cbd Posted Sunday at 23:23 Share Posted Sunday at 23:23 Years ago I built a 2x6" cabinet with a pair of Faital 6FE100s, exactly the size of my largest pannier bag so I could cycle to gigs with it. It turned out, mostly by accident, to be a success, and more recently I've been using it a bunch for double bass gigs. However at ~8kg or so it's still quite a lot of stuff to carry alongside a big bass, and I'm often playing drumless so I never turn it up past halfway anyway. So after stumbling across @Phil Starr's micro cab design I thought I'd have a go at that to see if I could reduce the schlep even more - ideally for these gigs I could wheel the double bass in front of me with a normal-looking backpack with a cab in. However I've had to modify the design slightly as not many bags are actually cuboid shaped. Here's what I've got so far after a trip to Huws Gray for some of their 9mm poplar ply and a day in the garage: Next step - a baffle. 9 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hellzero Posted Monday at 10:14 Share Posted Monday at 10:14 Following with interest. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pete.young Posted Monday at 11:38 Share Posted Monday at 11:38 12 hours ago, cbd said: Years ago I built a 2x6" cabinet with a pair of Faital 6FE100s, exactly the size of my largest pannier bag so I could cycle to gigs with it. It turned out, mostly by accident, to be a success, and more recently I've been using it a bunch for double bass gigs. You cycle to double bass gigs? I use a golf bag trolley to wheel mine around and was thinking about modifying it so that it could attach to the seat post with a Tagalong-style joint. That's a build thread I'd like to see! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbd Posted Monday at 12:35 Author Share Posted Monday at 12:35 52 minutes ago, pete.young said: You cycle to double bass gigs? I use a golf bag trolley to wheel mine around and was thinking about modifying it so that it could attach to the seat post with a Tagalong-style joint. That's a build thread I'd like to see! Ah sadly my wife has forbidden that! Although I reckon some kind of trailer must be possible - I borrowed a friend's MIG welder for another project and it's given me all sorts of ideas... I built the 2x6 for electric bass originally, and when I started playing upright more seriously a couple of years ago it's come in handy, being lighter than a full size cab and not super subby which I don't need for upright. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbd Posted Monday at 21:45 Author Share Posted Monday at 21:45 Baffle cut out, and some ports added. I had some 40mm drain pipe left over from doing up my kitchen so I wanted to try and use those instead of buying a whole new 2.5m of guttering as used in the micro house jam. I've put the ports in the side rather than in the baffle. This is because I've bought another Faital 6FE100 as well as the Fane 6-100 and I'd like to be able to swap them out to compare. The issue here being that according to WinISD, the Faital needs much longer ports, so they wouldn't fit if I put them in the baffle! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbd Posted Monday at 21:53 Author Share Posted Monday at 21:53 I had a little play around with both speakers, trying out different port lengths as well. Some things I noticed: - I actually tried both speakers _without_ ports at all first. Super interesting - the Faital sounds quite bad in such a tiny unported box, but at least there's some bass coming out. The Fane 6-100 sounded _terrible_ in an unported box - imagine trying to play through one of those 5w guitar amps that come free with the guitar... - The difference after adding ports is insane - it seems completely impossible that drilling a hole and adding some old drainpipe would suddenly make it sound like a bass amp, but it actually works! - I played both speakers with upright and electric. The Fane has a really nice top end, especially with a P-bass. As promised in the House Jam Micro Cab thread, it has much more low end than you'd expect. But I think the Faital is slightly more full at the very lowest frequencies, and seems to take away some of the nasally-ness of the double bass piezo pickup. On both though there's an unusable amount of port noise. It's less bad with my BAM200, which seems to have a decent amount of high pass filtering going on, but with my GK MB200 it's pretty intolerable even for low volume noodling unless I use an HPF pedal or take most of the bass EQ out. That's not a criticism of Phil's design though - for starters I think my cab has ended up being slightly smaller, more like 8.5L internally rather than 10 - plus I was being lazy and used the wrong diameter pipe for the ports, which means I've got less cross-sectional area than if I was using 68mm downpipe. So next I'm going to fill in my old port holes and get some downpipe from screwfix. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaulThePlug Posted Monday at 21:56 Share Posted Monday at 21:56 Kick Backs... so sensible What sort of Watt? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cbd Posted Monday at 22:01 Author Share Posted Monday at 22:01 Both speakers I'm trying have ~100W average power handling. I'm planning to use this mostly with my TC BAM200 which claims to be 200W - but that's probably ambitious and into 4 ohms, so is probably unlikely to blow up the speaker Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PinkMohawk Posted 8 hours ago Share Posted 8 hours ago On 16/12/2024 at 21:53, cbd said: I had a little play around with both speakers, trying out different port lengths as well. Some things I noticed: - I actually tried both speakers _without_ ports at all first. Super interesting - the Faital sounds quite bad in such a tiny unported box, but at least there's some bass coming out. The Fane 6-100 sounded _terrible_ in an unported box - imagine trying to play through one of those 5w guitar amps that come free with the guitar... - The difference after adding ports is insane - it seems completely impossible that drilling a hole and adding some old drainpipe would suddenly make it sound like a bass amp, but it actually works! - I played both speakers with upright and electric. The Fane has a really nice top end, especially with a P-bass. As promised in the House Jam Micro Cab thread, it has much more low end than you'd expect. But I think the Faital is slightly more full at the very lowest frequencies, and seems to take away some of the nasally-ness of the double bass piezo pickup. On both though there's an unusable amount of port noise. It's less bad with my BAM200, which seems to have a decent amount of high pass filtering going on, but with my GK MB200 it's pretty intolerable even for low volume noodling unless I use an HPF pedal or take most of the bass EQ out. That's not a criticism of Phil's design though - for starters I think my cab has ended up being slightly smaller, more like 8.5L internally rather than 10 - plus I was being lazy and used the wrong diameter pipe for the ports, which means I've got less cross-sectional area than if I was using 68mm downpipe. So next I'm going to fill in my old port holes and get some downpipe from screwfix. Air flow is restricted on sharp edges, might be worth getting flares on the ends of the ports to help cut down some of that noise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnH89 Posted 6 hours ago Share Posted 6 hours ago I agree about the ports . Have a look here ... https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?browsemode=category&category=Hardware&masthead=Case_!amp!_Speaker_Parts&subheadnew=Tuning_Ports Not going to break the bank and I have used these on a few builds without any problems . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Starr Posted 4 hours ago Share Posted 4 hours ago On 16/12/2024 at 21:53, cbd said: On both though there's an unusable amount of port noise. I On 16/12/2024 at 22:01, cbd said: TC BAM200 which claims to be 200W Even the 68mm port is a bit on the small side. 75mm would be better. I use drainpipe because it's easy to get hold of and you can get hole saws to cut a 68mm hole. It's part of the easy build philosophy behind my BassChat designs and I think I mentioned this somewhere in the text. We did specify the Blue Aran ports early on but availability was so patchy people were pausing their builds so I went back to drainpipe. The micro amps are 130W into 8 ohms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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