Some may recall that I built a 4 cu ft box for the Parts Express Titanic 12. It had very basic construction, my old flush trim router bit ate the edges and I always thought it was too boomy. And the black formica was same-'ole, same-'ole ugly.
Since then I discovered some alternative venting schemes on the P.E. site, I needed to create a good cabinet after the Twin Towers debacle and I was most of the way thru the Bill Martinelli School of Veneering.
So now I had 4" ABS with 3 7/8 I.D., a bunch of Parts Express damping panels, and another batch of Sweetgum veneer.
Doubled the baffle, braced the 2 sides, top and bottom, attached the damping to the same 4 panels and made the vent an astounding 17 1/2" long for an F3 of 17Hz! Oh yeah, I added spikes, too.
Fired up the "Fifth Element" and heard more detail in the explosions:) No, really, there seems to be more definition to the lower tones. The first cabinet played the lowest notes okay but the stuff below 30 Hz was just a thud. Thud is gone, each bang and boom is different one from another. Cleaner. Hard to describe, easy to hear. And listening to a soundtrack like "Live In Paris" it's still necessary to dial back the sub to -3dB but John Clayton's Bass is closer to having the 2 Delta's in the 10 cu ft box than a 'just a sub'. Especially on "I Don't Know Enough About You" when Clayton grabs that bow in the German style the really low harmonics reach out. There's also a closeup of him plucking the lowest string and that, what, Low E? is so clean and clear.
Wait, it gets better: I haven't fitted the spikes, yet! Sure enough, on my suspended Living Room floor, the spikes banished the sympathetic vibration thuds that aren't in the score and yielded even cleaner, deeper sub-harmonics. Sub-harmonics, what a great term!
All these construction details really made a difference.
More pix of the construction steps on my site:
Merry Pranks Website
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