build your own

[2dogsrunning]

I'm seriously considering building my own guitar cabs and I aim to make them mean as ****. I play for an experimental/progressive metal band and I feel like the ol' Marshall 1960 cabs are good, but they don't have the punch I hear in my head. I'm thinking about incorporating a 15" in the cab to give my seven-string that much more gravity and to have a Vader sound to it. I really haven't done much brainstorming, just a lot of daydreaming. Anyone got some advice?

[Ricochet~kun]

building your own CABNINTS? thats a new one. i say: go for it! ive heard of building guitars, but i want to know how this comes out =P
if i were you, i would buy speakers first, or google how they are build, and go from there

[GuitarBizarre]

You have to remember that using a bigger speaker won't necessarily make your sound good. It'll reproduce lower frequencies in greater amounts, but the larger the cone, the more you lose fine control over it, which may well hurt your midrange performance, which is where the guitars voice really is.

Make sure to tune the cab if you can. A cab that is too big will produce too much low end and you'll end up stepping all over the bass in a mix.

(BTW, As a note, I really can't stand it when people assume that more bass is the answer to all their problems. If you listen to any well produced record, you'll find that even heavy bands use a much more high and mid frequency based sound than you'd think, because too much bass from the guitars just turns everything into mud.)

[Ricochet~kun]

Originally Posted by GuitarBizarre

You have to remember that using a bigger speaker won't necessarily make your sound good. It'll reproduce lower frequencies in greater amounts, but the larger the cone, the more you lose fine control over it, which may well hurt your midrange performance, which is where the guitars voice really is.

Make sure to tune the cab if you can. A cab that is too big will produce too much low end and you'll end up stepping all over the bass in a mix.

(BTW, As a note, I really can't stand it when people assume that more bass is the answer to all their problems. If you listen to any well produced record, you'll find that even heavy bands use a much more high and mid frequency based sound than you'd think, because too much bass from the guitars just turns everything into mud.)

*writes all this down on notepad*
*loves advice from more skilled musicians*

[GuitarBizarre]

I suggest you try and listen to and seperate out the guitar tones from your favourite songs. Listen very carefully to exactly how much of the signal you're hearing is bass, how much of it is a single guitar track, and how much of it is actually one guitar part, double tracked.

You'll find yourself consistently surprised by one thing - Those huge meshuggah and Gojira-esque guitar sounds are very rarely as bassy as they sound in a mix, and they very rarely use as much gain on them as you'd think. Seperated out of the mix, they sound remarkably thin.

[Ricochet~kun]

rlly...? i never would have thought... that probably explains why i fail whenever i try to mix a track with guitar parts...

[GuitarBizarre]

Super heavy bands rely on the drums and bass following the guitar parts to create those huge sounds. Listen to the drumming on Gojira's 'The heaviest matter of the universe'

Hear how all the hits on the drums sync with the guitar part?

And where is the bass in that mix? Completely mixed with the guitar part.

[mr dave]

there are plenty of tutorials for building amp cabinets online. a simple google search will hook you up.

there are a few other electrical considerations that need to be addressed before you start working on a cab as well. mainly the impedance of the speakers vs. the ratio of volts and amperes in your amp. i just read an article on it and now my head hurts, good luck.

[2dogsrunning]

Yeah, I know what you mean regarding gain. I run through a TSL100 and have the gain set at 6. Just enough teeth to hurt, but it doesn't descend into mud. I have a fair understanding of mids and bass. I wouldn't go as far as to use 15"s exclusively in the cab, but I was considering maybe 3x12" & 1x15". Sounds like a crazy design. I'd like to go balls-out and hook it up with a rotary speaker at the bottom as well just as an option, but I don't have that kind of money, I'm sure. I'll be making at least 2 cabs because I'm the only guitarist in the band and I want to spread it full onstage.

[SATCHMO]

Originally Posted by 2dogsrunning

Yeah, I know what you mean regarding gain. I run through a TSL100 and have the gain set at 6. Just enough teeth to hurt, but it doesn't descend into mud. I have a fair understanding of mids and bass. I wouldn't go as far as to use 15"s exclusively in the cab, but I was considering maybe 3x12" & 1x15". Sounds like a crazy design. I'd like to go balls-out and hook it up with a rotary speaker at the bottom as well just as an option, but I don't have that kind of money, I'm sure. I'll be making at least 2 cabs because I'm the only guitarist in the band and I want to spread it full onstage.

15"s are gonna do nothing to improve your tone. Your low end is just gonna' bag out. I'd suggest a really good parametric EQ and a quality compressor. As for the rotaries. It's a hot idea but if your trying to actually get a legit cab stand in line behind the B3 players that want/need them. There's a company that makes a rack sized rotary that sounds really nice, can't remember who it is though.