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Post subject: Cab suggestions (sorry this is long)
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 8:51 am
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Aspiring Musician
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Hi Guys,

This question may be different than what you expected by the title, but bare with me. Back in the 70's my uncle and grandpa built a cab. The cab was built to the deminisions of a fender bassman acording to my uncle. At first it had 2 12" speakers and was used for guitar, but my uncle bought a 1974 fender twin reverb new in 74 and still has it to this day. It is in all stock original condition with the stock tubes and still works good to this day, as he does not play much the last 20-25 years. Anyway that is another story.

The cab was then given to my other uncle, who played bass. He took out the 12" speakers and put a JBL professional series 15". Where the top 12" speaker was, he filled the hole by glueing a piece of particle board over it. The 15" speaker is where the bottom 12" speaker was, and he just ported the hole to fit a 15" speaker. He gave me the cab, maybe 15 years ago. I used to mess with it a bit, as my guitar stuff sounded pretty good through the 15". Woofy but kinda cool.

Anyway, a few months ago, I decided to restore the old homemade "bassman" cab. THe first thing I did was remove the speaker board and began to remove the vintage cloth covering the speakers, which had faded, but not where the 12" speakers used to be, so you had two dark 12" circles in the cloth and it just smelled musty. So it had to go.

Well, I had to use needle nose pliers to remove the cloth tacks and when I was finished I forgot to take the needle nose pliers off the sound board, and they slid down the sound board when I picked it up to reinstall, and punctured the old 15" JBL speaker.

This is where things stand today. I am at a crossroads, I still want to restore this cab, but the project is going to be more involved and expensive than originally planned due to the speaker issue. The easy fix would be to either recone the old JBL or get a new 15" speaker???

My questions are:

1. Would I be better off making this into a guitar cab or bass cab. The thing stands about 4' tall and 2' wide...just a guess. I am a guitar player, but this may be a good starting point for a bass cab. The back of the cab does have a couple of maybe 4" round ports, which I never see on guitar cabs.

2. Would it be better as a 410, 2 12, or maybe a 15" and two 10" speaker?

3. Should I just recone the old 15' vintage JBL speaker or get a new 15" speaker?

4. Any ideas are welcome, and thanks in advance for reading this book and offering suggestions :oops:

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Post subject:
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 2:58 pm
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Professional Musician
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I would first repair the existing JBL 15" speaker to get an idea of how good the cab sounds for bass. You don't say how bad the puncture is but itf the voice coil on the speaker is still good, then I would fix the hole in the speaker wih just wood glue and paper and see how the cab sounds with the 15".
You are asking for a lot of work when you change out the speaker configuration in a cabinet and if its not done right, it won't sound good.
I would do some research before investing the cost of reconing or new speakers for this cab.

BC

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Post subject:
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 3:20 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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Thanks for the reply. I have heard it with bass, but the bass amp head I have for it is an old homemade amp. Apparently, these do it yourself electronic kits became very popular in the 60's and early 70's. But it sounds ok. Looking inside the old cab, I see my uncle used a lot of bracing and put caulk between all the joining parts. I am guessing he was getting some vibrational buzzing or something and fixed it.

I tried to fix the small hole, but the speaker is still distorting in some freqencies. You are right about changing the speaker config, but this cab has had that done before. But to do it again is going to require a new sound board. Marbe I should just try again to fix the speaker and recover the amp

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Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst


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Post subject:
Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 5:21 pm
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Rock Star
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Location: My Piece Of Red Dirt
Re-cone. Those old JBL D-130's are worth 300.00 + , when you can find them. I've got an old Dual Showman cab with two of them in it and they kick butt. 8) Mike

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Post subject:
Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 7:16 am
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Aspiring Musician
Aspiring Musician

Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2008 9:21 am
Posts: 527
This old JBL may have been a monitor speaker or something like that. It was not a dedicated bass speaker. But after further research, its appears that these speakers work great for bass, and some bass players even prefer them over dedicated bass speakers because of the extended frequency response.
It sounded surprizingly good with my guitar as well, when using my preamps. However, it could get muddy quick and the high end was rolled off. I guessing that is typical of any 15" speaker when playing guitar. For bass its very warm and vintage sounding. How stupid of me to forget those pliers :roll:

I just used glue to try to fix it before, I will try with paper and glue and see how it goes

_________________
Guitars:
1. mid 70's Ventura MIJ Gibson l6-s clone (Pre-lawsuit) in Black with Rosewood FB and EMG 81 BR/ 85 Neck
2. ESP KH2 Neck Thru
3. 2008 Am Std Strat in 3 tone sunburst


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