Wiseblood

Any of you mess around with an idea like this, now I know they have isolation cabs already. But have anyone of you ever rigged up a home-brew type contraption? What I mean is, we all know Marshall sound best when cranked, I was thinking of building something that would basically go over my cab that would be sound proof, I would have my amp cranked (but covered with this sound proof cab cover) then have my cab mic'd and then fed out and I can control the mic'd volume through separate speakers> I don't have recording experience so I know I'm missing a few steps there, but do you guys get what I mean, has anyone messed around with this type of thing? Or is it more of a re-inventing the wheel sort of thing to the isolation cabs.

There's countless posts about how to manipulate your amp to get the cranked sound without cranking, just thought this may help?

Marshall Amps

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Frankie

You're just reinventing the wheel because you're basically talking about an isolation cabinet. The best way to do what you're trying to do would be to use an attenuator as a load sim, then run the line out of the attenuator into a solid state amp. I used to do this with my hot plate and it worked pretty good, but there's still no substitution for a cranked Marshall. A lot of that tone we assume is from a cranked amp also comes from speakers crying for mercy, so without those you're missing half the equation.

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Wiseblood

Makes sense.

Kinda figured I was on that path of reinventing the wheel...

Enough of that then, thanks Frankie.

Frankie

No problem. I fixed my typos too.

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Papus

If you've got a proper brick or cement-lined underground wine cellar or a home garage with a proper pit or something like that then you're in business.
Put your cab down in the cellar, fill most of the void with mattresses and seal the crap out of the door/access flap.
Or you could dig and build your own isolation cellar.
It ain't worth trying to build an isolation box for a 4x12 - it would need to be 1 or 2 feet thick on all sides, solid concrete or some other dense material.

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TwinACStacks

What was that? I can't hear you my ears are still ringing...

TWIN

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j2112c

There is a thread on Will Wallners box he made for his 4x12. He recorded with it and the results were excellent. Check his site at Wallner Vain - google.

There are numerous home made isolation cab builds on You Tube. They also spear very effective.
You can make your own for no more than the cost of materials £130.
I was going to make one I would not go for the full size will went for as only one speaker is needed, I may yet when I have no winter project!

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John C

Wiseblood

Interesting stuff. I was thinking of something similar, I don't have the space, but essentially at the end of the day you just need to have a rehearsal space where the amp is cranked and a mixing room where the mic's feed into that you can lower the volume. So a professional (or semi professional) home studio is what is needed. There's an article I read, or it was a behind the scenes type video actually I think where I heard that James & Kirk (Metallica) have several amps up to 6 or 8 that are set up in various rooms with mic's, amp settings the way the need to be and just cranked, feeding into their mixing room so they can get various sounds they use instantly by simply powering the amps up...

j2112c

Simple to make.

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John C

ant_riv

+1000

I agree that a great deal of the tone we crave is the speaker "crying for mercy".

An isolation cabinet will allow you to torture the speaker and then mic it. That signal can be sent anywhere you like.

I think the only time you'd ever want more than one speaker (for your application) is if you were trying to capture ambient room sound also.

My preference for speakers is G12L-35 or G10L-35 speakers. When I use more efficient speakers, they maintain their clarity (head room) at louder volumes, and so I need to crank the amp louder to get the amount of speaker distortion I like.

I believe this is why so many people like the Vintage 30 speakers (earlier break up).

IMO, YMMV.

Wiseblood

Cool video man, thanks for sharing. Good tone for sure. So how is that cab built exactly?

Skotosynthesis

Here's how I solved the problem:
I rented a storage unit.
Humidity controlled, gated and key-coded, closed-circuit security cameras, double master-locked, a wall outlet and a lightbulb.
Just bring a floor fan and an ice chest.
$150 per month.
4 people in my band.
$37.50 per person, per month.
Dirt cheap. That's not even a tank of gas.
Sometimes I drive down there at 2am by myself, crank the stack to ten and wail at the moon.
Totally worth it!
A lot of other bands around here do the same thing.
Look into it.

j2112c

Simply buy a board of MDF, some acoustic foam and screw it all together, if you look on You Tube there are 3 part guides on how to make one... Infact I think the one I put up there was the final part three of a build. Some have the box, then foam block, then acoustic cone foam - they seem very effective.

Amp gets driven HARD, speaker gets driven HARD, no attenuation required and the output is great/controlable for recording or just everyday home playing.

You can buy them ready made by Randall and others but really it is so simple to do yourself (plus you choose what speaker you want) it is not worth buying one.

Find a mate who wants one and do a couple together with stuff from Home Depot one weekend.

I will make one this winter as a fun weekend project.

Good Luck.

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John C

Wiseblood

Appreciate the info, I'll check out those videos for sure.

Frankie

Basically what we do, and we pay the rent with gig money. It's cheap, we got a big ol' AC, little fridge for beers and whiskey, and since Pop is an electrician, enough power to power our amps. Sometimes I go down there too just to fire up my DSL, 2203, or 2204. I keep them all there since they're virtually useless at home.

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All4Tone

Basically, if you want to seriously attentuate the volume of a cranked 412, you need mass, lots of it too. Any type of isolation cube you build will help, but it has to have serious mass in order to be very effective. This goes for soundblocking of any kind. As someone already sort of mentioned, you'd need a hermetically sealed concrete bunker to really contain the sound, but that is a tad impractical.

If you build a cube with absorbent surfaces on the inside and thick walls of the heaviest plywood or MDF you can find, then add an internal layer of soundboard before the absorbent material, like Roxul Safe&Sound or an equivalent, you've done about all you can do without making up a concrete cast.

I've used a few people's ideas of an isolation chamber and in ALL cases, the recording was great, but what differs is the amount of attenuation outside the thing.

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