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My first 1 x 10” cabinet build. I am using cheap pine shelving, 18 mm thick. I wanted to go for pine ply, but the only stuff I could find was warped shutterboard, heaven knows how one is supposed to use that junk at all. Ah, life in the Platteland. Cabinet outside dimensions about 450 mm wide, 350 mm high, 250 mm deep. This cabinet is a compromise between three amplifiers, a 15 Watt Solid state combo (with 8” speaker), a 15 Watt tube head, and a yet-to-be-built 5 Watt 5F1 amp. The 15 Watt tube head is supposed to get a 1 x 12” cabinet, later.

High-quality cabinetry - the basic box sides, screwed and glued.

Starting the baffle mounting frame. The baffle will tilt backwards a bit. Better than tilting the cabinet, without the hassles of adding a tilted amp support on top..

Expensive, high quality, custom voiced and rare driver of choice. This will be discussed in yet another thread.

Noice! Going in the newsletter ?

    8 days later

    Slow progress, but the baffle is cut and fitted, as well as the back. The routing of round holes need some refinement of technique. Better quality plywood might also help.

    Initial testing of the concept. A lot of work to go, deciding (and finding) grill cloth, shall I cover the rear holes, paint or varnish, or leave semi rough. The words "packing crate" comes to mind. Still has boomy bass in my bedroom.

    5 months later

    This project is not dead, yet, only slow. Lacking grill cloth, and using the cabinet, I decided to make up a cover to protect the speaker. The cover might as well go in permanently. I used some old hessian (I would like a cleaner weave...), and gave it a light coat of thinned down varnish to catch loose fibres. Looks OK to me.

    You may argue that the weave should be straight and so on.

    I also made a new back, did not like the four holes. This looks better to me. Cabinet might be a bit boomy, but then, I find that with all of them. Maybe too deep?

    I really should get to the belt sander and finish this.

    Nice.. looking good. Well done. Also like the second back cover better.. although the ohm sign came out all squiggly ?

      Squiggly?? Nah, It is an effort of artistic excellence. Yes, but it will be corrected when the final finish is done. I would love to have an engraved plate, but, no, I guess koki pen will have to do it. It is just there now to remind me to plug the cabinet into the correct (1 x 8 ohm) socket. The amp has a plethora of choices...

        Hi modulator, I'm not sure where you are based but I have a piece of cloth left over after I've replaced the grill cloth on my Marshall JTM60. You're welcome to have it if you like it, it's more than large enough for your purpose. Here is an image what it looks like, compared to the original. I'm in Randburg.

        Zorand That's very cool of you ?

        That refurb you did on the cloth looks great! Forgive though...I'm reading the marshall as marsnail ?

          I knew someone will notice immediately!!! It bugged me a lot as well so a friend of mine got me a new Marshall sign when he was ordering some stuff from the US. It's fixed and perfect now. The cloth grill and speaker were broken - someone had put a guitar through it or something.

          Anyway, it took me quite a while to find a good piece of material for the grill and if modulator doesn't want it, anyone is welcome to have it. It's 85x85cm.

          Zorand I knew someone will notice immediately!!

          Ahhh, I've been watching too much SpaceX/Nasa - Mars Snail is pace of getting to to the red planet!

          Bonus points for this...Marsha must be very attached to this cab!

            Nothing against Marsha but the Force (OCD) is strong today.

            • V8 replied to this.

              Zorand

              Thanks for the offer. I shall pass on this one. Seems like Marsha needs it more than I do?

              Paul

                10 months later

                This cabinet has been used mostly with my Ibanez TSA15H.

                I recently posted about finding a Celestion G12-35XC, which I forced into this cabinet, to hear if it will lead to desired tones. It will, but the 12” cabinet is still lines on paper.

                The Celestion Ten-Thirty is not bad, but not quite there yet. I ordered a Celestion 10 inch Greenback, as well as a G10 Vintage, and they arrived this weekend. Unfortunately, I am in the slow process of testing bias settings on my Marshall amp (long post on that to follow), so, patience will be required before I can start evaluating the new speakers.

                I might build a test baffle (s) to allow easy-to-swap front loading.

                  6 months later

                  Time goes by. I fitted the G10 Greenback, and found a “good” tone, but still a bit “dark”. I have always assigned the dark-ish tone to the amplifier, but I have been thinking a lot about the cabinet dimensions: The speaker sits slap bang in the center of the baffle. Apparently this should be avoided. The rear cut-out is centered as well, horizontally. And I was starting to suspect the cabinet is too deep, leading to “boom”. The G10 greenback has some nice chime to it, it really has potential.

                  But, that G12-35XC has been bugging me. I decided to make up a decent baffle for it, and offset the speaker a bit to one side. I took the existing ten inch baffle, and cut out a bigger hole for the twelve inch. I then increased the rear vent hole size by opening it up a bit to the other side, thus making the setup asymmetrical. I also cut off 30 mm from the rear of the cabinet, to reduce depth. I like what I hear. I have several hours’ testing on it with several guitars, and I really like the sparkle, the lack of boomy bass, the power (higher sensitivity). With the Tube Screamer engaged (“Overdrive” 12 o’clock, “Tone” 12 o’clock, “Level” between 9 and 10 o’clock), at bedroom-plus volumes (way loud), 15 Watt setting on the amplifier, amp volume at 3 o’clock, Ibanez Jem-Jr volume at 9, the dynamics are impressive.

                  Which leads back to the Jem-Jr mods I envisaged, I am not convinced the guitar will sound “better” with the pickups I plan to fit.

                  The idea to reduce the cabinet depth and force a twelve inch speaker into a ten inch cabinet is blamed on the Laney Cub 10. That amplifier has a ten inch speaker pressed into a small box with almost full open back (only the electronics part takes away some space). When I pluck up the courage, I want to fit the Celestion G10 Vintage in there, mainly due to the frequency response curve on the website. It starts off with a higher resonance frequency than the G10 Greenback and the Celestion ten-thirty, so, it might just have some “sparkle” and reduce low frequency excess. I would love to find the Tube Ten frequency response curve, however, to compare. I am going into this without info.

                  All this experimentation postpones the 12” cabinet build indefinately. The current setup is good. No reason to change. I found my speaker for this amplifier, for now. The 12 inch build might just be replaced by a phase two ten inch cabinet build, with the overall size just an inch or so less that this cabinet. Seeing as the existing ten inch baffle is no more, I unfortunately cannot yet A-B compare the two speakers (well, losts of speakers) to satisfy the quest for knowledge. If I do make a smaller ten inch cabinet, at least any baffle I make up for this cabinet in the interim, can be cut down to fit.

                  Now, some more tweaking on the stock INF Jem-Jr pickups, they are almost there… I really enjoy playing it.

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