Hubcaps as Speaker Grille?

First, amps from Radio Shack, now this?
What Mad Max themed band are you in?
Regular gigs at the Thunderdome?

 

Go for it and post back. Sounds like fun.

 

Look, I didn't take the hubcaps.....

 

It's not a "hubcap", it's a "sound dispersion speaker grill".


...joking aside, it really is: The design consists of a sound dispersion cone and center high-frequency blocking hub. The spokes helding this on place are specially tapered to block as least as possible. It's designed to be a dispersion grille but it coincidentally ends up looking like a hubcap, a feature which was deliberately exploited by the designer.

I would reckon that an actual hubcap wouldn't really perform as great as dispersion grille as dispersion grille would perform as a hubcap. That is to say, don't confuse them with each other.

 

Looks super cool! I'm partial to the pignose style guy for amps I don't move around too much.

What's the best hubcap for metal?

 

Let's see.

One: I mount small bass combo on each wheel of my car...
Two: reattach hubcap.

Wait, my headstock sticks out the window....

At 60mph it gets chilly in the NE.

 

I suddenly have the urge to mount hubcap spinners on all my amps.

 

Didn't BFM use a reflective hubcap in one of his designs?

 

Plus the home wound double coil subwoofer, this is definitely going to be a one of a kind rig!

 

It could work really good. The center cap would work like a phase plug, like the ones BFM has in the Jack and Otop cabs. He wouldn't use them if they didn't work.

 

I was thinking this, also.
Plus, it may produce a cool Doppler Effect!

 

High frequency beam blockers are nothing new, so why not give it a shot. Some companies mounted their speakers behind the baffle and had a cross member in the baffle that did something similar.

Your can read about how they work and see the product that Weber sells here: http://www.webervst.com/blocker.html

 

...and you can read about how they don't work and how to make something that does here: Speaker Directivity Modifier

Edit: I have tried this and can't say I've really noticed much difference. It was easy enough to do though.

 

interesting.
for a front mount speaker, could you just cover the entire baffle with the foam?
Seems like i've seen that before.
Didn't the polytone amps have foam covering the front of the baffle behind the screen?

 

I tried one from a 4X4 pick up, but it sounded kinda muddy...............

 

The Visual Sound "hubcap" actually combines "waveguide" concept, similar to this old Teisco Checkmate amp, with the aforementioned "beam blocker" concept, which simply puts an obstruction in front of center parts of the cone diagphgram and therefore modifies dispersion characteristics so that higher frequencies disperse to less narrow area than without the waveguide/beam blocker.



So, it's not a hubcap, it's specially designed dispersion modifier grill that is just deliberately made to look like a hubcap - because it can. That in mind, you can't just slap a random -real- hubcap in front of the speaker and expect it to perform similarly.