This one is pretty close to my all time favorite, the Cannabis Rex, from the same company.
Guitar amp/speaker are musical instruments in their own right, and there's no "scientific" way to calculate anything. Within your constraints, I think the best solution would be a open baffle (a sheet of wood) that you attach to your door. There's nothing below 80 Hz in a guitar, so no worries about the bass response.
Also, a transistor amp designed for Hifi is a bad idea: its tone will be flat and lifeless, unless you use some modelisation hard/software. I'm currently trying the Amplitube, it's surprisingly acceptable even on headphones, and there's a free version.
The thing about the guitar world is that we do not necessarily crave a flat response in the signal path. We also shave off the top and bottom of the frequency spectrum. Not unusual selecting coupling caps to start the roll off of the bass end fairly high up and having a 6 dB slope going down. As said, we do not play too nice with rules.
No, from what I read he´s comparing a Guitar speaker/cabinet (what you are building) to a Woofer/Subwoofer cabinet (what regular cabinet design software deals with) , absolutely opposite goals.
Those are not calculations but actual measurements, belong to a very representative Guitar speaker: Eminence Legend 12", and tons of guitar speakers have strikingly simoar curves.
Including the huge peak and de huge dip, just a few Hertz higher or lower.
Your WGS speaker curve will be very similar, except it will have a little less Bass, having a smaller diameter cone.
And the 1500Hz dip will probably be higher, say 1800 to 2000 Hz, it depends on a geometrical fact (distance between voice coil and cone edge) and appears in very thin, very underdamped and quite resonant Guitar cones.
Edge doping attenuates it but it seldom disappears.
For Guitar speakers? ... none.
They tell me nothing in the important mid/highs peaks which give Guitar speakers "voice" and too little at Guitar low frequencies.
or they suggest useless wardrobe sized cabinets.
EDIT: notice Zung´s contribution: the speaker he likes is slightly smoother but basically the same.
Difference comes in cannabis fiber (the long and strong fiber used in hemp cords) being added to cone pulp mix, which increases self-damping and less extreme peaks and dips.
Is one better than the other? Nope, just different "flavours", to each his own.
FWIW each cone factory has its own, jealously guarded cone pulp mix.
Plus "secret" proprietary ways to dry and press cones.
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When you talk about a vent, you mean the cutout on the front, right? I've been observing designs here that have a circular cutout and a very thin and long squared cutout. Which one would be better in this case? For some reason my intuition tells me that a long square cutout in the botton would work better here..
Yesss, this speaks to my personality so well..😀
Thank you for your input, this clears quite a bit of uncertainty. Correct me if im wrong, but if I understand it correctly - with this cabinet the WGS speaker would produce a more unique sound, boosting and cutting at the frequencies you mentioned.
On the other hand - if I chose a speaker with a lesser Q factor I could opt for a more standard guitar amp sound, correct?
If this is correct, I assume the best way for me to go to get the nicest sound is to build several cabinets with different drivers in each of them and then test them all out..
Yes, I understand that, but the tube approach, from what I understand, is far more complicated.. Also, it requires transformers and other electronics, that increase the weight of the device.. And I really want to keep the weight down as much as possible..
I will check out the software! Thank you so much, brother!
So like I mentioned in the comment above - a good way to actually know is to just buy several different drivers and build a cabinet for each of them and then listen.. And then pick the sound that I like..
... and more expensive.
That's why I prefer buying ready made cheap all tube combos. I'm very happy with my Pignose G60, good sound and reliable with some mods, but they don't make it anymore. Today, the Bugera looks pretty good and cheaper than what will cost you in parts, but I don't have any hands on experience with it.
I just thought the whole bottom of the box would be open. But I was just using the speaker as one option. I was hoping others would chime in. You are not doing things the normal way so usually a number of iterations are usually needed before a concrete plan can be formed.
To clarify: for Hi-Fi, the speaker itself is designed to have as flat a frequency response as possible EXCEPT down at its bass resonance, where there will be an inevitable fall-off in bass, and a corresponding mechanical "Q".
Therefore Hi-Fi speaker cabinet design is focussed mostly on working correctly in the bass region. At frequencies above that - midrange and treble - the cabinet can do almost nothing to affect the sound (there are relatively minor effects due to diffraction, etc, which are irrelevant to our discussion here.) The speaker is already flat everywhere except in the bass, so the cabinet is really only there to help the bass be even flatter and more extended.
For guitar, the speaker isn't designed to be even closer to flat-response. The speaker itself is designed to have a very strong midrange and treble EQ of its own - huge peaks and dips. This built-in EQ very strongly "colours" the sound of the guitar amp, and you have absolutely no control over it - it's built into the speaker, and doesn't change no matter what sort of cabinet you put the guitar speaker into.
As a result, there is not much to be gained by fussing with different cabinet types, ports, careful bass tuning, etc. Yes, you can make some slight changes in the bass sound, but much of the character of the sound from the speaker will be defined by those midrange/treble peaks and dips that you have no control over.
There is still another factor: these speakers are invariably designed to work with tube guitar amps, and those amps have high output impedance, and that changes the bass "Q" of the speaker substantially. Qts becomes much less relevant than it is in any Hi-Fi design.
"Nicest" is entirely subjective, so, unfortunately, yes...and it's a very expensive method!
Better, if you can, listen to other people's amps, find out what speaker is in the ones you like, and buy that/those for yourself.
Popular guitar speakers usually turn out to have been the ones used by famous guitarists of the past, and as a result, they are usually insanely expensive. WGS is one example of a company that copies the sound of some of these famous and expensive speakers, but without the famous brand name, their speakers cost much less.
-Gnobuddy
I think this idea of a thin but wide speaker, mounted on a door, is far enough from experience, but interesting enough, to warrant launching into some experimentation. ie, get a panel of ply, maybe full size, and mount a 12" speaker into a hole in it. Then try it different distances from a wall, and try blocking sides, not blocking sides to get a feel for tones. Hopefully get a feel for the important parameters in a jury-rigged, adjustable lash-up, and use what works to design a permanent version.
I will make a design with the whole bottom open and another with two round holes under the driver. I will share the drawings here for people to comment what they think.
Thanks for your input!
So you are saying that I should just pick one design for the cabinet and go with it and put more effort into picking a proper driver? Is the difference in sound that small that I should completely ignore different cabinet designs?
I have a transistor amp in mind.. From the engineering perspective I think thats just a matter of adding resistors in the circuit to even out the impedance of both the driver and the electronics. But how about sonically? Have you listened to transistor amps running these drivers? Is that terrible or decent? I know tubes distort more pleasantly and let through more signal before the sound is heavily distorted, but how noticeable is it between tube and transistor amps sound wise?
Thank you for your input! Any speaker you would reccomend trying out?
Thanks, John. Im stuck with how big the cutout should be in the cabinet.. any reccomendations? I will definitely do a closed design because thats just how it will work.. The only thing I can vary is the plywood thickness, plywood type (birch, pine, etc.), driver type, cutout size and type..
What plywood would be best for the cabinet? Or should I try several types to experiment with tone? Is stiff or soft better?
I also have a question about wiring: since the cabinet will be closed, how should I do the wiring? Should I cut a hole and then seal it or mount a sealed connector in the frame?
There´s a better way to do that, it´s called "mixed feedback" and VERY popular i Guitar transistor amplifiers.
Check a couple Guitar amp schematics and you´ll see it everywhere.
basically: adding a low value resistor (wirewound 0.1 or 0.2 ohm) between speaker "-" terminal and ground, so it acts as a current sense resistor.
Voltage from that point is mixed with standard voltage feedback taken from speaker "+" terminal and amplifier ends up having an output impedance similar to that of a tube amp.
Damping factor hovers around "1" and this produces a peak at resonance (perceived as fatter sound) and increased Treble response, perceived as bright and punchy, and exaggerating speaker "voice" .
Check, say, Peavey Bandit amp, although most Fender/Marshall/Crate/Laney/etc. amps use basically same trick.
Hundreds.
Quite decent.
In a nutshell: let your tub es clip if you wish, avoid clipping SS poweramps; if needed get your finished sound out of the preamp and let SS just drive speakers without adding clipping by themselves.