Hey all speaker and cab gurus, can you take a look at this please and offer as much feedback as you like. I have thick skin, so it won’t hurt as long as it’s productive.
This is my first go at a bass guitar cab. I have experience designing and building cabs in car audio spl competitions 20 years ago, but that’s a totally different tuning animal. I have the construction tools and knowledge at hand.
Backstory on why I’m designing these cabs. I played bass for many years, then took a 10 year break. I’ve recently returned and packing heavy cabs and amps isn’t nearly as easy nor as fun as it used to be. My former and current gigging rig is a Traynor YBA200 with the matching 2x10, 1x15 all in one cab that weighs 85 pounds…. I play 4 string short scale basses tuned down a half step, so super low coverage isn’t needed from these cabs.
I’m looking to build something light, loud, and easy on the pocket for weekly rehearsals if nothing else. Would ultimately like to build 2 of these cabs, and power them with one of the 200ish watt Class D lunchbox heads like the BAM200, Gnome, Elf, etc
By making the cabs 8 ohm each it keeps power into one at roughly 100 watts, great for practice and small gigs. Adding the second 8 ohm cab brings the load down to 4ohm and the power up to 200 watts, hopefully enough to cover bar gigs and such.
In all honestly, if they sound good, and are loud enough to be heard on stage will probably gig with them and run a DI to front of house for bigger shows. Only bring out the big amp if and when needed.
I chose the MCM 55-2952 after chatting with @basscooker. Why? Because it has high sensitivity, good low end response, and it’s cheap. Did I mention it’s cheap? Like $50 for a pair of them shipped cheap.
I know you get what you pay for, but I also believe that with big name brands you are paying a lot for the marketing that’s made them a big name brand and not all that money goes to the product.
I’ve designed and modeled in a 1.8cuft ported box. Box will be made of 1/2” birch ply and measure 14” wide, 20” high, and 11.1” deep. Box is tuned to 50hz with a F3 of 65.8hz. For ports I went with 4 x 1.5” black ABS pipe at 6.69” long each. I went with multiple ports to keep the port velocities down.
Please see graphs below of modeled box and let me know what you think. Modeling was done with 100 watt input.
Also see speaker data sheet below.
Want to also thank @basscooker again for his help and talking to me over the last few days to get this rolling! It’s greatly appreciated.
This is my first go at a bass guitar cab. I have experience designing and building cabs in car audio spl competitions 20 years ago, but that’s a totally different tuning animal. I have the construction tools and knowledge at hand.
Backstory on why I’m designing these cabs. I played bass for many years, then took a 10 year break. I’ve recently returned and packing heavy cabs and amps isn’t nearly as easy nor as fun as it used to be. My former and current gigging rig is a Traynor YBA200 with the matching 2x10, 1x15 all in one cab that weighs 85 pounds…. I play 4 string short scale basses tuned down a half step, so super low coverage isn’t needed from these cabs.
I’m looking to build something light, loud, and easy on the pocket for weekly rehearsals if nothing else. Would ultimately like to build 2 of these cabs, and power them with one of the 200ish watt Class D lunchbox heads like the BAM200, Gnome, Elf, etc
By making the cabs 8 ohm each it keeps power into one at roughly 100 watts, great for practice and small gigs. Adding the second 8 ohm cab brings the load down to 4ohm and the power up to 200 watts, hopefully enough to cover bar gigs and such.
In all honestly, if they sound good, and are loud enough to be heard on stage will probably gig with them and run a DI to front of house for bigger shows. Only bring out the big amp if and when needed.
I chose the MCM 55-2952 after chatting with @basscooker. Why? Because it has high sensitivity, good low end response, and it’s cheap. Did I mention it’s cheap? Like $50 for a pair of them shipped cheap.
I know you get what you pay for, but I also believe that with big name brands you are paying a lot for the marketing that’s made them a big name brand and not all that money goes to the product.
I’ve designed and modeled in a 1.8cuft ported box. Box will be made of 1/2” birch ply and measure 14” wide, 20” high, and 11.1” deep. Box is tuned to 50hz with a F3 of 65.8hz. For ports I went with 4 x 1.5” black ABS pipe at 6.69” long each. I went with multiple ports to keep the port velocities down.
Please see graphs below of modeled box and let me know what you think. Modeling was done with 100 watt input.
Also see speaker data sheet below.
Want to also thank @basscooker again for his help and talking to me over the last few days to get this rolling! It’s greatly appreciated.
I am not intending to dissuade using this woofer, but these were my impressions of it. The bass response seemed decent in a 2cuft box. Addendum, I found some measured specs on another forum. The measured qts would work for open back cabs, probably need a 4x12 for any reasonable sensitivity though which defeats the purpose of a smaller lighter cab.