rubis

If you'd like a set of plans just give me the wink 😉

I've made a little bit more progress on this now. I'm hampered by the weather as I have limited room to work on this in the garage at the moment, and I'm having to do it outside, in between the customary Devon rain. Anyway, the cab is glued, I found that using the front fascia part to help square it up made things a lot easier, otherwise I might have been experimenting with a rhombus shaped cab. Not being a cabinet maker by trade, there was a bit of filling and sanding needed around the joints, but it's smooth now and all that will be hidden under the tolex later. The main thing is, it feels rigid, it looks about right and it's square! I also glued in the spacer bits, behind the front facia and the speaker mounting baffle glues in behind that next.

I've finally made a little bit of progress with this now. I'm afraid I got off to a false start with the sheet of plywood I had found lying around, it looked sound enough, but the damp Devon climate had done it no favours and when I began to cut it up, it was unusable! So I got a couple of sheets of new ply 1220x606 which fit perfectly into the back of a saloon car and left little wastage! I got started yesterday but I didn't get a chance to post the progress because me and the man cub went to the Pavillions to see The Pixies, who were brilliant, by the way! So, I did the speaker baffle first, need to do the spacer blocks and mounting bolts, and then grille cloth I have made the front facia thing, which is pretty much like a picture frame, it's busy gluing as we speak. My thinking behind doing that was, firstly it looked fairly easy to do, and most importantly, if I could get that fairly square, I could use it to help square up the sides of the cab when I glue it up. Then I cut the four sides, which are all the same size as this cab won't have the flip top arrangement. I don't have a dovetail jig, so I had intended to just do butt joints and add a square or triangular fillet strip to strengthen the joint, but then I found a clip on YouTube of this bloke who made a simple cheap jig for doing finger joints and thought it was exactly what I needed. Here's the clip Now, he used pine, both for the amp casing he made, and for the jig. I couldn't find 18mm pine, so I had to use MDF, and the cab is plywood, which had a tendency to split little bits of the surface layer with the router, but even so, I have to say, it worked rather well, and will make for a neater joint, I'm sure. Here's my MDF jig, not as tidy as pine and prone to splitting when the brackets were screwed on, but it did the job! I cut out the back panel and the inside baffle, which are just a couple of squares, and marked out the ports on the inside baffle. I hope to glue the sides of the cab together this week and, assuming it goes well, I will try to route out the port slots and speaker hole while the glue is curing.

Took my 13 year old son to see The Pixies last night in Plymouth, I've never seen them before, and really enjoyed it, riotous! He'd never seen crowd surfing before and thought it was wild! Great boys night out

How much does the scale length come into play, does 35" vs 34" make all the difference to the B string or could quality of construction negate any advantage? I'm interested in this debate as I have a partially built 5 string which will be 35" scale length, (I've never played or owned one before) and the only thing I have as a comparison is an Aria which is 34" and has a MM style pickup. This build will be getting a Nordstrand P5 pickup and I did wonder about pickup placement etc for 35" scale length? I also thought it might help flipping the pickup around like Yamaha and Sandberg do, so the lower string pole pieces are a fraction nearer the bridge? Didn't Yamaha come up with an elegant compromise with one of their 5 strings, where the B was 35" and the other 4 strings were 34", how did that work out in practice?

Bare Knuckles are well worth considering, my favourites

WOW, that's astonishing, thanks for posting this, I will be going over it a few more times yet!

Love the analogy stewblack! Amazingly,despite your avatar, I still believe every word you say about the Bass Centre instruments, used (live, at least) by Mark Bedford and other gliterati of the bass world, they must be as good as they say! Genuinely sorry to hear of your woes, RobF, I hope you get some satisfaction (didn't mean to be flippant, but I couldn't resist it), please post some pics and thoughts on your new bass when you get it, they look very appealing Good luck

Oh my giddy aunt, that's fabulous, I have a green 5420 which would be the perfect match for that, your guitarist owes it to you to get one, such a cool bass!

That's a beauty

Understated and very classy, what a lovely bass you have there

This idea started whilst on holiday a couple of weeks ago, with too much time on my hands to mull over new 'projects', and with easy access to alcohol and the internet, I decided I needed a B15, the perfect partner for the '64 style P bass I made recently. However, once again, without the spare cash to find and buy an original '64 Ampeg, I began to consider the alternatives, and in a bit of a deja-vu situation, the answer seemed to present itself. Last year, whilst on holiday I missed out on a great deal Kenny's Music had on the Ampeg PF20t and PF50t, basically because I dithered instead of snatching one, and they went out of stock by the time I got home and got my derrière in gear. So, this year when I noticed a similar offer on the PF20t from Gear4Music, I ordered one and delayed delivery till I got home. This will suit my needs perfectly, I have never had a valve bass amp before, it's low power, intended for home practice and recording and you can plug it directly into a recording interface, without a speaker connected. From what I read, the sound was reminiscent of a B15, and seemed to me to be the perfect alternative to shelling out on an original or a Heritage reissue, providing you can find one! Then I began to ponder on the idea of building a cab like the infamous 'double baffle' cab from the early B15 fliptop combo's. As you can imagine, there are a lot of references to the B15 on the internet, but surprisingly few people have properly documented any attempts at copying a cab or even restoring one, so getting anything more than the basic dimensions proved a bit tricky. I found exploded diagrams of the cab design and the baffles, and snippets of information from various sources, including an American company called Fliptop cabinets, who make reproduction cabs and restore original gear. I had a fair bit of the drawings I needed, and enough reference photo's to have a go at 'reverse engineering' a cab, which after all will not be a copy of a flip top, when up stepped the wonderful Chimike of this parish, with a kind offer of a complete set of plans for a B15N...…….result! Thanks again Mike So, this is what I have in mind. As I mentioned, I don't want or need the flip top arrangement on the top of the cab, this cab will be used for home practice and recording, so an authentic sounding and airtight cab will be better suited to my needs. The amp will be used a lot of the time, plugged into my recording interface and utilising the Two Notes cab sim, which has Ampeg models on it. This will also (hopefully) make the cab build easier or more straightforward, as I have never made a cab before. On the Fliptops website they offer an extension cab, which is pretty much exactly what I have in mind, with a solid top instead of the rotating tray thing, no wheels dolly on the bottom, and with a removable back for access to the speaker, but still retaining the characteristic double baffle design. I have a full sheet of 3/4" plywood, which is what the originals were made from, this has been in the cellar below the garage since we moved into our house 15 years ago, and it looks quite good quality and void free, just a bit dusty! I found a local seller on Ebay, selling an Eminence Delta 15a, which is the replacement speaker recommended by Fliptops for the cabs they make, which incidentally start at around $500 plus shipping and import tax, so, obviously are a non starter for me. The Eminence seemingly sounds the closest to the original speakers. Anyway, got the speaker for £10 (bargain) and if anyone can find a use for the metal speaker grille and port tubes that came with it, drop me a line and I will gladly post them to you, as I won't need them. The grille cloth and the checked tolex is available, albeit not in the UK (unless anyone knows better 😉) and this will be the most expensive part of this project, which so far has cost me £10 and a gallon of diesel! If anyone is interested, I will slowly keep you posted!

Thank you very kindly gents, thanks to the kind people and reactions on this very site, especially Chimike……………... .................I have the necessary information to make a start on the cab build, so keep an eye out for a thread in the build section, where I will be very pleased for any advice and guidance from those in the know.

Thanks Beer of the Bass Whilst I was on holiday I had time enough on my hands to look for info into the fabled double baffle cabs, and you are tight, there is a surprising lack of clear information on the dimensions, I couldn't really find any complete plans, for example, as you can for other cabs, but I did find a drawing for the front baffle with the port slots in, and enough other dimensions and information to have a crack at it. I have a sheet of 3/4" plywood, which has been lying around for years, so there's not going to be much cost involved. baffle.pdfbaffle.pdf

Hi RedVee this is more or less the sound I'm aiming for, hopefully with the right kind of cab and/or cab sim I can get close Looking forward to hours of aimless fiddling !

Treated myself to a new amp, my first valve bass amp, and very pleased I am too. I noticed it while on holiday, on Gear4music's website and they had 7 in stock at £375! I have wanted one of these for a while and missed out (last time we were on holiday!) when Kenny's Music were discounting them heavily, so I thought 'what the hell' It will be for home practice and recording, and will hopefully match up nicely with my home built P bass I have another project in mind...…..I am going to have a go at making a B15 style cab to match it, the early double baffle one, like this one which is a modern reproduction made by a company in the USA called FlipTops It's actually marketed as an extension cab, and as such doesn't have the flip top lid, which I wasn't interested in anyway, so it will be a removable back with the fabled double baffle design at the front. I have had a quick doodle with it plugged straight into an Audient interface and it sounded great, it should be lush with the 2 Notes Ampeg cab sim added. Very pleased, I have been missing out on the valve sound for years!

I once had a similar rig Stingray 5, an AH200-12 head with a 1x15 and the same 2x10 cab with the two little 5" drivers instead of a tweeter, what a nice, under rated cab it is, I liked it much better than any tweeter I have heard.

This is lush

Very business-like...……………...what a beautiful bass

Black and yellow? A sting bass? Sorry, sorry, very sorry This looks like another cracking project Jimothy……………...thank you for posting it

Oh yes, very nice idea I was a bit thrown by the staining at first, but I see what you are going for now! Some pics of the two necks would be nice, but I like a chunky neck, the fatter profile, the better, so I would go for the Allparts and just the single Wizard (which I understand are very good). Traditional, I know, but everyone needs an old school P bass in the toybox. Is that a gold anodised scratchplate as well? Hope it is, I have a real hankering lately, to make a maple necked '57ish P bass with an anodised scratchplate, I'm thinking of a yellowed out LPB or maybe one of the old metallic greens. Reading your thread will not be good for me!

Very sad, you're a good son and I hope that bass will remain special to you