smaller chamber, and most of the back wave of the speaker is dissipated by the larger chamber. There is a large port in the panel separating the chambers to minimize turbulence and impedance issues.
You can tune the bass response by treating the larger chamber so that only lower frequencies make it out of the port; this produces a tighter bass response from the iso cab and gives your recorded tone one that is very similar to mic'ing a cab in a room.
If the isolation box for an already-enclosed cab does not allow for room modes, it will sound pretty bad; the modes excited by the small box dimensions will have all sorts of adverse effects on the finished sound.
There is more to it than that; isolation boxes can be much harder to get a good tone from because you are essentially making a small room for your guitar cab. That means the cabinets speakers will excite the same modes they would in any other room. In order to get an isolation box big enough to fit an entire cabinet in, as well a microphone, it would have to be much larger than the cabinet itself.
Iso cabs usually have 2 chambers to reduce this effect; the speaker driver sits in the smaller chamber, and most of the back wave of the speaker is dissipated by the larger chamber. There is a large port in the panel separating the chambers to minimize turbulence and impedance issues.
You can tune the bass response by treating the larger chamber so that only lower frequencies make it out of the port; this produces a tighter bass response from the iso cab and gives your recorded tone one that is very similar to mic'ing a cab in a room.
If the isolation box for an already-enclosed cab does not allow for room modes, it will sound pretty bad; the modes excited by the small box dimensions will have all sorts of adverse effects on the finished sound.
DrNewcenstein
He Did the Monster Mash
Re: Isolation cab vs Isolation box
Interesting. Thanks. The box I was planning to build is for a 2x12, but due to space constraints I'm leaning more towards the iso cab idea.
Interesting. Thanks. The box I was planning to build is for a 2x12, but due to space constraints I'm leaning more towards the iso cab idea.