GR Bass Natural Fibre

[Stub Mandrel]

OOOOOOH!!!!!!!

 

https://www.grbass.com/natural-fiber/

 

[gjones]

Natural fibre eh?

 

They'll be making them out of wood next........

 

🤔

[eude]

Or maybe wicker?

[Waddycall]

Looks like a dustbin

[JohnR]

I just wish they'd produce and ship the products they already have. I gave up waiting for a carbon 2x10 to become available.

[MOSCOWBASS]

9 hours ago, JohnR said:

I just wish they'd produce and ship the products they already have. I gave up waiting for a carbon 2x10 to become available.

Best cab I've owned in 47 years of playing. Sad you didn't get one. I similarly can't get a mesa d350 in the UK till at least sometime next year😥

Edited July 30, 2022 by MOSCOWBASS

[yorks5stringer]

Following the link, it appears they might be made of these which is handy for the garden....

[JohnR]

11 hours ago, MOSCOWBASS said:

Best cab I've owned in 47 years of playing. Sad you didn't get one. I similarly can't get a mesa d350 in the UK till at least sometime next year😥

I've previously owned a 410+ which was an amazing cab. I wanted to downsize and replace it with a 2x10.

[Niiranen]

I have bought the GR 212 slim 4 ohm .... And it's really a great speaker /keeper 😁

[Stub Mandrel]

22 hours ago, Niiranen said:

I have bought the GR 212 slim 4 ohm .... And it's really a great speaker /keeper 😁

 

Ditto.

[Phil Starr]

On 31/07/2022 at 09:40, yorks5stringer said:

Following the link, it appears they might be made of these which is handy for the garden....

It's potentially a great material, rigid and light. I've been eying up some of the bamboo laminates for a while as a potential cab material. Just need to find it as a sheet material, making a cab from Lidl's chopping boards has even been under consideration as a proof of concept.

[Chienmortbb]

11 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

It's potentially a great material, rigid and light. I've been eying up some of the bamboo laminates for a while as a potential cab material. Just need to find it as a sheet material, making a cab from Lidl's chopping boards has even been under consideration as a proof of concept.

Its also a sustainable wood/material, at least in its natural form. 

[Phil Starr]

8 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

Its also a sustainable wood/material, at least in its natural form. 

I need to get on and do some research. The fibres are used in some speaker cones but I’ve no idea how the bamboo is formed into sheets, they are really stable though even when wet..

[Phil Starr]

Interesting, so there are quite a range of differing bamboo laminates available. I haven't been able to discover the actual resin they use to bond the material but it is described as D3 which makes it shower proof but not fully waterproof and suggests it might be a PVA. In any case there is no problem with the release of formaldehydes when the boards are cut and shaped.

 

The density is 0.7 (where water is 1) that compares with many plywoods but is heavier than poplar ply. It is very rigid though so you should be able to get away with thinner boards. It is also much harder than most woods so should handle knocks much better. the downside is that it is much more expensive than most plies, An 8'x4' sheet of 12mm board is around £200, enough for two decent sized cabs.

[MichaelDean]

10 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

the downside is that it is much more expensive than most plies, An 8'x4' sheet of 12mm board is around £200, enough for two decent sized cabs.

Compared to about £115 for poplar ply in the same thickness (admiteddly from the first website I found), I don't think that is too bad for a more renewable material that is also FSC certified (at least from here it is). Yes, it's a 74% increase in the material cost, but that works out to be about £45 extra for a "decent" sized cab (I'm guessing two 12" cabs from a sheet that size?). It is also arguably a more attractive ply with a stain/oil finish and more hardwearing. Plus, if you can get away with it being thinner, and then making the cab lighter, that feels like a win all round to me for a small premium given the expected lifespan of a cab.

 

I'm not that far away, I'm almost tempted to say if you buy a sheet, I'll take the other half. Not sure how that would go down with my wife though! Still haven't made the cover for our consumer unit despite having all of the materials here... 😅

[Stevie H]

On 07/08/2022 at 10:30, Niiranen said:

I have bought the GR 212 slim 4 ohm .... And it's really a great speaker /keeper 😁

I’ve got one as well. I’ve had 3 Barefaced cabs over the years and this little thing wipes the floor with all of them. 

[agedhorse]

11 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

Compared to about £115 for poplar ply in the same thickness (admiteddly from the first website I found), I don't think that is too bad for a more renewable material that is also FSC certified (at least from here it is). Yes, it's a 74% increase in the material cost, but that works out to be about £45 extra for a "decent" sized cab (I'm guessing two 12" cabs from a sheet that size?). It is also arguably a more attractive ply with a stain/oil finish and more hardwearing. Plus, if you can get away with it being thinner, and then making the cab lighter, that feels like a win all round to me for a small premium given the expected lifespan of a cab.

 

I'm not that far away, I'm almost tempted to say if you buy a sheet, I'll take the other half. Not sure how that would go down with my wife though! Still haven't made the cover for our consumer unit despite having all of the materials here... 😅

To be clear, most Italian Poplar is FSC certified:

 

https://fsc.org/en/newsfeed/fsc-italy-publishes-national-forest-stewardship-standard

[Phil Starr]

12 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

Compared to about £115 for poplar ply in the same thickness (admiteddly from the first website I found), I don't think that is too bad for a more renewable material that is also FSC certified (at least from here it is). Yes, it's a 74% increase in the material cost, but that works out to be about £45 extra for a "decent" sized cab (I'm guessing two 12" cabs from a sheet that size?). It is also arguably a more attractive ply with a stain/oil finish and more hardwearing. Plus, if you can get away with it being thinner, and then making the cab lighter, that feels like a win all round to me for a small premium given the expected lifespan of a cab.

 

I'm not that far away, I'm almost tempted to say if you buy a sheet, I'll take the other half. Not sure how that would go down with my wife though! Still haven't made the cover for our consumer unit despite having all of the materials here... 😅

It's an interesting proposition. £100 a cab is expensive but for something high quality not completely prohibitive. Poplar worries me because it is soft and not too rigid so a harder material would be attractive. What I don't know about is workability and how it takes glue and finishes. You would still need some bracing and that tends to have a small glued surface so that might be an issue. If I do it there are people selling smaller panels on Ebay and I'd want to work with that first. I've also picked up a bamboo chopping board from Lidl. I'm going to make a cutlery drawer out of so it will be interesting to see how easy it is to work with

[agedhorse]

I've used a large amount (tens of thousands of board-feet) Italian Poplar (CNC grade mostly) for many years, haven't had any issues with softness or structural properties. 

Edited August 15, 2022 by agedhorse

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, agedhorse said:

To be clear, most Italian Poplar is FSC certified:

 

https://fsc.org/en/newsfeed/fsc-italy-publishes-national-forest-stewardship-standard

It's so hard to be certain of the lifetime environmental cost of any timber products. US and European standards are pretty good and reasonably well controlled, though conservatives both sides of the Atlantic have cut back funding for inspection and enforcement agencies. Italian Poplar is to be trusted I think but for us over here it is more complex. Most of our 'Baltic' birch is Russian and only the outer plies are birch. A lot of 'Poplar' is made in China and is cored with either Populus yunnanensis or Eucalyptus deglupta and faced with Eucalyptus grandis or other hardwoods that may be sourced from elsewhere in South Asia. If you are a manufacturer buying in bulk it's reasonably easy to track back your timber but it's harder if you are buying a single sheet from the local hardware store.

 

Bamboo looks to be a fantastic resource as it grows to maturity in 4 years or so and can be continuously harvested as the roots remain, a bit like the old coppicing system with hazel and chestnut, or more accurately like mowing very long grass. It will be interesting to see what they do with the waste (about 70%) what inputs are needed to maintain the growth and what problems large monocultures bring. I'm not cynical about this and almost any product made by photosynthesis has to be better than mining or manufacturing. I'm with you in recognising that FSC certified timber is already a 'green' material. I'm sceptical that some of the green hype over bamboo might be a little overdone. The devil is in the detail.

[agedhorse]

5 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

It's so hard to be certain of the lifetime environmental cost of any timber products. US and European standards are pretty good and reasonably well controlled, though conservatives both sides of the Atlantic have cut back funding for inspection and enforcement agencies. Italian Poplar is to be trusted I think but for us over here it is more complex. Most of our 'Baltic' birch is Russian and only the outer plies are birch. A lot of 'Poplar' is made in China and is cored with either Populus yunnanensis or Eucalyptus deglupta and faced with Eucalyptus grandis or other hardwoods that may be sourced from elsewhere in South Asia. If you are a manufacturer buying in bulk it's reasonably easy to track back your timber but it's harder if you are buying a single sheet from the local hardware store.

 

Bamboo looks to be a fantastic resource as it grows to maturity in 4 years or so and can be continuously harvested as the roots remain, a bit like the old coppicing system with hazel and chestnut, or more accurately like mowing very long grass. It will be interesting to see what they do with the waste (about 70%) what inputs are needed to maintain the growth and what problems large monocultures bring. I'm not cynical about this and almost any product made by photosynthesis has to be better than mining or manufacturing. I'm with you in recognising that FSC certified timber is already a 'green' material. I'm sceptical that some of the green hype over bamboo might be a little overdone. The devil is in the detail.

Agreed. Due to our size, we obviously have a significant system in place to track both the source and composition of the woods used in cabinet construction, in many cases this is not true and you get what you get (buyer beware). We use so much of these products that it's also in our interest to be sure that we are receiving what we are paying for.

 

CNC grade materials have different composition tolerances, the core plies are more uniform and the face plies have a guaranteed minimum thickness. The plies are usually thinner and there are more of them too, resulting in less warp and twist. For high volume precision production, this is critical because the reference for the cutter is off of the top surface of the material and if the thickness varies, this affects the depths of dados and rabbits, plus any other joints (like lock-miters) the cabinet may employ. The cabinet shop can go through more than a hundred (4' x 8' equiv.) sheets of plywood in a single day, it's not practical to struggle with pieces that don't quite fit together. 

 

The advantage of CNC grades is uniformity (thickness, glue lines and lack of voids), the primary disadvantage is cost... but the end result is that it costs less to assemble and finish using CNC grade so in the end the cabinet is a much better product for not much more money. 

 

The accuracy for CNC parts milled in production is typically between +/- 1/64" and +/- 1/32" resulting in cabinets that have tight, square joints. As you can guess, for the finger joints used in some of our natural finish guitar cabinets, this is essential or the parts simply won't go together.

 

Here's an video that shows cabinet production:

 

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by agedhorse

[tauzero]

On 09/08/2022 at 22:50, Phil Starr said:

Bamboo looks to be a fantastic resource as it grows to maturity in 4 years or so and can be continuously harvested as the roots remain, a bit like the old coppicing system with hazel and chestnut, or more accurately like mowing very long grass. It will be interesting to see what they do with the waste (about 70%) 

 

Make bogroll with it. https://uk.whogivesacrap.org/

 

Very nice it is too.

[agedhorse]

I looked at the "Natural fiber" promotion and immediately thought what a good advert campaign this would make for a laxitive... combine with heavy bass guitar and things are guaranteed to move right along

[tauzero]

It's a bit irritating that they don't give an idea of the weight of whatever they'll be building. I assume it'll be heavier than CF but lighter than wood, but I could be wildly wrong.

[Chienmortbb]

6 hours ago, tauzero said:

It's a bit irritating that they don't give an idea of the weight of whatever they'll be building. I assume it'll be heavier than CF but lighter than wood, but I could be wildly wrong.

Bamboo sheet is quite heavy so unless the cabinet walls are thin then there will be a weight penalty. However it is very hard, so would take hard knocks.

 

it is also expensive compared to ply.