Speaker cab is finally finished!
Friday, October 9th, 2009
The cab is finally done! Since the last post, I poly’d the speaker baffle, attached & wired the jackplate, mounted the speakers, and painted & attached the speaker grills.
I found the Marshall switchable jackplate at Antique Electronic Supply. It allows the use of both speakers at 4 ohms or 16 ohms, or either speaker at 8 ohms. With two heads or a stereo head, the cab could be run in stereo for more spacious chorus and delay effects. So far I’ve used it with the Stulce SA-10H shown in the picture below, as well as my friend Pete’s Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier head, and it sounds great with both.
The speaker grills are basic 12” metal waffle grills. When I painted them, I achieved a texture similar to the amp head’s texture by spraying them with Valspar Stone paint and then spraying the red over that. If I wanted it to be durable, I could buy Valspar’s fixative spray and cover the stone paint with that before spraying it red. But I think they’ll actually look better when they get a little scratched up, so I’m leaving them alone.
I installed two different speakers: One is a Tone Tubby Hempcone H1E Alnico, and the other is an H1E Ceramic. I ordered them from South Valley Vintage Amps. As I researched speakers, I found a really helpful GearNet review of a ton of speaker combinations—-definitely worth checking out.
One of these days I’ll post some audio clips. For now, pictures:
By the way, these pictures were taken in the elevator behind our stage, which has become our makeshift amp isolation booth. We put the amp heads in the stage hallway so we can run cables to them, and we mic the cabs in the elevator or the back room. Of course, it would look cooler if they were all on stage, but at the volume we run our services (roughly 90dB), there’s no way to get a tube amp to sound good and also make a sound guy happy. :)
The cab is finally done! Since the last post, I poly’d the speaker baffle, attached & wired the jackplate, mounted the speakers, and painted & attached the speaker grills.
I found the Marshall switchable jackplate at Antique Electronic Supply. It allows the use of both speakers at 4 ohms or 16 ohms, or either speaker at 8 ohms. With two heads or a stereo head, the cab could be run in stereo for more spacious chorus and delay effects. So far I’ve used it with the Stulce SA-10H shown in the picture below, as well as my friend Pete’s Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier head, and it sounds great with both.
The speaker grills are basic 12” metal waffle grills. When I painted them, I achieved a texture similar to the amp head’s texture by spraying them with Valspar Stone paint and then spraying the red over that. If I wanted it to be durable, I could buy Valspar’s fixative spray and cover the stone paint with that before spraying it red. But I think they’ll actually look better when they get a little scratched up, so I’m leaving them alone.
I installed two different speakers: One is a Tone Tubby Hempcone H1E Alnico, and the other is an H1E Ceramic. I ordered them from South Valley Vintage Amps. As I researched speakers, I found a really helpful GearNet review of a ton of speaker combinations—-definitely worth checking out.
One of these days I’ll post some audio clips. For now, pictures:
By the way, these pictures were taken in the elevator behind our stage, which has become our makeshift amp isolation booth. We put the amp heads in the stage hallway so we can run cables to them, and we mic the cabs in the elevator or the back room. Of course, it would look cooler if they were all on stage, but at the volume we run our services (roughly 90dB), there’s no way to get a tube amp to sound good and also make a sound guy happy. :)
