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Rumble 500 - Any Cabinet Mods Worth Doing?

MustangWally

MustangWally

Inactive
Feb 5, 2019
921
1,551
San Marcos TX
#1
I have my Rumble 500 open at the moment (speakers out, just because i am curious and the band is not playing for a few weeks) and I was wondering if there are any worthwhile mods that I can do while I am inside the cabinet - extra bracing, more acoustic padding and so on? Or is it fine the way it is? Thanks in advance.
 
#4
It's a modern combo designed very well to do the things it is supposed to do from what I have heard.

Is there a tonal or performance issue you are trying to address or do you just want to experiment with it?

Analogeezer
 
#5
Analogeezer said:
Is there a tonal or performance issue you are trying to address or do you just want to experiment with it?
Click to expand...
I just can't leave anything alone, it's an affliction :D. I used to pull the wheels off of my toy cars as a kid, this is just the adult version.

I thought that I would just run a rib up each long side, maybe brace between them and add some more acoustic batting. Nothing dramatic and if I don't like it it can be easily removed.

FWIW I do like a good tight bass/low mid, but that said the little thing sounds great as it came.
 
Last edited:
#6
Well, here is the update.

I braced the top, bottom and side panels with 1½" x 1½" pine and ran a 1" dowel side-to-side, everything glued and screwed:
upload_2021-12-15_9-41-38.png


Then I stuffed a pillow's worth of fluffy synthetic batting in there and put it all back together.

Net result: nothing that I can hear! Then I stuffed the ports with T-shirts and still no change. Either my ears are way worse than I had thought or I achieved a big fat zero with all this.

As Andy Curry said above 'if it ain't broke'! To AnaloGeezer (great name BTW) well I experimented and my personal conclusion is that the Rumble 500 is just fine the way it comes from the factory.

My highly unscientific 'improvements' were based loosely on building a lot of speaker cabinets back in the 1980's that housed JBL E140's for bass use - we found that bracing was critical back then but I can only assume that my knowledge, such as it is, is now redundant in light of 40 years or advances in cabinet and speaker design. There are some times when getting old sucks.
 
#8
Reminds me a bit of something I say so often regarding food. Try it how I make it (or THEY when out to eat or preparing convenience foods) before trying to doctor it up.

Somebody put in the time to achieve a goal. It wouldn't be on the market (or the menu) if the chef (or in this case the designer) felt it wasn't as intended.
 
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#9
Coda: I think I will pull out all my mods - I can do that fairly quickly and hopefully get a fair 'after and before' comparison. First I will take the rig out on my back porch and run it LOUD in both configurations without being colored by any other resonant interference from being in a room or from objects therein.

I am hearing a nasty sort of a 'bite' or buzz in the tone that might be caused by too hot a signal (passive Mustang PJ input, no effects) from the gain control.
 
#10
OK, so I took the unit outside and ran it LOUD (we back onto an area of bush so no neighbors to bug) with the mods still installed then I removed the padding and bracing for a fair 'after and before' test and I have to say that I much prefer the 'before' aka the original sound, it seems cleaner overall which is what I like. Children, learn from my mistakes and don't do what I did. Trust uncle Fender, he/they can not be improved on!
 
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#13
MustangWally said:
Well, here is the update.

I braced the top, bottom and side panels with 1½" x 1½" pine and ran a 1" dowel side-to-side, everything glued and screwed:
View attachment 4505779

Then I stuffed a pillow's worth of fluffy synthetic batting in there and put it all back together.

Net result: nothing that I can hear! Then I stuffed the ports with T-shirts and still no change. Either my ears are way worse than I had thought or I achieved a big fat zero with all this.

As Andy Curry said above 'if it ain't broke'! To AnaloGeezer (great name BTW) well I experimented and my personal conclusion is that the Rumble 500 is just fine the way it comes from the factory.

My highly unscientific 'improvements' were based loosely on building a lot of speaker cabinets back in the 1980's that housed JBL E140's for bass use - we found that bracing was critical back then but I can only assume that my knowledge, such as it is, is now redundant in light of 40 years or advances in cabinet and speaker design. There are some times when getting old sucks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment!

It's a mashup of "Analog" + "Geezer" which dates to my days on the rec.audio.pro board on Usenet.

I really like analog recording gear, mixing consoles, outboard, tape machines and analog synthesizers and like many here I am an old guy LOL

Ironically I was not THAT much of a Geezer back in the Usenet days :)

Analogeezer

p.s. I can relate to the desire to muck with things, what you need is a bunch of old gear like I have....something will always need work or need to get some sort of updates. I have a Roland JD-800 that suffers from the infamous "red glue disaster" problem, so I need to remove all the keys, soak them in a lye solution for 24 hours then wash them off and reglue the key weights to the keys and reinstall them, after cleaning the glue residue off the keybed.

So what you need are some projects like this around the house to keep you from mucking with brand new gear! :)

p.s.s. There is a term in the car enthusiast world (applies to gear as well) called the "Project Guy/Project Girl". This is a person who is always engaged in some sort of project, but as soon as the project gets done and is perfect.....they get bored, sell it and move on to the next project.

Nothing wrong with that really, just pointing out it's an actual thing...
 
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#17
Analogeezer said:
Thanks for the compliment!

It's a mashup of "Analog" + "Geezer" which dates to my days on the rec.audio.pro board on Usenet.

I really like analog recording gear, mixing consoles, outboard, tape machines and analog synthesizers and like many here I am an old guy LOL

Ironically I was not THAT much of a Geezer back in the Usenet days :)

Analogeezer

p.s. I can relate to the desire to muck with things, what you need is a bunch of old gear like I have....something will always need work or need to get some sort of updates. I have a Roland JD-800 that suffers from the infamous "red glue disaster" problem, so I need to remove all the keys, soak them in a lye solution for 24 hours then wash them off and reglue the key weights to the keys and reinstall them, after cleaning the glue residue off the keybed.

So what you need are some projects like this around the house to keep you from mucking with brand new gear! :)

p.s.s. There is a term in the car enthusiast world (applies to gear as well) called the "Project Guy/Project Girl". This is a person who is always engaged in some sort of project, but as soon as the project gets done and is perfect.....they get bored, sell it and move on to the next project.

Nothing wrong with that really, just pointing out it's an actual thing...
Click to expand...
I learned a long time ago from a friend I went to school with and who with his older brother built street cars into drag cars. His name is Stan, he told me that 95%of people who buy a project car get it in some form of disassembly and loose interest, it takes up too much space in the garage, etc
So the moral of the story is, if you want a summer, hot rod car go to a car show/swap meet/cruse night, etc there is always something for sale that you can take home and enjoy. No muss no fuss.
Duke
 
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#18
The important thing to remember is your cab isn't just a box to hold your speakers. It's part of a system that's designed to get the maximum performance out of everything (i.e. speakers, porting, enclosure geometry, volume, bracing, materials, etc) it possibly can.

Everything in that system was already carefully matched by designers who know what they're doing. Change anything and there's a high risk you'll either see zero improvement best case - or - worst case, you'll seriously diminish the performance it already has.

Cab design is as much an art as it is a science. One that involves carefully balancing a series of compromises to get the best you can out of a cab design when all factors are taken into account.

Swapping speakers isn't the same thing as trying out different string sets. So I'd strongly suggest reconsidering a speaker swap if your existing drivers aren't broken. Or at least proceeding with caution if you're intent on trying it anyway.
 
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