Yeah it kicks butt and it's not even broken in yet. Of course it's not going to kill your 4x10 or your 12/6 fEARful; but it WILL surprise you with the quantity and quality of sound it puts out. I wasn't prepared for what came out of the cab. Then again, the only other amp with a 10" speaker I"ve played through was a little no-name thing. One of those 15w things with an open cab back. Yeah. This is NOT one of those. I did not crank it up at all; not yet anyway. I want to give the driver a fair shot. Let it break in, get used to the cab and then I'll beat the snot out of it. I played through my normal rig which is powered by a QSC GX5 (500WPC @ 8 ohms). Just for reference. I plan on utilizing this little beast with my Shuttle 6.0...got the whole portability thing down with this rig!
On with the show. First off: I chose not put any padding in my cab. Mostly b/c I didn't have any on hand and can't buy any. It's just not readily available where I'm at for the next few months. Maybe in a few months when I'm back stateside I'll open it up and throw some in there for kicks. For now, I'm happy with the end result. It's not broken in yet. I'm going to play a 30Hz tone through it overnight. I played my rig through it at low to very moderate volume for about an hour. I must say...it's different sounding than my Avatar 212. Much more...articulate in the mids, and the lowest notes (on a 4-string) have a lovely "thunk" to them. Again, I haven't cranked it so i can't comment on cone breakup/power handling/fartout/etc. It sounds really good played loud enough that you have to really speak up for me to hear you. Odd thing: I didn't think I'd notice that the cab has no tweet. I keep the tweet in my Avatar padded back to about 1/3rd. You'll notice the tweet missing, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just an observation.
Enough yammering! Where's the pics, man? Here they be:
Mounted the handle. Drilled a 5mm hole thru the cab, the used 5mm bolts about 30mm long. There's a nut, lockwasher and big steel washer on each bolt. The big plain washer spreads the load over more surface area and helps ensure that the nut won't pull through the hole under tension. The rubber handle will snap before these bolts pull out of the cab.
Mounting assembly:
Handle (wow...it's a...handle):
I mounted the jack plate/dish. I forgot to take pictures of the wire installed into the Speakon, so you can just imagine some 16ga PartsExpress speaker wire installed. I used the +1/-1 connection points, BTW. Here's the plate installed. I used 3/4" #6 coarse thread screws. You can see that the Speakon from the amp fits fine. It does not hit either of the Speakon jack mounting bolts. The screws sit about 1/16" of an inch below the outer rim of the connector. NO issues. I also didn't silicone the inside of the jack plate/dish like I had originally intended. I got distracted while working (I've got a whole tube of silicone cut open with a screw stuffed in the end...now what?
) and I just forgot. Luckily there don't seem to be any air leaks. Can't feel any air pumping out or hear any weird whistling noises back there. I'm sure the carpet is acting as a lame gasket. Seems to be working though!
Next I drilled holes for the t-nuts/bolts to hold the grill on. I put the woofer in the cab (didn't mount, just rested it in there) and sat the grill on top of it. I then determined where the grill mounting tabs would go, marked a hole and drilled. I started the holes with a 4mm bit and worked up in bit sizes until I could fit the t-nut in the bottom of the hole. The t-nuts that come with the grill mounting kit (see part number in my previous post) need an 8mm hole, BTW. Then I installed the t-nuts. Here's one of them.
As I stated in my last post, these grill mounting tabs are made assuming your driver is flush-mounted. If you surface mount it, the tabs will be crooked b/c they have to "reach up" to hold the grill on. That looks bad, IMO and isn't a strong way to mount the only thing keeping your clumsy self from kicking a hole in your fancy $80 woofer. If you mount the tabs straight like you're supposed to, there's a big gap b/t the tab and the cab like this:
How to take up the space? Easy. Use washers. I used 7, 1/4" hole washers on each mounting tab screw. Don't know the outer diameter. Here's what a mounting tab assembly looks like with the washers:
You wind up with this:
By the way: The driver is mounted with 1", #8 coarse thread screws. No pics of that. Imagine the woofer sitting in the hole in the cab. Now imagine some screws holding it in. You got it!
And here's the final product:
It's not a small cab, but it sounds impressive:
On top of my rig. The big cab on the bottom is an Avatar 212, just for comparison's sake.
So far I'm very happy with this little project. I want to wait until the driver is properly broken in and played in before really putting some wattage through it. I'll reserve my "deliriously happy" comment for when and if that happens. But so far we are on track for that level of satisfaction.
The performance vs. price ratio/comparision is just ridiculous with this little guy. If you need a good sounding small and light (mine is 25.7 pounds on my bathroom scale, BTW) you need to build one of these. Even if you don't "need it" you should still build one just so you can say "Wow...what a nice little cab!" and of course, you can then be part of the yet Un-named You Have This Cab Club."
I'd be happy to answer any build-related questions anyone might have. I did this build in my kitchen and in my music room/office with hand tools. (Cordless drill, keyhole saw, pliers, screwdrivers, wire cutters, wire crimper, Dremel.) Nothing fancy is needed to join the club!
I'll check again before I mount the dish, but the Neutrik connector itself is sitting flush on/in the plate. As you know, the mounting holes on the Neutrik are dished for pan-head screws. The bolts I used are pan head and are sitting correctly from what I can tell, in the holes. The heads on these bolts/screws are a little big, but they do appear to be sitting correctly. Also, you can see I smeared silicone over the bolts. I don't think there's any air little air gaps but the silicone should catch any little that might get through. Thanks again for the warning.
and I'd like to read what you guys think. Could this cab be made any "better" building a bigger cab?
