stevie Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 (edited) This project was touched upon in another thread. We're designing a bass guitar speaker cab that literally anyone can build. Cabinet assembly is based on Phil's easy-build 12" cab, which some of you have already built. This time, we're going to show you how to build a compact bass cab that you can use at home or for smaller gigs. It uses a 10" driver plus a compression driver and horn. It will be designed to be as easy as possible to build. It will also be surprisingly inexpensive, considering that we're using good quality components. Those of you who built the BC112 Mk3 will know that Celestion were very supportive of the project. They are helping out again by providing engineering samples of the drivers. So, thanks once again to Aiden McFall, Celestion's European sales manager. And they've arrived. Edit: Drawings now added here as requested. Please note that you will need to fit an additional batten vertically between the cutouts for the horn and port. This is not shown in the drawing but proved to be needed after testing. BC 110T v1.2.pdf Edited June 20, 2023 by stevie 9 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnDaBass Posted February 5, 2021 Share Posted February 5, 2021 Looking forward to following this new adventure. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downunderwonder Posted February 6, 2021 Share Posted February 6, 2021 ''Engineering Sample'' = mates rates on the 'prototype' materials? Bloody good show. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Starr Posted February 6, 2021 Share Posted February 6, 2021 Looks like I'm going to have to make some sawdust. My wife will be pleased. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Woodwind Posted February 6, 2021 Share Posted February 6, 2021 Excellent, following this with interest. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie Posted February 6, 2021 Author Share Posted February 6, 2021 (edited) So what's the point, I hear you ask? Well, apart from keeping you busy in whatever spare time you may have, this project will give you the satisfaction of having made something useful with your own fair hands during this awful pandemic - because nothing beats plugging your instrument into a piece of equipment that you've built yourself. Well, not much anyway. The cab we're putting together will be small enough to use for practice at home. It will fit easily under the piano or in a spare corner of a room. And if you'd like it to be really spouse-friendly, paint it white or the same colour as the walls. It's an ideal cab for rehearsals or in your home studio - just paint it matt black and leave it where you plan to use it. No need to keep dragging your usual rig in there. If you'd like to use it on small gigs, paint it with Tuff Cab and fit some corners and feet and a handle. For bigger gigs, build a second one without the tweeter. The cosmetics and external appearance are completely in the hands of the builder. There are lots of options. Phil is building the cab we'll be working on in half-inch plywood, and that's obviously ideal, but I suggest using whatever you have to hand. If you have a sheet of chipboard or MDF in your garage, use that. You'll only need a few tools, which I'd expect most people have at home already. A jigsaw, some woodscrews, wood glue, screwdrivers, a soldering iron. If you haven't got a soldering iron, Lidl were selling one recently for under a tenner and may have some left. You can get one from Toolstation, Halfords, etc. for under ten pounds, too. Everyone should have a soldering iron. Edited February 6, 2021 by stevie 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewblack Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 Following with interest. I have a couple of 10 inchers just waiting for a home. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek99 Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 Have you considered a future in pron? 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie Posted February 7, 2021 Author Share Posted February 7, 2021 I do hope those last two posts are not going to set the tone for this thread. 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie Posted February 7, 2021 Author Share Posted February 7, 2021 On 05/02/2021 at 23:48, JohnDaBass said: Looking forward to following this new adventure. It's something of an adventure for us, too, John. When you start a project like this, you can never be 100% sure it will work out. Selecting and modelling components based on spec sheets is one thing, but it can prove trickier in practice. For example, sometimes the technical info supplied by the manufacturers is somewhat optimistic - or plain wrong. I recently received a high-end driver from a prestige manufacturer that had a 6dB half-octave dip in the frequency response that wasn't shown in the datasheet. My experience with Celestion has been that their spec sheets and info are accurate. But we'll see. Another unknown is matching compression drivers and horns. Some combinations simply don't work well together - sometimes even components from the same manufacturer. I chose the driver/horn combination based primarily on cost/value for money- so fingers crossed that it works out. The crossover is probably the biggest unknown. Some driver combinations can be made to work together with very simple crossover circuits, while others need more complex crossovers. As I'm aiming for a very simple crossover here, there's no room for extensive driver tailoring - so we need to start with drivers that are well behaved, which I hope these ones are. However, all will be revealed in due course. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek99 Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 On 07/02/2021 at 11:55, stevie said: I do hope those last two posts are not going to set the tone for this thread. 😁 You didn’t honestly expect me to let a comment about “ten-inchers lying about” to pass by, did you ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie Posted February 8, 2021 Author Share Posted February 8, 2021 Well somebody was bound to comment. You were just the first past the post.😊 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Geek99 Posted February 8, 2021 Share Posted February 8, 2021 49 minutes ago, stevie said: Well somebody was bound to comment. You were just the first past the post.😊 Always a bad thing in that kind of movie 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chienmortbb Posted February 10, 2021 Share Posted February 10, 2021 (edited) On 06/02/2021 at 00:34, Downunderwonder said: ''Engineering Sample'' = mates rates on the 'prototype' materials? Bloody good show. The amount of work needed to get the design from conception to finish, is considerable and getting test samples just makes things a little easier. Although this is a simple design, weeks of thought have already gone into refining the design and cabinet build to make it easy for us to build. Phil "the wood" Starr is already thinking about how to rationalise his easy cab build even more. Once that is done, there will doubtless be several iterations of measuring and refining the crossover before @Stevie "the coil" is happy. Edited February 10, 2021 by Chienmortbb 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beer of the Bass Posted February 10, 2021 Share Posted February 10, 2021 It's not something I have a need for at the moment, but a compact 1x10" with a properly done crossover and HF driver seems like it might make a very nice jazz gig-sized double bass cab. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie Posted February 13, 2021 Author Share Posted February 13, 2021 (edited) I believe Phil is making good progress with the cabinet, which will be our starting point, and I'm expecting to see the cab assembly details on here before too long. The 10" driver we'll be using is the Celestion Pulse 10. I gave it an hour of 30Hz sine wave in open air to soften the suspension, but my first efforts at measuring the Thiele Small parameters were thwarted by the cold weather. I've had the driver warming up in the house for a day and will try again later. Edited February 13, 2021 by stevie 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Starr Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 Here's the cab, corners and cutouts tomorrow. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downunderwonder Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 Nice looking plywood. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nilebodgers Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 Not exactly a cheap driver at £60 though? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Jack Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 I'd love to have a stab at this, but I suspect that some basic knowledge of electrickery will be involved, possibly even a soldering iron at some stage. A man's gotta know his limitations. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downunderwonder Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 2 minutes ago, nilebodgers said: Not exactly a cheap driver at £60 though? I think if you're going to go to all the trouble of making a cab you probably want it to be the best sounding cab it can be, without spending so much on the parts that you could just buy a GK. 60 squid seems reasonable enough. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downunderwonder Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 2 minutes ago, Happy Jack said: I'd love to have a stab at this, but I suspect that some basic knowledge of electrickery will be involved, possibly even a soldering iron at some stage. A man's gotta know his limitations. Soldering is only tricky if you don't know what you are doing and solder away making a mess until you kill it by fire or sucessfully join part A to part B. YouTube can teach you and then you wonder why you ever thought it was tricky. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy Jack Posted February 13, 2021 Share Posted February 13, 2021 4 minutes ago, Downunderwonder said: YouTube can teach you and then you wonder why you ever thought it was tricky. You've not seen me dealing with electrons, have you? Best keep it that way ... 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Downunderwonder Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 39 minutes ago, Happy Jack said: You've not seen me dealing with electrons, have you? Best keep it that way ... 😂 At school I was pretty hopeless in the workshop classes, ''all thumbs''. Later I did evening engineering shop classes as part of my degree and barely passed those too. It was only when thrust into working in an actual engineering workshop that I got a handle on paying attention to the little details that result in not making a hash of the job. Learning enought to solder a few wires is a thousand times easier than welding galvanised pipe with stick electrodes. Give it a go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul S Posted February 14, 2021 Share Posted February 14, 2021 9 hours ago, Downunderwonder said: solder away making a mess until you kill it by fire or sucessfully join part A to part B. You've seen me solder then? I have shaky hands that are getting worse (something called Essential Tremor, another story) and have decided to stop before I do some harm or burn the house down. 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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