building a cabinet

[second chances]

do you know of anywhere that has instructions on building a cabinet for a 15 inch speaker

[Steve Lawson]

'Fraid not - I'm not great with building stuff - too busy playing it! :o)

try asking the question in the amp forum

cheers

steve
www.steve-lawson.co.uk

[Bruce Lindfield]

Yes - Joris, who appears regularly in the Amps forum has built his own cabs and is something of an expert on this and electronics.

[mchildree]

Here's a pretty well-known article by Len Moskowitz, who posts on TBL quite often. He did lots of research and built a small cab that really turned out well. Other bassists have built that same cab using his plans and have raved about it. Been thinking about giving it a shot myself.

http://www.core-sound.com//bottom-article.html

It's for a 1 x 10" cab, but maybe you can get a feel for what's involved and adapt it to a 15". It's interesting reading in any case because it points you to freeware that can be used to design your own box.

[greenboy]

Make sure you have the pertinent Thiele-Small parameters for the particular driver you want to use, or get them for several you are interested in.

Then download WinISD at http://www.linearteam.dk/ -- this is an easy program to use to model woofer cabs; just insert the name of a speaker and its Thiele-Small parameters and it will pull up a few graphs. Then you can experiment with different box tunings and INTERNAL sizes.

Read the Help files to learn about "group delay" and response curves so that you truly understand all the trade-offs involved; ported cabinets have the direct frontal output, and the delayed output of the frequencies that the port handles -- this as a general rule induces more delay the lower you go, and is the reason why some people talk about smeared response or mushiness.

The best designs are those that fit your circumstances (are you using a low B, what type of tone are you after, which comprimises do you feel are the best for you, etc).

Have fun. I've done quite a few, often sounding better than a manufacturer's using the same driver. And this beats doing all the calculations with formulas on paper by a long shot.