Cabinet for class D bass amp
Posted 10th June 2013 at 07:54 PM by mlise
As seen in the D2 amplifier posting, I had built a pretty normal 4X10 cabinet with Eminence Beta10A's. I was talking to Ron Wickersham up at Alembic, and he suggested an idea he had. Make the cabinets shallow enough that the back pole pieces of the speakers were against the back of the cabinet and vent them outside. Sealed back drivers are problematic in bass amps because they overheat and the coil resistance either goes way up and the sound wimps out, or the coils outright melt. The Beta 10A's are vented and I've even gotten them up to where you can smell the varnish burning off the coils.
Flattening out the cabinet made it quite large. 32" square and only 4" deep.
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/galle...665/Waffle.JPG
The frame around the outside is oak, but the front and back are only 1/8" masonite. To firm it up, there are masonite braces front to back radiating from each speaker into the corners and edges of each enclosure. There's a wooden ring glued to the back of the driver and the back is screwed to that. The cabinet ended up being amazingly solid. No rattles or flexing at all even with 900 watts going through it.
I brought the prototype up to Alembic to show off. I've chatted with them in the past about an Alembic bass amp.
Alembic - Fine handcrafted basses and guitars
Ron was clearly startled by how good it sounded. I'm sure he would have taken time to listen to whatever I brought, but I wasn't going to bring up something that was lame. We set it up with an F1 preamp and an ELF processor, 2 speakers on the normal and 2 speakers on the ELF channel. It could probably be 1 and 3 though. They have a few folks lined up to come in and give it a whirl.
Flattening out the cabinet made it quite large. 32" square and only 4" deep.
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/galle...665/Waffle.JPG
The frame around the outside is oak, but the front and back are only 1/8" masonite. To firm it up, there are masonite braces front to back radiating from each speaker into the corners and edges of each enclosure. There's a wooden ring glued to the back of the driver and the back is screwed to that. The cabinet ended up being amazingly solid. No rattles or flexing at all even with 900 watts going through it.
I brought the prototype up to Alembic to show off. I've chatted with them in the past about an Alembic bass amp.
Alembic - Fine handcrafted basses and guitars
Ron was clearly startled by how good it sounded. I'm sure he would have taken time to listen to whatever I brought, but I wasn't going to bring up something that was lame. We set it up with an F1 preamp and an ELF processor, 2 speakers on the normal and 2 speakers on the ELF channel. It could probably be 1 and 3 though. They have a few folks lined up to come in and give it a whirl.
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