stevie

Interesting to know that which cab is better was actually irrelevant to your choice, Al. What mattered was which cab is lighter. We could have solved that one for you three years ago.

Tilting a cab (or raising it up) doesn't improve a cab's dispersion; it just allows the mid and high frequencies to be beamed in the direction of your ears. It's a fudge because, if you step to the side, those high frequencies disappear. When a cab has good dispersion, the sound remains the same no matter where you're listening from. For the audience too. A good PA cab can do it, but bass cabs usually fail. Which is why they're often tilted or raised.

Although there doesn't seem much point in fitting a tweeter and then switching it off (unless I'm missing something). Bear in mind that, despite its relatively low cost, this is a good quality HF unit and a class above what you find in most bass cabs. As far as I can tell, most players who switch tweeters off do so because they sound bad. This compression driver/horn combination sounds really nice

Very nice work, John. Don't discount the possibility of adding a tweeter later. It's definitely worth it even if your repertoire doesn't include slap. 😊

Sounds like a plan. What size of ports will fit on the baffle?

I reckon you have about 30 litres net. The tuning appears to be in the region of 80Hz, which is OK for a vocal cab or a guitar cab, but not good for bass. To make matters worse, as Downunderwonder correctly points out, the rear entrance to the ports is constrained. It looks like the designer didn't know what he was doing. If you block one of the ports and open up the rear of the remaining port, you'll have a fighting chance. That will probably tune the cab to around 60Hz. It's difficult to be accurate here because the proximity of the ports to the rear baffle affects the tuning. You might like to get hold of a Celestion 12BN-300S, which is claimed by many to be close to the EV you sold. No guarantees though.

I remarked in another thread about a year ago that I preferred the sound of the amp with the 240Hz cut - to about 9 o'clock if I remember rightly. So you're not alone.

Finally, a view of the front and rear of the cabinet. Builders can choose from a selection of feet, corners and handles from Blue Aran to finish the cab off.

And a photo showing the brace on the back of the baffle, which is simply glued on using three screws.

Here are a few more photos to help potential builders see what's what. The first is my port extension arrangement. This particular cardboard is ideal for the purpose because it entails going out and getting yourself a pack of beer.

Oh dear. Not sure what's happened but it doesn't sound good.

It's on the left, John. Each horizontal bar is 5 ohms. Minimum impedance is around 7 ohms.

I forgot to mention - gluing a piece of batten to the baffle just above the driver completely killed the 70Hz resonance, as can be seen from the impedance curve.

This should be the final piece of the puzzle from me. The port needs to be about 170mm long in total. So we have to add 50mm to the length of our standard 120mm port using one of the techniques mentioned above - unless you can think of another way of doing it. There may well be 4" ports that are longer than the one we're using. If there are, they'll certainly be more expensive. If you're not bothered about obtaining maximum output from this cab, stick with the tuning that the 120mm length gives you. It'll sound fine. But if there's any chance you might want to put the full 200 watts through it, be sure to add the extra two inches. For internal damping, I'd line the cabinet with your damping material of choice, keeping it away from the port. Felt is my favourite nowadays, but use whatever you happen to have (or repurpose an old duvet). I tested the cab with a variety of different recorded sources, including bass guitar (obviously) but also some recordings with voice. The cab is perfectly usable as a PA cab. The colouration between 2 and 3kHz is audible (on bass guitar also) but it doesn't jump out at you. It's a natural sound on voice and doesn't screech on female vocals like a lot of PA cabs do. Here's the impedance curve without any damping material in the cab. It's a very easy amplifier load. Even @agedhorse would nod in approval (nasty amplifier loads are his pet peeve).

No, @JohnDaBasswhen I said more expensive components, I meant a lot more expensive. Their identity will remain a mystery at least for the time being.😊

While I've been doing this, I've been working on another 10" system that uses more expensive components and a much more complex crossover. This is what you can do if money's no object. No smoothing, by the way.

And here's a photo of my chocolate block crossover. It should be screwed to a convenient place inside the cabinet. Two screws in the chocolate block and one screw in the inductor - they must be brass or stainless steel screws. Keep all leadout wires as short as possible - the ones on the resistor should be shorter but I left them for clarity. You can tape the whole lot together if you like. If you want to do a build without any soldering at all, you'll need to source three different sizes of connector because the 10" driver, HF driver and Speakon all use different sizes of crimp.

There's just enough room to fit some batten.

It's impossible to know whether the resonance is due to the narrowness of the wood between the main driver, horn and port or the thickness of the baffle - we're working with lightweight 12mm ply here. It could well be a combination of both. I did notice that the alternative 10" driver I tried, which has a thicker, cast aluminium chassis, reduced the severity of the resonance, although it didn't get rid of it. I'd guess that an 18mm birch ply baffle wouldn't have the same problem. When I did more in-depth panel resonance testing on the Basschat MkIII cab (which used 15mm poplar ply), I noticed that the baffle is by far the worst cuprit for undesireable resonances and that's why I always fit a figure-8 brace nowadays. But this is supposed to be an easy-build design. So I'm going to screw some batten to the back of the baffle and remeasure the impedance curve. If it's successful, I'll show you what the impedance of the system looks like.

The 70Hz resonance has been bugging me for a few days now, because it shouldn't be there and it's causing a noticeable dip in the frequency response at the same frequency. At first I thought it was an air leak and decided to seal all the battens on the back panel. It didn't make any difference. So I tried another driver and the resonance was still there. That ruled out the driver as the cause of the problem. It had to be the cabinet. To cut a long story short, I eventually discovered that the impedance blip (or resonance) was caused by vibration of the baffle. The solution - and I'm sure Phil will include this in his drawings - is to fit a brace across the front baffle above the driver.

Here's the frequency response of the finished system with crossover.

The tuning with the standard port is in the upper 50s. The cab does works tuned to that frequency but power handling of the lowest frequencies is compromised. So I'd like to get it down to 50Hz - which means we need to lengthen the port. There are a couple of ways of doing it. The first is to buy a second port (at £1.27 or what ever not really a problem), cut it to the extra length needed, and use plastic glue (the stuff you use to glue plastic drainpipe) to glue the piece of port to the main one. Support with gaffa tape. The second way is to cut some cardboard (Cornflakes packet, for example) and tape it to the existing port to extend the length. Once I've tuned the system, I'll advise on the length of port needed.

Yes, that's about the size of it.