stevie

Maybe we should just keep it all in this thread in that case. When Pete was building his cab, we were in touch regularly by pm; we reached page seven in the end. Quite a lot of the information that was exchanged will be useful to other builders.

My experience with Plastikote goes back to a time when I was involved in speaker cab manufacturing. Grilles for all the models were normally powder coated. However, when we needed to produce a small batch of grilles in a hurry, we used to paint them with Hammerite or Plastikote black spray paint, which at the time were pretty much the same. Their formulations may have changed since then, and the Hammerite spray is now a lot more expensive, but the end result was indistinguishable from powder coating. That was painting straight onto bare mild steel. When I tried the Baufix spray on the Tuff Cab coating as I described earlier, it initially softened the paint, but then hardened up after a day or two. So I reckon that the Plastikote clear acrylic matt spray would be ideal but haven't tried it myself.

Sounds like a good idea to me. However, it would be good if we could have a private message thread where all current builders could ask for advice without boring the pants off the entire Basschat population. I think there is a maximum number of participants in any pm conversation, isn't there?

I tried out the clear matt spray and it worked fine. It takes the sheen off without changing the colour. I reckon the Plastikote one would be even better, as that's an acrylic paint, the same as the Tuff Cab.

Update: I now have all the cab kits and they look lovely! The Celestion compression drivers will be with me on Friday, by which time I should have some of the crossovers ready. Anyone wanting to collect is welcome to do so at the weekend. I'm going to start sending boxes of goodies out next Monday. It'll take me a few days to pack everybody's orders up. I just hope the local supermarkets and stores have enough spare cardboard boxes.

I really like the SM212 as well, but you save a couple of kgs with the Faital for not much more money. The Celestion 12 is another nicely designed speaker. It doesn't handle as much power as the first two but is cheaper and definitely a good choice.

Hi Hashmash, I'm organising two batches of ten cab kits. The first ten are all taken and are about to be delivered to their builders. The second batch will be available around the end of October. Some of these have already been reserved but there are still some left. If you'd like one, just send me a pm and I'll put you on the list. Stevie

Everyone on the waiting list for the first batch of cabs should now have received a pm from me with all the info re. payment and delivery. If you haven't received one, please let me know.

Sorted now. I think it's just necessary to wait for a while after you've sent eight near-identical messages.

Plenty, Aidan. A cab uses about half a litre, although you can apply more if you like.

The cabs kits have been machined and I plan to collect them early next week. Crossovers underway....

Yes, it's really neat!

I've sent eight messages to Basschatters with the same header. I need to send another two but I now see the message "XXX cannot receive messages" and cannot send any more. I assume this is some kind of spam/flood control in operation. What to do? Stevie

I've just uploaded a new Parts list with info on the grilles. Unfortunately, I've also noticed that tinypic has gone out of business, which means that we've lost lots of the photos from this thread. I'll try to upload the assembly photos as soon as I can, as I'm sure some people will want to refer to them during their builds.

I'm not sure steel wool is a great idea. As Luke says, a roughed-up surface is likely to attract dirt. I've been using gloss black paint on my grilles and then flattening the finish with clear lacquer. It's invisible, provides extra protection and takes away the shine to leave a satin matt finish. I used it on the grille I sent to funkle. This is the kind of thing: <https://www.toolstation.com/plastikote-quick-dry-clear-lacquer-spray-paint/p56142> - although there are lots of other companies making a similar thing. I used a Baufix satin lacquer from Lidl and have a bit left in the can. I'll try it out on the bottom of my cab and let you know how it works. The new 'pro' Tuff Cab is less shiny than the original stuff, but it's definitely not matt.

OK, everyone who has a kit on order should receive a pm about payment today.

That's the finish you get from the foam roller without trying too hard. (The badge looks great!) The shine on the bottom left is from the flash.

Best I can do right now, as the grille's not finished.

Flush mounting the handle is a nice idea but I think it looks best surface mounted because the edges are rounded rather than straight - you'd have an odd gap. I thought about fitting rear wheels and a retractable handle, but they cost the earth.

I hope you haven't spent your money, @stewblack because things are progressing more quickly than I'd expected. The cab kits are likely to be here early next week - probably before everything else is ready. If you can collect, you can probably have your kit next week if you don't mind waiting for the other bits and pieces.

But just wait till you see my grey one with the aluminium grille.......

That looks the business - and certainly outshines some commercially built cabs. "What, you built that yourself? You're kidding me!"🤩

On the question of a HPF on the GK, the measurements show that there is one but it's quite mild and is negated by the bass boost. It looks better with the tone controls set to optimally flat.

I'm not an expert on compressors, but as far as I can see, you need to set the compressor to catch and squash that initial transient.

This has been bugging me all weekend. There's no reason why the cone should have touched the driver on Pete's cab. There was a gap of 4mm between the driver frame and the grille, which means the speaker was moving 4mm beyond the frame. That's quite a lot of movement, to put it mildly. It's worth mentioning that exceeding xmax isn't necessarily a disaster, and exceeding xmax on transients is probably something we all experience regularly when we're playing loud. However, it shouldn't have happened in this instance because Pete says he wasn't playing at an outrageous volume. I can think of two possibilities, which are not mutually exclusive. The first is that sub-E-string frequencies were being sent to the cab. This is what Phil has suggested and it makes a lot of sense. The port has been designed to support the frequencies 40 to 80Hz, which is the bottom octave of the bass guitar. Below that, power handling reduces quickly, causing quite severe movement of the cone. The second possibility is that the amp's frequency response wasn't flat during the test. The specs on the GK amp review Pete posted mentioned +/-7bB. So I decided to take a look at the original review, which is here: <https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwj1n8-e-dTkAhWoRhUIHe0eCYMQFjAAegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbassgearmag.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F07%2FIssue8.pdf&usg=AOvVaw03uQIy_EsBJQP-iYWC1vxL> Go to p. 74. Unfortunately, the graphs are a bit pixellated, but I'd say that, with its controls at noon, the amp has a baked-in bass boost of about 4dB at 50Hz and a strongly rising treble (+7dB at 10kHz). That could also account for the excess treble Pete noticed. It looks suspiciously like a Trace Elliot "smile" in fact. Optimally flat settings for the amp are Contour off, Treble 10 o'clock, Bass 10 o'clock, Hi-mid one o'clock and Lo-mid one o'clock. Back to the grille. I found some 3mm foam strip in my workshop and have decided to use that instead of adding batten. As long as I don't fully compress the foam, it doesn't poke through the grille. That gives me an additional 3mm of clearance. If the cone hits the grille now, it will be doing so at twice xmax, which is plenty - and just 4mm short of xlim. Perhaps a warning that you're about to reach xlim isn't a bad idea. I'll alter the Parts List for the batten accordingly.