I have a 1x12 cabinet that my dad and I (well mostly my dad) built together many (many) years ago.
It's made of 18 mm ply with all internal edges battened and all joints screwed and glued. That makes it pretty sturdy but there's no internal bracing and currently no damping except for some bituminised felt stuck to the back panel, for some obscure historical reason. Allowing for the speaker the volume is about 50 L and it has a slot port that tunes it to about 70 Hz.
It was always intended for bass but for some further obscure reason ended up with a Fane guitar speaker which is very loud but doesn't sound great. Driving it with a signal generator sine wave it feels like the back panel resonates a little bit at 55 and 110 Hz and it sounds like there's another slight resonance at about 300 Hz. One final bad choice is that I sprayed it with grey Hammerite without adequate priming, so it really needs properly refinishing too.
It's time to sort all this out and because the volume is close to the Basschat 12" design, and I reckon the full-range 'hi-fi' approach works for me, my current plan is to:
block the slot port by gluing in an 18x18mm softwood strip and fit a 125mm tube port instead as per the Basschat design
sand it back to the wood and paint it with Tuff Cab
replace the existing handle with inset handles top and bottom, so it can easily be placed upright or sideways
line the inside with acoustic wadding
replace the Fane driver with either a Beyma SM212 or a Faital Pro 12PR320
probably, fit a P Audio PH-170 horn, Celestion compression driver and crossover as per the Basschat design
depending on cost, get a grille made to cover the whole front face.
Have I missed anything? Is it likely to be worthwhile trying to add any bracing and if so where? The back panel is glued, so the only access to the inside is through the driver hole...