Basschat easy-build lockdown cab project

[Phil Starr]

I like to dry assemble things before I glue them. I've made hundreds of cabs over the years but I still make stupid mistakes measuring once and cutting twice. If it's your first time then seeing exactly how things fit is a real confidence boost. If you look below you can see how the battens on the base leave a little square for the vertical batten to fit into.

Now you've come to glueing up. This construction technique is what makes this an easy build. If the panels are cut accurately and you have good right angles on the battens then the cab will be square. You really can't go wrong. Using screws with the glue means you don't have to clamp either. A single screwdriver is all you need. Any woodworking glue will do but white PVA is my favourite. It is stronger than wood, you can clean it up with a damp cloth, it's the cheapest and best of all it takes an hour to set, so if you make a mistake you could theoretically take the whole cab apart and start again.

OK, I have a leak in my shed roof apparently, hence the wet wood and the move to the kitchen. The photo above shows how the technique works. You can seethe glue lines where the screws have pulled the wood together and squeezed out the glue. If you get a nice straight line like this you've used enough glue so the cab will be airtight. Because you are screwing from the inside the screws can be left in place and there is no filling to do. The nice square pse batten is holding everything in place with good 90 degree angles whilst the glue dries. the less gluey lines have been wiped once, but need another wipe.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Phil Starr]

Don't stop at this point, go on and fix the other side and then the top. I assembled the whole cab in about 30 mins including the photos. You can be confident because if you make a mistake you can remove the screws and even wipe off the glue, though usually it just a matter of slackening the screws off a turn and tapping the panels into place if they aren't perfectly lined up. Once you reach this stage check all the panels are actually lined up or you will have a lot of sanding to do later. At this stage the cab is already pretty strong and stable and you can see in the pics that it is good and square without any clamping.

Now you can fit the last of the battens in place, Doing these four last makes sense as you have plenty of space to get to them. You can see that the batten in the picture below is a tiny bit short and there is a small gap on the left hand side, that will be sealed up with a bit of decorators filler later. Again you can see a nice full line of glue squeezed out showing that that joint will be airtight.

Finally either glue the back panel in place , you can either continue with the screws or just glue it in and put some weights on the panel with the cab face down, so long as you squeeze glue out all round the joint you'll have an airtight seal. At this point you have a cab.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Phil Starr]

I've pushed the baffle in place whilst i wait for all the glue to dry and I've gone over again with a damp sponge to remove excess glue. At this poing it's just a waiting game for the glue to dry. The instructions on the glue will tell you how long to wait/

 

Now to deal with the speaker and port cutouts. Measure twice and cut once. This is the photo I sent Stevie, I'd positioned the horn and port centrally to keep the structure strong but acoustically it is better to have the horn as close as possible to the bass speaker so you'll see we ended up moving it in the later pic.

Here you go, the cut outs for the smaller holes were done with a jig-saw. there's some discussion about blades earlier in the thread. I used a thin blade to cut the round port hole and then used it for the horn cut out which was wrong, It's hard to cut a straight hole with a thin blade and you can see it isn't as straight as I'd like. Fortunately the horn has a lip that will cover the wobbly cut. I've also rounded off the cabinet edges (I'll add more on finishing later)

So this is the final cab before fitting the speakers. It's had a single coat of Tuff Cab paint, which I strongly recommend. It's genuinely tough as well as Tuff and easy to apply, You can get a professional textured finish with the special rollers or a linen like effect with ordinary rollers.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Phil Starr]

Ok this is the crossover circuit. You can ignore the 1W power amp and I have no idea why there is an exclamation mark in the tweeter. We've kept the crossover as simple as possible, just a high pass filter to stop the bass reaching the tweeter. the Pulse bass driver rolls off naturally above 2kHz and the components are chosen so that the tweeter takes over at that point. they've been carefully chosen to match the two Celestion units we've used. Other drivers will roll off at different frequencies and at different rates and may be louder or quieter than the pair we chose so if you go and swap things it will almost certainly not work as well.

Keeping to just three components keeps the cost down and you don't even need to solder the crossover together.

 

 The speakers can also be connected without solder if you use crimp connectors. The wires are going out of the port because at this stage Stevie was still designing the crossover so it started life outside the box to enable modifications to be made without removing the baffle every time. Notice the blob of red on the wires. Speakers have a plus end and minus and must be connected the right way round. They will be marked with either a plus sign or a red blob on the speaker. The plus is connected to the tip of a jack or the +1 on a Speakon.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Phil Starr]

These are the measurements Stevie made with the crossover sorted. the bottom graph is the one to look at. It's very flat across the frequency range with the dip showing where the crossover sits, around 2.3kHz. That dip is normal for most crossovers.

Edited June 2, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Phil Starr]

 

Hi Everyone, I hope you've now got pretty much everything you need to get building. It would be great if someone could use the instructions I've just put up and get back with questions. It's hard to know how much detail to put in and I'm bound to have missed a lot. When we've had a couple of builds and I've got the drawings back from RichardH I'll go on and put up a tidier version as a completely separate thread. All comments and suggestions welcome and though I don't promise to answer everything you tell me it will all be read and taken seriously.

Don't worry about the  previous three posts, I've dragged some of Stevie's pictures down to be added to when I get the cab back. I'll add some text too but later.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Phil Starr

[Chienmortbb]

I am no great one for pushing products but I have to say that Tuffcab is brilliant. I bought some vynyl to cover my After Eight and after trying a dry fit, decided the Tuffcab I already had was a better bet. How right I was. As Phil says it is really easy to apply and really is tough. I would never use anything else now on a roadworthy cabinet. In the event that it does get damaged (one of my cabs has done well over 100 gigs and still pristine) just reapply some tuffcab. It does cover well but as with any covering will show any gaps so be sure to fill them. I use some saw dust mixed in with the same wood glue that is used to glue the cabinet together. Tuff cab is supposed to stick over PVA wood glue but I seem to remember that @stevie had  some trouble on one cab. Including the sawdust gives a better chance of adhesion.

[stevie]

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.

[stevie]

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

[stevie]

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.

[naxos10]

Nice one Stevie👍

[Phil Starr]

And now the drawings, big thanks to @RichardH who did all the hard work, nb the port is 170mm and 100mm internal diameter. We hadn't settled on this when these drawings were made

BC 110 T.pdf

Edited May 20, 2021 by Phil Starr

[JohnDaBass]

***** Stingy old Skinflint ALERT********

As a Zoom B1 Four Fan boy I thought a small powered cab with the B1 Four would be ideal for the odd pub Jam & Open Mic nights down the Dog & Duck.  

I have been toying with the idea of building a powered 1X10 for a while, but the cost of Plate amps and ICE Power modules seems very expensive.  @Chienmortbb

As a @stevie   & @Phil Starr follower I have been waiting for the Basschat Easy Build 1 x 10 cab ever since @Stevie teased it last year. My personal bass tone does not demand any top end so I decided to use just the speaker.

So I started my Mini Combo.

The baffle dimensions were already fixed as I had salvaged a front grill off an old Carlsbro PA cab. So after buying a Peavey MiniMax from here I decided that I would go for an 8Ohm Celestion BN10-300X speaker as the MiniMax output was 300W at 8 Ohm and 500W at 4Ohm.

I played with WinISD to get the final dimensions and port length, and since I had a Roqsolid cover I tried to work within the covers dimensions so I did not need to buy a new cover. ( I told you I was Stingy)

I used @Phil Starr guidance to construct the cab and a spare length of 100mm sewer pipe for the port. As per the thread I used 12mm for the cab but 18mm for the baffle because it was a bit of a squeeze to get the Speaker & port in the 345mm X 375mm baffle so I wanted to be sure it was rigid enough. The cab ended up being 345 x 375 x 280 internal with a volume of 36.3 Lts, resulting in the port being 186mm long.

Here's the progress

 

 

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by JohnDaBass
spelling

[Phil Starr]

John, you got the MInimax then, I thought about buying it (I already have one but was looking for something to put into a combo). It went while I dithered. Well done, it was a great buy and good to see it has a good home. 

Ummmm that soil pipe looks .. well soiled really  the speaker should be well damped!

Good build, and good to salvage and use the grille, It's the bit of the build I never get round to doing and it will make the final combo look great. I hope it sounds great and if you wanted you could probably add Stevie's horn and crossover later. It isn't designed for that speaker but that means it won't be optimal not that it wouldn't work. 

Well done.

[JohnDaBass]

Thank you Phil for your kind words. The MiniMax was the  ideal solution, a lot lower cost than the ICE Power modules. It's a bit noisey but I hope I've calmed that down with the slotted sides to the amp cavity. The BN10-300X is a super light Neo speaker with specs close to the Pulse 10 that Stevie selected. I had a spare 100mm dia port but it was only 110mm long and I needed 186mm long so the soil pipe fitted the bill. It's been sanitised and once it's had quick spray no one will know that copious amounts of poo have been thro it. So it will be quite comfortable reproducing my poo bass lines😂😂. 

I'll update the thread as I progress with the build. 

[Chienmortbb]

I like the chicken head knobs on the Minimax (Mk1) the nice thinks about them aid there is no doubt as to where they are set.

The new Minimax MkII is £400+
 

Just to continue the sill pipe references, I hope it does not chuff too much. 

[stevie]

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. 😊

[EBS_freak]

28 minutes ago, stevie said:

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. 😊

+1.

There's a big misunderstanding that tweeters are only for tap and slap. Without them, there's a lot of harmonic content being lost! 

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, stevie said:

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. 😊

 

1 hour ago, EBS_freak said:

+1.

There's a big misunderstanding that tweeters are only for tap and slap. Without them, there's a lot of harmonic content being lost! 

And you've left room on the baffle

[JohnDaBass]

2 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

+1.

There's a big misunderstanding that tweeters are only for tap and slap. Without them, there's a lot of harmonic content being lost! 

Totally agree.

One of the best tones I had was in 1968 with my Selmer T'n B 50 through a Selmer 1 x 18 100w Goliath cab with my Gibson EB3. I can achieve a similar tone today with my two BF Super compacts and Mesa Subway D800 in one of my rock bands. Technology has moved on so much since 1968 and agree that tweeters add to the overall harmonic delivery of the bass guitar. The 40 to 2500 Hz frequency response of the BN-10 300X will probably be fine for me knowing that the combo's target use is down the Dog & Duck for causal Open Mic nights. I love the sound of my two DIY Beyma SM 12 Basschat Mk1 cabs in my function bands and the BF One10 that I use at home, the tone I like and enjoy is delivered in differing ways thro differing rigs. As already mentioned I still have the option of adding the tweeter if I discover I am missing something in the sound output of the combo. But Hey-Ho it's a Lockdown project so we're all allowed an ocean of flexibility.

[TPJ]

Can the tweeter be switchable (on/off)?

Edited March 22, 2021 by TPJ

[Phil Starr]

42 minutes ago, TPJ said:

Can the tweeter be switchable (on/off)?

of course, you just need a switch between the input and the crossover

[stevie]

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

[EBS_freak]

4 minutes ago, stevie said:

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

Or are told they don't need a tweeter... instead of listening to what their ears are telling them (or looking at the old gear that their heroes are using) and deciding for themselves!

[JohnDaBass]

A few hints.

For those amongst us who suffer with S.I.A.D.’s (Soldering Iron Anxiety Disorder) Blue Aran offer a fully built SpeakOn connector plate with screw terminals. It’s around £9 where the individual parts cost around £6.

If builders wish to achieve a pro look-alike finish, those with S.I.A.D. can practise their soldering iron technique burning holes & scrolls into cheap Wilko roller sleeves. It’s great fun and a lot cheaper than buying the purpose made rollers.

 

The pattern I have used mimics a sort of leather Ostrich Skin finish. I generally apply with a brush and then use the roller to create the texture.

 

I like to use the large dia tall rubber feet on my cabs, mainly to keep the cab way off those wet rainy pavements and those beer wet floors down the Dog & Duck. As many have experienced from feet “popping off” cabs of some repute, it is difficult to achieve a decent means of securing wood screwed feet on light weight, thin wall cabs. So I try to fix the front feet through the base and into the baffle batten meaning at least 30mm of “ meat” to hold the wood screw.

To align the rear feet I add a glued off-cut to the inside of the cab to “beef” up the wall thickness to 24mm.

I tend to use the “filament” type speaker cabinet wadding which I staple to the internal battens, not forgetting to fit some to the rear of the baffle

 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by JohnDaBass
spelling