The Trash Can Cab

Making a silk purse out of bird in the bush gathers no moss

I recently ordered two 10" guitar speakers from Ted Weber . My idea was to build a small 2x10 cab to play around with the various low wattage amps I have been experimenting with. I started out designing a very traditional enclosure, but it really wasn't exciting me.

During a trip to the local crafts store, I spied a stack of unfinished wood trashcan/storage container boxes. They were in the shape of an truncated pyramid and had a lid and cut-outs for handles.

I realized that these cheap wood boxes would nicely fit a 10" speaker each. I bought two and headed home to the workshop.

So I had the rough idea, but it was time to rummage through my boxes of junk. I came across a set of shelf brackets from Ikea that I had never used. Nice metal ones, fairly heavy duty--holy crap these would make great lets.

After all, I wanted my enclosure to stand up off the floor a bit.

Plus the pyramid shape of the wood boxes meant that the speakers would face upwards by a slight angle. So I assembled the first batch of parts:

 

Ok, time to do some cutting, measuring and rough assembly. I was particularly happy with the way the shelf bracket legs angled out slightly

I wanted to be able to use my "tester" cab to experiment with different amps easily. I'm always searching for the right connector or using alligator clips. For this cab, I included a 1/4 mono jack, and a Radio Shack thingy that has both spring terminals and an RCA jack.

Of course, I'm going to need handles to lift this thing. 4 bucks a piece at the local hardware store in the Drawer Pulls section. These ones have 5" centers.

The length of the bottom of the shelf bracket legs was not enough to keep the cab stable (i.e. don't want it to tip over. So I used a couple of pieces of oak. I dug some old casters out of my junk box so I could roll the cab around in my basement studio.

Next I had to figure out how to attach the bottom cab to the top cab. I wanted some clearance between the two. I chose some long bolts, and three electrical tube connectors. Here's two views:

And its done! A very different take on the traditional guitar cab I hope. The overall project took about three days and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Howzit Sound?

It sounds pretty nice. I tried both open bottom and closed bottom designs, but ended up opting for closed-bottom because it augmented and tuned the bass very nicely. The handle cut-outs from the original wood box act as nice ports also. Since the speakers are brand new, I'll have to play them for a while to break them in (very stiff outof the box)