Closed Cabinet build

[Bbboy]

Has anyone built a closed cabinet for a 15” neodymium speaker? If you have how do you use it? Is it enough for a small club or outside street dance or party? How much does your cabinet weigh? Also does is sound good?

 

[agedhorse]

You need to identify a driver that will work well in a sealed enclosure first. You will find the options to be very limited IME.

 

[KevInDaBassment]

Is there a particular reason to narrow it down to closed cabinets only?

Plenty of Greenboy plans for 15" cabs, but I believe they are all ported. Tells you what drivers to use and you can even order flatpacks of the wood from some vendors. Bill Fitzmaurice has some 15" cab designs too IIRC. Either solution will prevent you from having to do all the math, which will save much headache and room for error.

Doing this as a project or something like that?

 

[Bbboy]

Is there a particular reason to narrow it down to closed cabinets only?

Plenty of Greenboy plans for 15" cabs, but I believe they are all ported. Tells you what drivers to use and you can even order flatpacks of the wood from some vendors. Bill Fitzmaurice has some 15" cab designs too IIRC. Either solution will prevent you from having to do all the math, which will save much headache and room for error.

Doing this as a project or something like that?

Yes thanks for answering, I bought a 15”; eminence neodymium (299-2253) for 80.00 from parts express. want a light cabinet for small clubs, outside parties light weight. I use a peavey 4x10” for bigger clubs and outside shows but it is a pain to move around. I love the peavey sound with my GK head. I could do vented but eminence specifies 1.6 cubi ft sealed cabinet. At practice I will play through a sealed acoustic amp with an 8” speaker that sounds good! I have the wood and plenty of tools. I want light weight good sound. I have a Hartke hd508 that I dislike. I have a fender rumble that does not have line level out I gave to my grandson. Has anyone built a cabinet and not bought an empty cabinet? I thought the 15 Neo might sound good in a sealed cabinet and be easily portable.
.

 

[agedhorse]

Ok, so what you bought is not a driver that's optimized for a sealed cabinet at all. The EBP of the driver is awfully high for a sealed cabinet application.

Eminence doesn't specify a 1.6CF sealed cabinet for this woofer because it's an OEM woofer and they only publish recommendations for their standard drivers (which this is not, it's a Chinese manufactured part form their DG factory). You give up a ton of performance using this driver in a sealed cabinet.

Now that you have learned that you don't have what you thought you had, it's time to revisit ported cabinets and how to calculate a good box design (including internal volume and porting data).

 

[agedhorse]

Assuming you can work with a 2 CF ported box, the results with 2 x 3" diameter ports that are 3" deep is quite good. The yellow plot is the same box sealed, which is pretty mediocre at best.

 

[Bbboy]

Okay thanks. 9

Ok, so what you bought is not a driver that's optimized for a sealed cabinet at all. The EBP of the driver is awfully high for a sealed cabinet application.

Eminence doesn't specify a 1.6CF sealed cabinet for this woofer because it's an OEM woofer and they only publish recommendations for their standard drivers (which this is not, it's a Chinese manufactured part form their DG factory). You give up a ton of performance using this driver in a sealed cabinet.

Now that you have learned that you don't have what you thought you had, it's time to revisit ported cabinets and how to calculate a good box design (including internal volume and porting data).

i. Apologize to you. I really do.. I gave you the wrong number of the speaker I bought. I bought the eminence 299-2252 ribbed paper cone neodymium. It does have specifications for a sealed enclosure of 1,6 cubic feet. I would build a vented enclosure and in fact have in the past. I built the EV TL606 and put a 15” EV speaker in it. It sounded great and I used it at church for 10 years or more. Never moved it! Heavy! The specifications are listed for this eminence speaker which as you say may be Chinese. It was 79.99 and 10% off that. Thank you for responding Randy

 

[Bbboy]

Okay thanks. 9

i. Apologize to you. I really do.. I gave you the wrong number of the speaker I bought. I bought the eminence 299-2252 ribbed paper cone neodymium. It does have specifications for a sealed enclosure of 1,6 cubic feet. I would build a vented enclosure and in fact have in the past. I built the EV TL606 and put a 15” EV speaker in it. It sounded great and I used it at church for 10 years or more. Never moved it! Heavy! The specifications are listed for this eminence speaker which as you say may be Chinese. It was 79.99 and 10% off that. Thank you for responding Randy

 

[Bbboy]

Thanks also for the port width and depth. I am thinking of using 1/2 plywood for the body and 3/4” to house the speaker and port if I Port it. Thanks again.

 

[agedhorse]

Okay thanks. 9

i. Apologize to you. I really do.. I gave you the wrong number of the speaker I bought. I bought the eminence 299-2252 ribbed paper cone neodymium. It does have specifications for a sealed enclosure of 1,6 cubic feet. I would build a vented enclosure and in fact have in the past. I built the EV TL606 and put a 15” EV speaker in it. It sounded great and I used it at church for 10 years or more. Never moved it! Heavy! The specifications are listed for this eminence speaker which as you say may be Chinese. It was 79.99 and 10% off that. Thank you for responding Randy

I think you have this all mixed up, the 299-2252 is not $79.99 unless somebody made a huge error.

This driver is also optimized for a vented/ported enclosure. It will work in a sealed enclosure like the other one you posted, but with similar mediocre performance. That's not an Eminence recommendation, just some parts counter marketing geek that pulled this recommendation out of his butt. It will work, sure. Any speaker will make noise if even if you stuff it into a garbage can, but the question is if you care at all about performance?

 

[agedhorse]

Running the numbers, there''s almost no performance difference between the two drivers but the one with the ribbed cone required 2 x 4" diameter ports 3" deep. The same loss of performance can be seen in the overlaid plots... both drivers are very clearly optimized for ported cabinets. Red is the first driver, Green is the second driver. The area between the curves is the lost performance.

 

[Bbboy]

Okay thanks. 9

Ok, so what you bought is not a driver that's optimized for a sealed cabinet at all. The EBP of the driver is awfully high for a sealed cabinet application.

Eminence doesn't specify a 1.6CF sealed cabinet for thiswoofer because it's an OEM woofer and they only publish recommendations for their standard drivers (which this is not, it's a Chinese manufactured part form their DG factory). You give up a ton of performance using this driver in a sealed cabinet.

Now that you have learned that you don't have what you thought you had, it's time to revisit ported cabinets and how to calculate a good box design (including internal volume and porting data).

i. Apologize to you. I really do.. I gave you the wrong number of the speaker I bought. I bought the eminence 299-2252 ribbed paper cone neodymium. It does have specifications for a sealed enclosure of 1,6 cubic feet. I would build a vented enclosure and in fact have in the past. I built the EV TL606 and put a 15” EV speaker in it. It sounded great and I used it at church for 10 years or more. Never moved it! Heavy!

I think you have this all mixed up, the 299-2252 is not $79.99 unless somebody made a huge error.

This driver is also optimized for a vented/ported enclosure. It will work in a sealed enclosure like the other one you posted, but with similar mediocre performance. That's not an Eminence recommendation, just some parts counter marketing geek that pulled this recommendation out of his butt. It will work, sure. Any speaker will make noise if even if you stuff it into a garbage can, but the question is if you care at all about performance?

The 299-2252 was $79.99. I went back and looked at the email invoice. It is now selling for $149.00.

 

[Bbboy]

I think you have this all mixed up, the 299-2252 is not $79.99 unless somebody made a huge error.

This driver is also optimized for a vented/ported enclosure. It will work in a sealed enclosure like the other one you posted, but with similar mediocre performance. That's not an Eminence recommendation, just some parts counter marketing geek that pulled this recommendation out of his butt. It will work, sure. Any speaker will make noise if even if you stuff it into a garbage can, but the question is if you care at all about

 

[agedhorse]

Okay thanks. 9

i. Apologize to you. I really do.. I gave you the wrong number of the speaker I bought. I bought the eminence 299-2252 ribbed paper cone neodymium. It does have specifications for a sealed enclosure of 1,6 cubic feet. I would build a vented enclosure and in fact have in the past. I built the EV TL606 and put a 15” EV speaker in it. It sounded great and I used it at church for 10 years or more. Never moved it! Heavy!

The 299-2252 was $79.99. I went back and looked at the email invoice. It is now selling for $149.00.

Somebody really screwed up and you were on the winning side of the screwup.

2 cubic foot enclosure (internal volume), 2 x 4” diameter ports 3” deep will get you a good sounding cabinet.

 

[Bbboy]

Well I do care about sound. I like the EV 15” I like the 4x10 Peavey. I don’t like the Hartke hd 508. I don’t like heavy. I want a light cabinet I can feel like the peavey feels that almost does what it can do outside and in a medium club. But, doesn’t weigh 75 pounds. That is what I want to build. Ported or sealed. 30 something lbs. or less. The eminence speaker is I think 8 lbs. the specifications say 3 cubic ft. Something that doesn’t give me a hernia going up a flight of stairs but sounds satisfyingly good. It would be fun to build that. Does anyone build or do they just stick new speakers in old cabinets?

 

[agedhorse]

The specifications don’t say 3CF. There is a range of acceptable cabinet volumes, and each cabinet volume has an associated porting configuration that results in a family of cabinet tunings. If you want a 3CF cabinet, the porting may be different.

Sure folks build cabinets. Some build excellent examples, many build mediocre examples and some are positively dreadful.

I do this for a living, read through my comments again because there is a lot of valuable information that you can learn from rather than striving for mediocre.

 

[6thplanet]

Post #14. Build it.

 

[Bbboy]

The specifications don’t say 3CF. There is a range of acceptable cabinet volumes, and each cabinet volume has an associated porting configuration that results in a family of cabinet tunings. If you want a 3CF cabinet, the porting may be different.

Sure folks build cabinets. Some build excellent examples, many build mediocre examples and some are positively dreadful.

I do this for a living, read through my comments again because there is a lot of valuable information that you can learn from rather than striving for

 

[Bbboy]

Thank you agedhorse for your reply again. Thank you for your knowledge and sharing it. If you were building a ported cabinet similar to what I have said I desire to build, with the 299-2252 eminence neodymium what volume and ports would you do. Even dimensions, you have done this and know what shape is best for sound. Is it a perfect cube or some kind of narrow box? I will build it and tell you if it sounds good or sounds like crap. As an aside I did not know Mesa Boogie is part of Gibson. I have a 1991 Gibson A style mandolin and a 2014 F style which is from the custom shop. They both sound great. Thanks Bbboy

 

[agedhorse]

I would do what I posted in #14