rwillett

Finally put all the bits together (minus the top coat) and plugged it all in. By some miracle, the dammed thing works, not only does it work, but it sounds really good and it's really loud, at least in my dining room The corners are held on with double sided tape as they are supposed to come off later The rest of it is screwed together properly. The Warwick is held on by my "patent pending" mounting system. As can be seen, my "roadie", the CFO, has demonstrated that the Warwick is indeed securely held. I actually tried it in all orientations and it's rock solid. It can also be mounted on the back, but those rails aren't on the cabinet yet. No fears whatsoever it's going to fall off at all. I plugged a Strat in first and it sounds fine, I'm sure a purist might argue it's not a full range speaker (and it's not), but it sounded fine to me. Next up was my headless bass and that sounded fine as well. I did wind the volume up a little bit then and it's bloody loud. No way could I play this at any volume in a small room. I'd certainly gig with both bass and guitar with this. At small volumes it's also fine. The Warwick needs to be setup for guitar or bass with the tone controls. but I have to say the speaker sounds really good. Far better than the Ampeg Rocket 108 to be honest, though it's got significantly more invested into it than the practise amp has. The little rack to the side is a home made one with a Behringher Centaur overdrive, a Mooer compressor and a EHX tuner. The overdrive is not for the bass though. Now to build the second one for a little more volume. Rob

As with many people, I have a load of 'rolls of stuff' that are a pain to keep on. e.g. copper tape or foam adhesive tape. Both comes on a cardboard roll but that has no sides and it falls out (or at least it does for me). So I had a think about it and have come up with this parameterised solution in Fusion 360. The nice bit is this reel comes apart and has a simple screw thread to screw together afterwards. As it's parameterised, everything is adjustable. So the above is 120mm for the reel size, the internal hub size is 75mm (which fits my copper tape rolls) and is 11mm between the reel sides. The copper tape is 10mm so a little bit of a gap. The screw thread automatically adjusts as well, which is great. Here's a larger version that just has the parameters changed. I'll try and upload the Fusion 360 file Rob

Yep that's what I'm going to do

And CPC have delivered some stuff. As Phil has already suggested, it neatly fits. The middle of the grille is raised (or the edges are lowered), I'll have a look and work out what to do here. Cut and flatten or flatten and cut? As the weather is miserable, no painting today.But I have worked out how to integrate the rubber feet into the corner clamps and to allow two of these cabs to be on top of each other. Not sure that's a sensible idea, but the option is there. Rob

Hi This belonged to my father-in-law. It's from 2014, runs Android 4.1 (ish) and works. It doesn't have the propriety power cable needed as it appears to have got lost in the house clearance. These are £4 from Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/TECHGEAR-Cable-Compatible-Samsung-Galaxy/dp/B00ADV2YM8 It has about 50% of the power on it and has been factory reset. No scratches and it's clean and tidy though it looks grubby in the pictures. Its not It comes with a box. This is not the latest and greatest Android tablet. It works and I think it can be upgraded to Android 5 and possibly further with custom ROM's. It might make a good media player or similar but I wouldn't expect it to be a viable alternative to a modern tablet. Happy to post for free and you will get it for Xmas (assuming Royal Mail works) Rob

I have a WO66 shortie which is really nice, quite easy to balance without hauling an EQ6 around. I also have a TMB 100m F8 APO. This needs an EQ6 at least and is a fabulous scope but is so large and heavy it never gets used as my two slipped discs immediately complain just looking at the scope. I know what you have done with the above, the really impressive bit (thought it's all impressive) is the cooling on the Canon (at least to me), that's really difficult to get just right. Everybody has gone Zwo, apart from me. Anyway back to the cab making. Rob

Thanks. Just noticed that one side looks like it's covered in white filler, it's not. I've filled and sanded, filled and sanded. Whilst the Armacab should hide imperfections, I'd rather not have to hide anything.

I do like that. A good old EQ6 and is that an 80mm cell? Looks like a Canon and a Zwo (?). What's the box on the Canon hidden behind the focuser? Looks like a peltier cooler or something similar. Interested to know why it's on the side, though must be a good reason. Rob

Good to know that there may be little smell. I also looked at speaker grills and spent a long time thinking through how to print one in four pieces and join it together using superglue, a special jig and all sorts of hard work until a rare bout of common sense broke out. Previously people had mentioned using an 18" speaker grill and cutting it down. I've just checked the sizes for this against the 8" speaker cab and of course when you lay it out, they were right and I was surprised (and wrong). The dashed straight lines show the inside of the 8" speaker cab, the large dashed circle is the cutaway for the Fane speaker and the small dashed circle is the port. The large solid circle is an 18" speaker grille and the smaller solid circle is a 300mm speaker grille. So the 18" speaker grille is pretty much a perfect fit, though it will need cutting down and flattening, though I can't see that being a major issue with a rubber hammer, a Dremel and a decent cutting wheel (or rather a few of them). For circa £10 per grille, this is a very cheap way to get a grille plus an hour or so of cutting. The other option is a small bit of rectangular hardboard with two large circles cut out with some speaker cloth which still might look nice. This is the speaker lightly sanded with some filler and the corners checked for fit. These will actually be glued on with "No Nail" rather than screwed. A little more sanding just to tidy up the front. You can just about see the t-nuts inside on the back for holding the Warwick Gnome on using slider rails. There are the same fittings on the top so the Warwick can be on the top or the back. There are holes on the side for grab handles. I don't use a strap for picking it up as I wanted the Warwick to have the option of top mounting as well as back mounting. Not sure I can paint it until I have worked out the speaker grille and how to fit it so I can easily take it on and off. I'm tending to think I mask off the corner piece areas before the Aracab goes on but would welcome thoughts.

You can do anodising in the garage , it is affected by cold weather but you need to heat the solutions up anyway, you do have high current and the chemicals aren't fantastic, TBH they aren't very good at all,, but decent space, power, fresh air, respirator and slightly loose lids on containers make it potentially doable outside in the garage. Not that I'm looking to try it (yet). Painting with these special tough paints, especially with a roller, seems less desirable. I have to confess to using some paints and stuff sometime ago that stank to high heaven, and for some reason t'CFO isn't keen to repeat the exercise. I have no sense of smell (lost it 2014) so I have no issues which is part of the problem, she can smell it and I can't. Rob

Stephen Thanks for this. Ambient temperature is around 7-8C, air moisture level is pretty much saturated as it's raining constantly such that flood warnings are in place and I am told Keswick Campsite is being evacuated which is a step into the unknown. Very little wind so air drying is probably not on. I do have a nice space heater courtesy of ScrewFix so may use that and see how it works. I suspect without artificial heat, we're into next year for painting Rob

That would look great. I did look at anodising some telescope parts years ago, the theory looks quite easy, its the practise that worries me...

Has anyone painted their cab with the Armacab from Penn-Elcom? Interested in the drying time, mins, hours, days or weeks? As it's 7-8c here, it could be a long time.

That does look good... Very tempting.... Spent an hour before torrential rain hit (again) Glue front and back panel Route the edges so there's a nice curve Nice 6mm routing bit makes this dead easy (as previously suggested) Solder speaker wire to the speaker Fill and sand any problems. Paint front baffle matt black. Take off side handles and rear speakon panel, and paint the wood matt black. I'll mask this area off before the Armacab goes on. Assemble, check all OK Check it all works. Wait for warm weather to do the Armacab. - July 2027?

I'd forgotten that one. Which language was that from?

There's some great ideas here. Lots of clever things to try which I would not have thought of.

Just looked at whether I could print a decent protective mesh. I could have done some clever measurements but I just plonked the speaker on the print plate. Its a fraction too big for a single print. A 300mm x 300mm printer would handle it, and would be easy to design for but I don't have one. Not sure if I want to glue two pieces together either Back to eBay and silly delivery prices, though as I need two grills I suppose that halves the delivery costs. Yes it's irrational 😁 Rob

I wonder if chicken wire would work? Pros: Cheap, little metal to space ratio, easy to work with. Cons: cheap, might look like crap, would bend easily. Probably better for keeping chickens in than protection. The round speaker grille is great but the delivery is the same price as the grille. 100% delivery costs feels wrong to me for some reason.

@Phil Starr Thanks for this. I'll work out how to mount the grill a few mm back from edges of the speaker cabinet. I should be able to get 15mm from the very front of the speaker to the grill. That's around 21mm from the cone. I'll look around for 10mm perforated aluminum and some acid etching primer.

The ^2 notation is nothing to do with imperial or metric but is a computer way of describing something to the power 2. So x^2 means x squared or x x x (which is really confusing) as we sometimes use x to mean times. We could also say x * x. Many computer languages use the ^ symbol as the notation for "to the power of" as you can't use a superscript as languages are based on the ASCII character set.

Thanks for the comments. So the Fane speaker is 11mm high from the front of the baffle. It has a maximum excursion of 5.5mm and I've just measured it and that maximum excursion is inside the 11mm rim around the outside of the speaker, so that's good. The outside edge of the speaker cabinet is about 27mm (or so), so that gives 16mm (or so) space for the grill (or cloth or whatever). Just looked up 10mm perforated aluminium and it's 1mm thick, so I have quite a lot of leeway for mounting it. It could 2-3mm inside the outer edge to stop it catching and that still leaves it 12mm or so away from the speaker. I think that answers the question as does @Chienmortbb's comprehensive reply on speaker cable width. I really, really wish we could throw away every non-metric measurement. 1.5mm^2 cable is easy to understand, a reverse sized number is just confusing. I am a child of the metric system (just). Rob

@Rosie C Thanks for this, I had a feeling it was just my latest dumb question in a long trail of them. Pleased its not only me

The weather here has slightly dropped off, however we have had reports of a bearded bloke collecting pairs of animals, and an awful lot of wood has gone missing. There seems to be some sort of structure being put up on the top of Ingleborough as well, no ones quite sure what's going on, but seems a dumb place to build a boat to me.... Anyway, I might get chance to do a bit more on the cab today after a week in London. I was thinking about a speaker grill and making sure I put some mounting points on, I rather like the metal grills that you can get on eBay. Is there a minium offset from the speaker that a metal grill must be, I look at the metal grill compared to speaker cloth and wonder does it either resonate or attenuate the sound. Clearly people use metal grills and they look great, but wondered if they need to be 10mm (or another minimum distance) from the speaker or the holes need to be a certain size, do you need rubber mounts on them to stop them vibrating? I can still put T-Nuts in if necessary for mounting points, even though the front and rear panels are now glued in, but I'd rather plan for it now than having to take it all apart again. Thoughts welcomed. Thanks Rob

Given the weather up here, we might come along so long as it's indoors...