Pine speaker cabs?

[justinhedrick]

A local guy is selling a 2x12 speaker cab made out of pine. How do those sound?

[Mr. Foxen]

Sound for guitar mostly comes from the speaker. thick enough pine is going to sound like any other cab, if its all flexible, you'll lose some of the sound from the resonances of the panels. For an equal stiffness, pine would have to be much thicker and heavier than ply. Upside to pine is being cheap and looking like furniture. Its not much of an upside and probably more a sign that whoever made it didn't bear much about sound in mind at all.

[VOLVO)))]

sound like a Sunn cab.

[Mr. Foxen]

Some Fender ones too.

[jibberish]

resonant wood will add resonance at its resonant frequency, which could get really really obnoxious. plywood has all those layers which screws up the consistent grain of regular wood. take a piece of firring strip and drop it on its end on some cement. it rings. take a thin firring strip sized piece of plywood and drop it on its end..it hits with a dull thud-crunch. regular wood is "ringy"   light wood is even ringier.    

furthermore, you have warping issues with changes in humidity or aging. plywood and composites have no dominant grain direction and thus no warp tendencies.

bottom line: lame material choice for functionality (IMO of course)

edit: also more fragile. pine breaks with the grain too. martial arts demonstrations are not done with plywood. no one could punch through plywood since it absorbs the impacts and spreads it out. you use 10" wide firring strips and they break like glass along the grain when you hit them sharply enough...actually you have to be careful not to drop those boards, they can break too..lol actually those breaking pine boards demos are ghey.  but this illustrates how fragile a "dropped" "thin walled" pine wood cabinet might be vs getting the corner crunched a bit dropping a plywood cab.

[Chovie D]

I like pine cabs in a combo with a small speaker. feels like the thing is shaking when you crank it.
fender tweeds.

[Mr. Foxen]

It probably is shaking, and making your valves and other components fail faster.

[justinhedrick]

here is the craigslist ad:
http://chambana.craigslist.org/msg/2986026773.html

i would be looking at the 3rd cab in the description. the "staggered" cab.

he said that it is made of 1" pine and everything is doweled together and braced.

[RacerX]

That's not Deputy Dog; it's Quickdraw McGraw.

[Mr. Foxen]

Ply baffle an open back pretty much renders the rest decoration. Heavy decoration.

[Hemisaurus]

Heavy pine

Looks nice enough, you'll have to scoop the EQ to get any bass from it, but hey. Cannabis Rex's are nice heavy cones.

[Chovie D]

It probably is shaking, and making your valves and other components fail faster.

it was good enough for Leo Fender and the best guitar amplifiers ever made.

[Hemisaurus]

It probably is shaking, and making your valves and other components fail faster.

it was good enough for Leo Fender and the best guitar amplifiers ever made.

See, this is the problem, Fender was a perfectionist, he was always improving his designs, and yet he had to deal with people telling him his peak was in the fifties. Fender was the Ford of the musical instrument world, he designed mass producable items for the average musician.

[VOLVO)))]

Did he make anything for shitty musicians? That's what I'm after...

[justinhedrick]

Heavy pine

Looks nice enough, you'll have to scoop the EQ to get any bass from it, but hey. Cannabis Rex's are nice heavy cones.

what if i closed the back completely? then it would probably sound tighter, right? he said that the dimensions are 24x24x11.

[Baltar]

Fuck for $125/cab, I'd be in & out that's guy's door like the Road Runner.  "Here's the $250, see ya later, meep-meep!".  I would definitely look into closing the backs up if you need a tighter bass response. But try before buy.

[RacerX]

For comparison:

http://www.americanmusical.com/Item--i-BUD-2X12-LIST

Pine is an extremely lightweight wood, so I don't get Mr. F's "heavy" argument.

Also, as Chovie points out, all the old Fender combos were pine.

Whether or not you want to try closing the back depends mostly upon the interior dimensions of the cab. It's gotta be at least large enough to accommodate the internal air movement. If that's too small, you could try a partially open backed design.

[Mr. Foxen]

Ply is stiffer, so for equal stiffness in panels, pine is heavier. Flexible panels make for frequency mess and resonance, damaging amps etc. As soon as you close the back of a cab, it goes from a frame to hold a speaker to a pressurised thing, and stiffness becomes a bigger deal. Best way to make cabs is thin ply and bracing. Thick ply is easier to make because bracing is labour intensive, but is lots heavier. Plain boards won't get the stiffness until too thick to actually use.

[Lumpy]

Fuck for $125/cab, I'd be in & out that's guy's door like the Road Runner.  "Here's the $250, see ya later, meep-meep!".  I would definitely look into closing the backs up if you need a tighter bass response. But try before buy.

New Cannabis Rex speakers sell for 95 dollars each, alone.

[Chovie D]

It probably is shaking, and making your valves and other components fail faster.

it was good enough for Leo Fender and the best guitar amplifiers ever made.

See, this is the problem, Fender was a perfectionist, he was always improving his designs, and yet he had to deal with people telling him his peak was in the fifties. Fender was the Ford of the musical instrument world, he designed mass producable items for the average musician.

Fender was like every other electronic "hi-fi" amplifier geek at the time...striving for more volume with LESS harmonic distortion. As he got better and better  at this his amps became less and less apealing to guitarists because guitarist LIKE Harmonic distortion. IM not sure he ever understood that or if he did he didnt care.

[Mr. Foxen]

He was rubbish at doing it with cabs though.

[Hemisaurus]

Here's the easy way, go try the cabs, problem solved.

[Baltar]

^^^^They look like decent cabs.

[justinhedrick]

i passed on that cab. if he has trouble selling the horizontal one i might bite on it for $100 or so.

I decided to upgrade some parts on one of my guitars (a peavey tele copy). grey primer body, all black hardware, single bridge pickup and black guard. should look nice.

[justinhedrick]

well, as luck would have it i sold an extra 2x15 i had lying around, so i am going to pick up the staggered cab hopefully later this week.