rwillett

Just crunched the first 256 songs. The average year is 1983 (so far) The band with the most is Queen with 13, followed by Black Sabbath with 8 and AC/DC with 8 Rob

Yep, that could happen, but I've made so many mistakes, it would have to be a hell of a new blunder to find with the second cab

I'm listening to Planet Rock's top 500 songs of all time. Very interesting as some songs would be far higher up my top 500, Chuck Berry "Johhny B Goode" for one and whilst I like Halestorm, somewhat surprised it's in the top 500 at all. Led Zepp - No quarter is also way down the list. At the time of writing we're down to number 420 or so. I'm going to have a think and before Thursday predict my top 10. Not my top 10, but what I think will be the top 10. Rob

Gosh, I didn't know Zoe was married. Is he building a loudspeaker as well as me? I'll ask him for advice and see if he can help. She knows I'm building it, but rarely goes down in the cellar. We have a biomass boiler and the hopper has just been filled so even less likely to go down to check on pellets. Just down the last (hopefully) top coat using a cut down textured roller. It looks quite nice, but patchy when wet. I've cut the textured roller down to 2" from 4" to allow it to get between the various sacrificial parts. The Armacab dries very quickly so should be ready to look at this evening. I've learnt a lot about building a cabinet. Lots of things not to do when I build the second one. Rob

You can start with why my new replacement bathroom fan doesn't work if you want...

A colonial cousin possibly? Somebody from the family tree but deported around 200 years ago? He could also have moved to the "land of the brave and the free" (stop sniggering at the back) hoping his entrepreneurial talents would more appreciated. I was going to say you had misused the word 'precision' but realised that you are correct and it can wholly be used in this context.

Decided to bypass test's and simply mask the cabinet up in the kitchen. and paint it. As the CFO is out and it is still below freezing, I masked the cabinet up before painting. In hindsight this was a mistake, I grossly over estimated how thick the paint covering is. Whilst it's like tar in the tin, it spreads thinly and evenly. A simple mask rather than masking sacrificial parts would have been far quicker but you live and learn. Managed to get two smooth coats on the cab in the celler. The textured coat is last and I may get that on tonight. The red corners are sacrificial so don't care about them. The real ones will be attached using no nails as I didn't want screws showing. It's still wet in the photo Rob

@RhythmJunky When you've only got a hammer, everything looks like a nail But thanks for the kind words. You are not the first person to suggest either a 3d printed cabinet or a frame or bonding things together. The issue is partly around the maximum size I can print at once, a Prusa MK4 can do circa 250mm by 220mm by 200mm (vertically). Thats fairly standard for most decent printers. Getting larger than this starts to get expensive, so a 350mm x 350mm x 350mm from Prusa is a lot more money. Even that isn't quite big enough for an 8" cab. Going beyond that is even more money. I have looked at 500mm x 500mm x 500mm but they are very big frames, the heated bed is as big as you can go, and even then its patchy. I did enquire with RatRig in Portugal about making a 600x600x100mm printer but they weren't keen at all. Also plastic isn't really a dense material and isn't that suitable for cabinets. I'm definitely at the novice end of the scale here but people want to use MDF and Birch ply or even concrete for the cabinets to avoid ringing. Plastic isn't really suitable, certainly for the bass ports it seems fine and for edges of frames and amp mounts it's OK but I wouldn't think it that good in large scale use. Bonding has been discussed off-line, but I'm not convinced you'd gain anything over plywood. However if somebody has some clever ideas and wants to try, I'm happy to put some time into it. Not sure how much time and effort, but more than nothing and less than an infinite amount I would suspect a honeycomb in three dimensions might be interesting, but I'm not 100% sure how I'd design it and how to bind it. Rob

No snow today and the CFO is heading to York for the day leaving me as something called "the responsible parent". Given my eldest is severely hungover in a farm near Kirkby Lonsdale and my youngest is off to work, that leaves me and the dog. I might accidently have to check the cellar and see how warm it is and perhaps check the Armacab paint and see if its frozen, and if not frozen, and all OK, it seems a shame not to test out the paint on some surfaces using the smooth roller for two coats and then the textured roller for the third coat. I will need to build some of jig to hold it but I suspect a coat hanger or two might be just the ticket. Has anybody any experience of masking areas off? Rob

Happy new year all. I originally used black tape around the edges of the grill as there were little sharp bits, I did take the Dremel to them but I then ended up with silver bits on a black grill and I didn't fancy spraying it all to match so put the tape on. To be honest it looked like cr4p and I was never happy with it. The original split tubing around the original circular grill didn't look much better either, so I looked and looked for a better idea and didn't really find anything that I liked, so as per normal, if I can't find it, I look to make my own. So pulled out Fusion 360 and the digital callipers and tried to see if I design something, I wasn't sure how it would look. This is the Fusion 360 view and this is what it looks like close up. and far away I can't make the two long sides in one print as they are 376mm long and the maximum diagonal I can print is around 330mm so its in two pieces. I need to do small adjustments to minimise the gaps but I'll work on that. As its black on a black grille on top of a matt black baffle board, small gaps won't be noticeable. Somewhat surprisingly its a nice tight fit and the holes I was going to put in the back and put hot glue in aren't needed. However in the process of printing these, one version went wrong and I managed to destroy the Y-Axis belt on my Prusa MK4, which was a bit of a surprise, as the belts are supposed to be pretty indestructible. I have a box full of spares but guess what I don't have? Oh well, 5M of 6mm GT2 is on the way and should be here tomorrow but I then have to reprint some broken bits and retune the 3D printer. Thankfully I can use the other printer to make the spares (or I hope I can ) The temperature here is still so cold that I still haven't managed to get the Armacab on the sodding cabinet. We are forecasting snow tomorrow as well, which actually should be warmer than it is today. We got down to -4.5C.

I'm sure the Midlands Bash will be nearly as good. Don't put yourself down 😊

T'other half has a big birthday celebration Easter so very early April is now gone. The Midlands bass bash is June 20th. Sunday April 18th 2026 Sunday April 19th 2026 Saturday April 25th 2026 Sunday April 26th 2026 Saturday May 9th 2026 Sunday May 10th 2026 So last calls with what you can do or can't do. I'll check with the hall to see what is still available but.away tonight. Rob

Black insulating or gaffer tape with a pin prick in works. Also non white masking tape.

Also asking for a "friend"?

Personally speaking, I'd go for an eBay refund. You can spend a lot of time and money trying to get it to work or hacking something together. If you like the challenge, go for it, but you could easily lose 10-20 hours just trying to figure it out. I'm not demeaning your talents here but being realistic. I know what it's like as I love a technical challenge and waste too much time and money doing something that I shouldn't. I now price my own time up and add that to the costs. So if I think something might take 10 hours and I think my time is worth £20 per hour, is it worth me spending £200 to fix it? I make exceptions for learning activities, as I think that learning is always good. Learning not to do something is valuable as well. YMMV Rob