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DIY 10/6 or 12/6 isolation cab for recording?

#21
I have 12/6 and 15/6 cabs of the near-fEarful design. I experimented micing the cab at various distances to learn what sounded best. About three feet away was optimal. As you move closer to the cab, the mic will end up between the drivers in the close position, so you'll adjust by moving it closer to the woofer or mid driver. Either way, close micing one of these seems to defeat the sonic purpose. That would make for a pretty big recording chamber.
 
#22
BogeyBass said:
Ever think about shoving your amp in a closet and closing the door....pre made box....if your in the garage just throw your amp in a car and shut the door...sounds lame huh? but a car has more airspace than some tiny box...stick a mic in a box with a speaker and it will sound like a mic in a box with a speaker....see my point yet...yawn:bassist:just play your bass
Click to expand...

oh man that's hilarious! I gotta sig part of that!

edit: hope you don't mind me cutting out the mid part :D only cuz it won't all fit
 
#24
fu22ba55 said:
I've wanted to do something like this for so long.

*And* I wish there were a way to install another speaker or pickup or something in there to produce feedback. Something I could control from the outside with a volume pedal to enable feedback.
Click to expand...

Couldn't you just run a second un-mic'd speaker outside the iso enclosure to get your bass to feed back?

We've done this in the studio with guitars, where the cab was in an isolation room, and we got the guitar to feed back through the control room monitors.
 
#25
BogeyBass said:
rpsands is the smartest guy here, just use the svt plugin and record direct, isolation boxes will make your bass sound like a muddy boomy speaker in a box. wow what a surprise right! because thats what it is...going to a tiny 6" speaker recorded to a cheap mic..will sound way dumb.
than just running a line 6 bass pod straight to the board. and in many circles that is pretty lame too. i know your all having fun building some cracked up dream box...cus i like building boxes too and shoving speakers in them....but for the most part its a waste of time and money. record direct with either software or outboard emulators...ive seen line 6 crap go for like 20 bucks at pawn shops, way cheaper than your cracked out home depot run that will ace 100 bucks easy. isolation is all the rage but good sounding pro recordings use large rooms with pro equipment..not homemade flea market speakers shoved in some homebrew bs. Ever think about shoving your amp in a closet and closing the door....pre made box....if your in the garage just throw your amp in a car and shut the door...sounds lame huh? but a car has more airspace than some tiny box...stick a mic in a box with a speaker and it will sound like a mic in a box with a speaker....see my point yet...yawn:bassist:just play your bass
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What's that saying...'They're are no stupid questions, just stupid answers'? At least RPsands offered up some good suggestions, whereas the value of your post was limited to your first 6 words. You either didn't read what I wrote or were too excited to type up your witty response to pay attention. ;)

The type of mic to be used hadn't come up yet, so I'm not sure why you think I'd be using a "cheap mic". If it matters, I've always recorded in the studio using a Heil PR40 and a Blue Robbie preamp with great results and that's what I was planning to use. I've thrown amps in closets (once even tried a bathroom with a mic in the tub and another in the sink), but unfortunately my garage doesn't have a closet or a bathroom and I can't fit my car into my garage as most of it is consumed by my bar, couch & home studio. :eek:

For a while there we spoke about speaker selection; Eminence, Beyma & B&C are hardly "...homemade flea market speakers..." and the whole point of this thread was to get some insight on design so I don't end up with a $75-$200 speaker "...shoved in some homebrew bs".

Anytime you mic your bass (unless playing outdoors) it will always "...sound like a mic in a box with a speaker...". Whether that box is a pro studio isolation room, a gym, a bathroom or a 1cu ft box, the only difference (besides the mic) is the size of the box and what's inside to absorb/reflect sound.

Ukiah Bass said:
I have 12/6 and 15/6 cabs of the near-fEarful design. I experimented micing the cab at various distances to learn what sounded best. About three feet away was optimal. As you move closer to the cab, the mic will end up between the drivers in the close position, so you'll adjust by moving it closer to the woofer or mid driver. Either way, close micing one of these seems to defeat the sonic purpose. That would make for a pretty big recording chamber.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. What type of mic were you using? I figured as much which was why I had considered separating the 12" and 6" drivers so they each would have their own isolation chamber and mic, but not sure if any of that is even needed. I may just scrap it for now and take the money I would have spent on my "cracked out homemade flea market speakers shoved in some homebrew bs" and build myself a fEarful 12/6 or 15/6 instead.

I guess there's no reason I couldn't build an iso box to fit a fEarful 12/6 and a mic at 3ft, but not sure that's a very good idea either.
 
#26
The more I think about it the more I think there's very little reason to use a speaker cabinet if you want flat response like a fEarful. Comparing a di to mic'ing, very few people can tell the difference between a fEarful and the Di. It's a very flat cabinet with the GB crossover.

If what you want is power tube distortion, just buy an Acme Low B1...its very low efficiency will allow you to drive it very hard and not get insanely loud, and it's super cheap on the used market, and also very small.

That said, the SVX plugin by itself will probably sound just as good.
 
#27
rpsands said:
The more I think about it the more I think there's very little reason to use a speaker cabinet if you want flat response like a fEarful. Comparing a di to mic'ing, very few people can tell the difference between a fEarful and the Di. It's a very flat cabinet with the GB crossover.

If what you want is power tube distortion, just buy an Acme Low B1...its very low efficiency will allow you to drive it very hard and not get insanely loud, and it's super cheap on the used market, and also very small.

That said, the SVX plugin by itself will probably sound just as good.
Click to expand...

Good to know, I'll have to play with the SVX plugin more. Thanks!
 
#28
interstatejoe said:
Thanks for the info. What type of mic were you using? I figured as much which was why I had considered separating the 12" and 6" drivers so they each would have their own isolation chamber and mic, but not sure if any of that is even needed. I may just scrap it for now and take the money I would have spent on my "cracked out homemade flea market speakers shoved in some homebrew bs" and build myself a fEarful 12/6 or 15/6 instead.

I guess there's no reason I couldn't build an iso box to fit a fEarful 12/6 and a mic at 3ft, but not sure that's a very good idea either.
Click to expand...


The whole exercise is chronicled here, including photos and recordings:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=599751

In a nutshell: I tried a variety of approaches.
•Centered mic on the subwoofer.
•Centered mic between both drivers, which was six inches from the center of each cone. That spot happened to be on the wavy edge of the subwoofer driver, which is where some people like to position the mic on a single-driver cab.
•Varied the type of microphone. I used a Sennheiser MD 421 II dynamic mic, an AKG Perception 400 large-diaphragm condenser mic, and an Audio-Technica stereo condenser mic.
 
#29
Ukiah Bass said:
In a nutshell: I tried a variety of approaches.
•Centered mic on the subwoofer.
•Centered mic between both drivers, which was six inches from the center of each cone. That spot happened to be on the wavy edge of the subwoofer driver, which is where some people like to position the mic on a single-driver cab.
•Varied the type of microphone. I used a Sennheiser MD 421 II dynamic mic, an AKG Perception 400 large-diaphragm condenser mic, and an Audio-Technica stereo condenser mic.
Click to expand...

FWIW, I've had very nice results with my 12/6 using a small diaphragm omni condenser (Audix TR-40) at one foot off, centered right between the 6 and 12.
 
#31
Why would you go with a 12/6 that's 5db more sensitive overall and twice (maybe not twice, but bigger!) as big as an Acme B1? Also, the Acme is going to be a lot closer to studio flat.

For live use obviously it makes sense but stuffed in an iso box how often are you gonna want to gig it and have to unhook everything?
 
#32
The 12/6 is only about 8" taller, 1" wider & 2" deeper than the B1, but room is not really an issue here. The B1 is also only rated @ 175 watts.

Not saying it's a good idea, just throwing ideas out expecting to be told why they're not good ones....so why can't I build a standard 12/6 for gigging and have a removable 3ft deep iso chamber for recording?

Again:
interstatejoe said:
Just sayin'.:hiding:
Click to expand...
 
#33
I see no reason why you couldn't do that, just bear in mind that the 12/6 over the Acme is going to be at least 4-5db louder. That's going to make building a working iso box a LOT harder afaik...the louder it gets in there, the more likely you are to have problems with reflections and such. I could be misunderstanding though.

I wouldn't worry much about the power handling most likely. That Acme driver has a lot of excursion available, and 175 watts for its rating is probably closer to 250 for any other box. As long as you aren't redlining the YBA-200, I think it'd be fine. But you could ask Andy from Acme.
 
#34
interstatejoe said:
What's that saying...'They're are no stupid questions, just stupid answers'? At least RPsands offered up some good suggestions, whereas the value of your post was limited to your first 6 words. You either didn't read what I wrote or were too excited to type up your witty response to pay attention. ;)
.
Click to expand...

First of all don't get your feathers ruffled, ive heard many different
mics that range from 100 to 2000 bucks, and you really don't hear a difference till you get over the 800 range.

No matter what thou in a full mix ,bass gets easily washed away with layered guitar tracks , drums , keys etc

Even if you had the greatest speaker in the world with the greatest
mic in the world, the bass gets washed.

So to save you money and time, it has been very common to run the bass "straight to the board" for countless recordings and now with modern plugins you can take it one step further and use emulations of all kinds of amp /cabs. the only downfall is on a home system plugins eat up lots of CPU

in my opinion thou the cab emulations sound good by them selfs
but in a final mix, just ad to the wash effect,

The best sound i got for bass is straight in, with mild eq in your DAW, otherwise use a plugin for eq and either bypass the cab emulator or spend time trying to get the sound flat as possibly.
everybody at one time finds you can solo a track and make it sound great, but sometimes in a full mix everything starts to wash up, because everybody over eq's with tracks on solo.

as far as using some home stereo 6" speaker rated at 85db
coupled with a pro sound speaker rated at 97db, being feed by a homebrew crossover network. shoved in a homemade box with no rear baffle and a poor port design.

is by far the perfect example of a "cracked out" homemade box.

i could record a amazing bass player, playing thru a peavey bandit with sm58 mic, and get a far better recording than recording a poor bass player going thru 10,000 dollars worth of pro equipment.

not being directed at you in any way, my point is=
A well played bass track going straight in will always sound better. just ask Paul McCartney. of course their always exceptions. don't care to argue

Ive heard tube preamps that range from 200 to 2000 dollars, and in most home recording enviroments , are a complete waste of time and money. Laugh, don't believe me, don't care. Low voltage chinese tube preamps being the perfect example. with only a few exceptions that range from 5000 and up. even at that point just running 16 channels would waste alot of rack space and create more noise and heat than a good plain jane solid state analog signal path.

Anything recorded below 24bit at 192kHz will have a restricted sound anyways that even a 5,000 dollar microphone and preamp won't help or fix.

A "real" pro tools setup is far different than using the home software. they use very high resolution DA converters and have seperate processors for everything.

Hence the reason many pros/ semi pros still record to tape. and only use digital for mastering, since in the end everyone is going to hear it in a highly compressed Mp3 format anyways.
 
#35
BogeyBass said:
as far as using some home stereo 6" speaker rated at 85db
coupled with a pro sound speaker rated at 97db, being feed by a homebrew crossover network. shoved in a homemade box with no rear baffle and a poor port design.

is by far the perfect example of a "cracked out" homemade box.
Click to expand...

Uh, is this the fEarful design you are referring to?

Otherwise, I say: Thank God I didn't spend thousands on fancy preamps, etc.!
 
#36
BogeyBass said:
in my opinion thou the cab emulations sound good by them selfs
but in a final mix, just ad to the wash effect,
Click to expand...


thou?, selfs?, ad(d).


This is why the younger folks need to stop texting and pick up a pen and paper. You can't expect to be taken seriously with stuff like this. You may be intelligent but will never come across that way to others. At least not in writing.
 
#37
will33 said:
thou?, selfs?, ad(d).


This is why the younger folks need to stop texting and pick up a pen and paper. You can't expect to be taken seriously with stuff like this. You may be intelligent but will never come across that way to others. At least not in writing.
Click to expand...

Like i said go ahead laugh , don't care

pretty much no different than people who keep typing=

fEarful

nOthing wRong wIth a fEw Miss- Spelled wOrds

Ive seen the curves on the Fearful crossover, and now i know why the call it fEarful........looks like a mountain range.

can anybody here actually play a Minor or Major scale
like ive been quoted....just play your bass:bassist:
 
#39
rpsands said:
Ever looked at an Fr chart for a mainstream cab?
Click to expand...

Since 80% of production cabs use low cost eminence drivers
they are all horrible

due to the fact that modern players want a small cabinet, with small 10" drivers with oversized magnets.
the limited air space and poor port designs, adds even more to the boomy lifeless mountain range curve.

hence the reason guys constantly buy and sell or trade different small cabinets and are never happy with them.
 
#40
So then you realize how much of an improvement the fearful is. the crossover is really a superb balance of performance and cost as well. If you think you can do better at that price please post it instead of talking through the top of your hat.
 

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