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Safe to Ship a Heavy Cabinet ?

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About checking those speaker screws, be very careful not to let the driver bit slip and poke a hole in the speaker. Years later I made another mistake. I was excited to test this excellent sub woofer project out, a screw tilted while screwing it in, the bit slipped off and went into the speaker cone. Had it been paper and not Polypropylene it would have a hole in it. That stuff makes TOUGH speaker cones.
Look at the bottom of the woofer, there is the scratch instead of a hole. Ok, it works great, I love this build, a 1.3cf cab with a 3" diameter, x 4" Pringle can port. Got lucky on that one.

This woofer by the way, is a very tightly suspended one, not loose like most subs. A little inefficient but man it make some nice tight sub bass, perfect for a home stereo. It is a GRS10SW-4 10" 4ohm. The Goldwood Heavy Duty mid is not supposed to be connected (from an old experiment) , but works out pretty good for a bass amp mid, but be sure to cross it a good space from it's resonant freq or it honks, probably because it's a sealed back midrange.
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I figure or hope smaller speakers, like 10" have less weight and leverage and are less likely to be damaged by the magnet weight's force multiplied by leverage. Another good reason for those 4x10 cabs. Do worry about those non-neo 15's and 18's.
 
I once ordered a little AER combo from Musician's Friend. Shipped in its single layer lightweight corrugated box with double thickness corrugated pieces at the corners. All the way from Germany to MF to me. It arrived damaged. If it had been double boxed with thick corners it would have made it. It had a crunched lower corner. Back it went.
 
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I'm looking at a good deal from an internet music company but I saw a thing on TV that showed boxes in a shipping terminal. The boxes were rolling, tumbling, getting dropped, stacks piling up at the conveyor ends, and people who have picked up hundreds of boxes that day, just tossing it on another conveyor.
Then they said it is up to the shipper to anticipate this rough handling and pack accordingly.

The option is to take a less inviting price and get it local, handled mainly on skids or pallets, in a bundle and much better treated.

How well is that shipped cabinet or combo amp arriving ?

What cabinet, exactly?

I worked at FedEx as a courier in the late 90s and in a few cases was asked to help daily shippers design suitable packaging. Anything that couldn't readily survive at least a six foot drop onto concrete was deemed inadequate at that time IIRC. At the hubs I was in bigger items never went on the belts, where a much bigger occasional drop was at least a possibility. It's all about risk management, in other words what percentage of damaged items the shipper is willing to accept. My biggest daily shipper sent very fragile sailboards to some pretty sketchy "Third World" locations and very few items were damaged. So as usual, I think it just depends.
 
Just make sure they insure it, signature required and hold for pickup. In my crappy neighborhood, I still uncheck the signature required box ordering from sweetwater and have yet to have a problem with damage or theft. This time of year, 90% of the shipping "problems" have just got to be theft from the drop-off/delivery point.
 
Just make sure they insure it, signature required and hold for pickup. In my crappy neighborhood, I still uncheck the signature required box ordering from sweetwater and have yet to have a problem with damage or theft. This time of year, 90% of the shipping "problems" have just got to be theft from the drop-off/delivery point.

It's peak season right now, so lots of temp employees in the mix too. As with many couriers, that's how I got my foot in the door.
 
And all the dope heads wandering around need a Christmas gift for momma without cutting into their dope money :( Quick, easy pickin's are what they want. Residential deliveries are a good target, I'm sure. Lotsa easy pawn shop crack money to be made.
 
Has anyone received a speaker properly mounted in a cab that had a damaged frame (basket), yet the cab was not damaged?
Yep, got a Mackie Thump 15 in that had the most minor carton marks imaginable, no cabinet damage whatsoever, but the voice coil was scraping. Sent it back, got another one - and that time, the box had no visible damage, yet the bottom of the cabinet inside was broken (hole punched in with area of half a square foot, where the molded-in foot had obviously borne the brunt of a "drop to concrete floor from six feet" sort of impact. The drivers all worked FINE in that one! So...returned that and finally got one in unscathed. Third time lucky? Cheap Plastic cabinets - AND very cheap packing materials. Moral of story: No more shipments of Mackie for me!
 
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Here's an idea that I've used before without problems - take the speaker and have it very heavily shrink-wrapped to a palette. You'll need lots of shrink wrap - enough to cushion the speaker plus enough to keep it fastened to the palette.

There are no foolproof ways to ship anything, but this has worked three or four times for me.
 
You just never know. I once received an order of 6 server cabinets and the client had paid for "white glove service". The cabinets were to be rolled in, unpacked and set into place by a specialized shipping company. I saw the "white glove" crew run one of the cabinets into a cable tray, putting a big dent in the frame. Two of the other cabinets arrived with bent doors.

All you can do is hope for the best & inspect it before you sign that you have received it in good order.