WOW! Randall Isolation Cab 12"

[J Moose]

Re: WOW! Randall Isolation Cab 12"

Back in the day, maybe close to a decade ago... I had these huge... I mean HUGE isolation cabs that were big enough for a 4x12 and mic stand that someone built out of a plywood & mdf sandwich. My lord... they were huge and HEAVY and while they really shut up a blaring cabinet & 100 watt head they weren't dead silent either. Not even close... but it was maybe a 70 or 80% cut from the roar of a stack.

I inherited the boxes with the studio space & eventually figured out that they sounded a bit better with a smaller cab, like a 1x12 or 2x12... but still never as good as having the amp in the middle of the room, even if it was close miked. The randall cab is certainly usable... the demeter speaker coffin is probably the nicest of the lot besides some really well constructed home-brew stuff. None of 'em are dead silent. Speaker choice makes a really sizable difference with all of them...

Best thing to isolate the boxes from the room is decouple them from the floor, on a little platform. That'll make the biggest cut in annoying the neighbors & its the easiest & cheapest thing to do... put the cab on neoprene risers.

Cheapest & best source of neoprene, for our purposes is hockey pucks.

That's right... get a handful of hockey pucks and lift the cab.

Shop around a bit, shouldn't be more then maybe $2 each... I always buy at least a dozen at a time, stick 'em under combo amps, 4x12s & bass rigs too so I'm always leaving them behind... haha oh well. 20 for $20 is doing good.

U-hauls a good source for packing blankets... just be sure to ask for new ones! Then put those over the top and it'll be as close to silent as it'll ever reasonably be... short of putting it inside another room... and then why not just build a room for a real cab?!

 

[WyrmCracker]

Re: WOW! Randall Isolation Cab 12"

Back in the day, maybe close to a decade ago... I had these huge... I mean HUGE isolation cabs that were big enough for a 4x12 and mic stand that someone built out of a plywood & mdf sandwich. My lord... they were huge and HEAVY and while they really shut up a blaring cabinet & 100 watt head they weren't dead silent either. Not even close... but it was maybe a 70 or 80% cut from the roar of a stack.

I inherited the boxes with the studio space & eventually figured out that they sounded a bit better with a smaller cab, like a 1x12 or 2x12... but still never as good as having the amp in the middle of the room, even if it was close miked. The randall cab is certainly usable... the demeter speaker coffin is probably the nicest of the lot besides some really well constructed home-brew stuff. None of 'em are dead silent. Speaker choice makes a really sizable difference with all of them...

Best thing to isolate the boxes from the room is decouple them from the floor, on a little platform. That'll make the biggest cut in annoying the neighbors & its the easiest & cheapest thing to do... put the cab on neoprene risers.

Cheapest & best source of neoprene, for our purposes is hockey pucks.

That's right... get a handful of hockey pucks and lift the cab.

Shop around a bit, shouldn't be more then maybe $2 each... I always buy at least a dozen at a time, stick 'em under combo amps, 4x12s & bass rigs too so I'm always leaving them behind... haha oh well. 20 for $20 is doing good.

U-hauls a good source for packing blankets... just be sure to ask for new ones! Then put those over the top and it'll be as close to silent as it'll ever reasonably be... short of putting it inside another room... and then why not just build a room for a real cab?!

About 15 years ago, before I bought the Randall Isolation cab (and before modellers were available), I built a double layer isolation cab. The 12" internal speaker was in an acoustically open-back mini-cab, which was up on plastic feet.

This was inside an internal 3' x 4' x 3/4" MDF box lined with auralex, and up on plastic feet (the screw in kind you get from home depot).

This was inside an external box that had about an inch of air around the outside. It was set directly on the carpet/concrete.


What I learned was that the interior box itself was raging loud, but adding the second layer of MDF made it as quiet as the television. So the first layer maybe cut the volume by 50% (still really loud), but the second layer brought the volume down to about 5% (quiet).

While that experiment proved to me that double layer deadening is highly effective, it also proved to me that acoustic design of the interior chamber is the most important thing! My iso box sounded like crap miced (dark and muddy), but it worked as a great load to use with a redbox. I got some power amp compression, and with the redbox speaker simulation it sounded decent, but still really small and not very dynamic.

That is why I am so thrilled with the Randall. I wasnt expecting much, but the ported interior design really works well. Im not hearing anything strange or unmusical. All the technique conveys. (I can even stand in front of the monitor and generate long sustain and feedback!) The strings really feel alive and the sound is great! I'm not going to claim it couldnt be better (although I am still amazed every time I fire it up - - I cant believe Im getting such a full and detailed sound so easily), but I think there was some solid engineering that went into the design. And I like the clamshell top which makes mic placement easy.


This is why I cringe when I see all the other ones on the market. The Demeter, the Rivera, the Grendel, (there is a Brit version I forget the name). The randall is the only ported design and I know it is working well for me. The other ones may work great and hopefully people have good luck with them.

I am so excited because after many years of futzing around with modellers, differnt preamps, extreme EQ, micing tube amps at quarter volume, having monitoring and isolation problems in my one-room studio, all of that has come to an end! And I didnt have to fight to get the sound. It sounds good at all volumes from the amp. Every pickup and tone control settings sound natural. Clean, mid-gain, high gain. It just sounds like the amp.

YMMV.