Cabinet

[Sleeckx]

HI,

I just bought a 65 Fender showman on ebay, and I need a cabinet.

I found these 3 vintage celestion greenbacks G12M ( still 20 watt) for 20 euro in a garage sale, the guy didn't know what he had!
Now I have 3 questions:

1)
I have a newer G12M (25 watt), I can use them together to builded a 412 cabinet right? and the power rating of the cabinet would be 85 watt right? which would be ideal, cause a showman is 85 watt
Or is there a reason a 25 watt speaker shouldn't be with 20 watt speakers cause the power would be divided unevenly or something?

2)
Does any one know where to buy a empty 412 cabinet that don't cost 50 euro/dollar less then a filled up cabinet?

3)
I could make one, I have the equipment. I would use plywood, wich is the best, right? But someone told that after a while your cabinet start to vibrate, cause the wood is still moving a bit cause it isn't dead. And that would a small disaster.

Any one who can help me with these 3 questions, or has any experience.

Thanks for reading any way.

[Franzoni]

Dunno about your friends advice...yep wood is always drying out but do you seriously think Fender or Marshall have wood drying out for amp cabs.....!!!!

I've never built a 4x12 but i did build some 1x12's out of pitch pine that work great...if your anyway handy a 4x12 wouldn't be hard....the main thing is to brace the insides well and use plenty of glue and screws........i think Tubetown in Germany do unloaded amp cabs but i'm not sure they do 4 x 12's....

No expert in the speaker dept but i reckon once all the speakers are the same impedence,that 5 watts won't make much difference.......Matchless made a 2x12 combo that had a 25 watt greenback and a Vintage 30 which is actually rated at 60 watts which was copied by a few different people since......

[Steam Abacus]

Hi Sleeckx

I can't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to make a great 4x12 yourself.

With the speakers, it's not the power handling that matters but the IMPEDANCE (i.e. 4, 8 or 16 ohms). The four speakers should ideally all be the same impedance. 4x12s usually use 16 ohm speakers (sometimes vintage speakers are marked 15 ohms but you can treat them as 16 without any worries). They would be wired as two pairs (in parallel) of two speakers in series. The two in series add up to 32 ohms. The two 32 ohm pairs in parallel add up to 16 ohms. (this explains it pretty well ..... ).

So your standard 4x12 is 16 ohms, a double stack would be two 16 ohm cabs in parallel which gives 8 ohms.
Just make sure your amp output is set to the correct value (or that you're plugged into the correct output sockets).

There's loads of info on the net about building cabs. Use decent ply, cut accurately, glue AND screw securely and you can't go far wrong.

[Steam Abacus]

Oh yes, forgot to say

The power handling would be 80W - the overall power would be shared between the four speakers equally (assuming they're all the same impedance) so at 80W the three 20W speakers would be fully loaded. The 25W would have a little headroom left, but if you ran any more power into the cab you'd be in danger of blowing the 20 watters (although Celestions are notoriously tough - but you don't want to risk it with vintage speakers )

[Sleeckx]

Yes, alright thank you all!

I know about the impedance of speaker (I just got my diplome 'electrician' & 'measurement and control techniques') I was just wondering if there where any things about the power ratings that I should be concerned about, that I didn't know cause indeed I don't wanna take a chance. But thanks anyway.

Another friend of mine who is a carpenter has a saw table(don't know if I translated that correctly) at work he can use for this so precise sawing won't be a problem.

By the way I did send an email to tube town about a month ago, but they won't be making any 412 cabs until atleast april again and they didn't wanna tell me a +/- price, so I'm not gonna wait for that.

Again thanks for the replies!

[Joya2Islam]