Tips on Cab Building???

[masonksterling]

So I've been looking all over the internet for advice to start building my cab with not much luck. I found alot on building guitar cabs but unfortunately virtually nothing on bass cabs. I had to get a new car(turns out it is a mustang) so I need something portable, powerful and has a great tone. I really don't want to take my cab apart and look on the inside for fear of tearing it up and possibly splitting the wood or definitely tearing the tolex. I did find out that i should use either 9 or 13 ply plywood. I looked on google images to see if i could find a pic of the inside of a bass cab and much to my surprise, not much of anything again. So my initial question is, should i pad the inside with some material like fiberglass, studio foam or cotton? or not?

Should I just leave it hollow inside? or should i build the insides like an acoustic guitar?

I'm looking for a smooth tone that's very versatile. Im thinking a 2x10 or a 2x12.

[PhiDeck]

fEARful

[arginator]

www.billfitzmaurice.com

[Beauchene Implements]

+1 on either of the recommendations above, they both have huge followings on talkbass. I'm partial to the fEARful design, a 12/6 and 12 sub will be my next projects after I finish my current bass build. There is a ton of support on greenboy's site: http://greenboy.us/fEARful/ as well as a fEARful megathread here you can search for. You can also purchase either cab as a precut kit.

Edit: Also recommend you consider one of the above proven designs, because optimizing a bass guitar cabinet for volume, porting, scantling, and crossover is it's own science and the two above have it down. I built my own cabinet over a decade ago, and even though it was very solidly built, it was a speaker killer because the cone constantly overextended. You can build an open backed box, jam some eminince 12's in there, and get lucky on making a good guitar cab, but bass cabs are a very specialized animal.

[type C basses]

If there was just one important thing, it would be good internal bracing in the design. Decide what driver(s) you want first, then design the cab to it/them. There are about 6 specs if memory serves, something like Q, Qts Qs, Qem...I don't know exactly, but this should put you in the right direction.

[iamlowsound]

I just finished reading through Bill's site and now I have an uncontrollable urge to build myself a 2x12 cab and get rid of the rest of my rig. Maybe that will be a summer project.

lowsound