Accidental score!

[swarfrat]

Family gathering this weekend (huge family, birthdays get aggregated by month now). My oldest nephew is 20, now plays guitar better than I do, and is a gear hound. This kid is kinda like the guy that started with a paper clip and traded up to a house. I've seen more nice gear pass through this kid's finger's than I ever had. Anyway - he always has something he just bought, something he traded. This weekend he shows up with this cabinet: (sorry for the cell phone pic)

It's an MG cabinet, but when we cranked up the Carvin through it, Mean 90's into the carvin dimed  - it just totally rocked. The crazy thing was I just sold my fretless (finally! yay!) on the way over, so I had a couple hundred bucks of 1) guitar money, 2) from a bass I bnought when I was single. No arguin that one! (not that it helped any)

Bought the cab for $100 from his friend who owned it. Now I suppose when I rework my homebuilt it's going to need a White tolex marshall cabinet for the head. I had been planning to build either a 412 or 212 slant top in smallbox dimenions, but for $100 I can't buy lumber, tolex, grill cloth, etc... let alone speakers. And the speakers actually sounded good. I haven't comparison shopped them, but I just know that tone absolutely is a keeper.

 

[JCizzle]

Sounds like a gem of a find!

Man, I'll be lucky if I can bolt the neck on to my guitar body correctly, meanwhile you guys build amps and guitars. :binkybaby:

 

[Cagey]

Nice catch! Even if it didn't have a speaker in it, that would be a good cab to grab because as you say, you'd be hard-pressed to cobble up something that nice yourself at that price.

 

[swarfrat]

I wouldn't have  selected white, but i think i actually like it. its different without being whacked. Call me stupid, it's been a long time since I handled a 412 - but I just realized looking at relative to the combo that it's a 410.  I thought it was smaller than I remembered.  Still the sound. Oh just lovely tone.

its ironic but i just found that the best Mic placement for me was inside the back of the combo.

 

[Justinginn]

I've found that too. In fact, I like the sound of my combo way better from the back as opposed to the front. I'm thinking about building a cab with one or both of the speakers mounted backwards. I'll be putting a thread up with some of my ideas in the near future. It just sounds so much better this way.

I'm using a Celestion 30 in my combo by the way. I really don't like that speaker. Too colored for me. I'm a bigger fan of a cleaner, more full-range speaker. That might contribute some to why I like things so much better from the back. Still, I'm curious as to how much better things might sound if I built a cab with the speakers flipped.

 

[swarfrat]

Yeah - I tried mounting a gooseneck on a clamp, but I bought a 6" gooseneck and it's way too short and the clamp too cumbersome.  But with a sealed cabinet - I might consider permanently mounting my SM57 inside. Not in a hurry on that one, since it's still my only mic.

Mojo sells a smallbox head - which I THINK would fit the 410.  (It's 26"W, the cab 26.5").  They'll also do changes like white tolex (I need to make sure it's white and not cream though - I have male pattern blindness when it comes to color shades and names).  If they'll do me a JCM 800 50W chassis with 9 pin power tubes for  EL-84's, it's only three months slush fund.

 

[fdesalvo]

way cool grab!

 

[swarfrat]

Okay, so here's the plan.
JCM 800 with an 12W self split EL-84 power amp. That leaves me with a whole extra 12AX7 to figure out what to do with.  :evil4:
But I may just leave it out - I have the room, but I'm out of heater current unless I run the power tubes at 5V which I've considered doing anyway. (It's within 10% and it can greatly extend tube life).  I'm really interested in doing a self-split design though because of the 2nd harmonic increase when pushed.  The transformers are coming from my first tube amp I built in college 20 years ago.

Bought the chassis from someone over at the ax84 forums. Getting the faceplate from Ceriatone for the JCM800 on a Smallbox sized chassis faceplate.  Building the cabinet and doing the covering myself.  Still undecided about covering the head in ivory to match, or recovering the cabinet and doing it all in white white.  It won't be an 'authentic' smallbox cabinet though - I'm using 3/4" ply and black steel corners with the lip, and no rear faceplate. I bought the board and components some time ago (year or two).

 

[erogenousjones17]

About the backward cab thing: I read somewhere that a lot of AC/DC records were made by recording an amp that's dimed and facing the wall. :dontknow:

 

[swarfrat]

I didn't mean facing backwards. I was lamenting that I'd just found a workable mic placement - that was no longer available to me if using a closed back cabinet. Mic'ing an open back combo FROM the back, inside the cabinet.

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

That begs for an 60's LP Junior with a single P90 to be played sweetly through it.

 

[bagman67]

That begs for an 60's LP Junior with a single P90 to be played NASTY through it.

FTFY. HTH.  HAND.


-Bagman

 

[fdesalvo]

Tasty treats!  Make a hotswitch with one of one of those triodes or a tube driven fx loop.

 

[swarfrat]

Now that I'm home:

And yes, rude is more like it. I think I'm decided on white white now. The ivory doesn't show it (hmm perhaps a reason to keep it) but there's actually a pretty big chunk of tolex missing on the lower right front.

I know where to get knockoff logos, there's a bunch of places for that. But what about sources or methods for a custom plastic script? Undecided on that one - don't really have any ideas yet, other than this cartoon from Guitar Player circa 1986 with a wall of Marshmellow amps. Storm trooper head?  Nah.. this is too classy for whimsy.

Got my chassis and face plate ordered. Now to get my table saw back. Bwahahaha 12 watts of baddness in a halfstack.  I'm surprised at the cab, the clean tone is actually quite good - especially for a cabinet that does rude & raucous so well.

 

[swarfrat]

face plate left Anchorage this afternoon.  Of the three probably UPS flights leaving Anchorage at that time, it looks like it should be on UPS63, landing in Louisville about 12:20 tomorrow. Is there such a thing as information being too accessible or what?

Chassis should be going on the brake tomorrow.

And then it's all going to sit here for WEEKS, maybe a month while I try to get my project in on time at work.