Cabinet wood

[matchless]

Hello,

I am planning to build a combo cabinet for my 5E3 using Scott's excellent blueprints, which I found on this forum.

I would really like to use a pretty wood, like curly hard maple, and stain/varnish it. Poplar is my second choice, even though it's not as visually appealing. I would prefer not to use pine because it's so soft, even though I know it was used in the original Fenders.

For those of you who've done this - made a non-tweed covered cabinet - I have several questions:

What wood did you use, and are you happy with its looks, workability, durability, and tone?

Where did you buy it? (I can't seem to find any 10" wide hard maple where I live - poplar is easier). Is there a good online source?

How did you stain/varnish it?

If you were to do it over again, what would you do differently?

Thank you very much for your time.

-Lowell

[jaydawg]

Lowell, I've build a lot of 5e3 cabs off of scotts drawings. They are very well done and accuret. Just make sure you use a 1/2" roundover on the edges, thats the only error in the drawing.

You should be able to find the wood at any lumber yard that stocks hardwoods. You will need to glue up two pieces to get 10" boards. Just work slow and clean. Remember that any blowout or errors will show if you don't cover the cab.

[Daveg]

Originally Posted by matchless

Hello,

I am planning to build a combo cabinet for my 5E3 using Scott's excellent blueprints, which I found on this forum.

I would really like to use a pretty wood, like curly hard maple, and stain/varnish it. Poplar is my second choice, even though it's not as visually appealing. I would prefer not to use pine because it's so soft, even though I know it was used in the original Fenders.

For those of you who've done this - made a non-tweed covered cabinet - I have several questions:

What wood did you use, and are you happy with its looks, workability, durability, and tone?

Where did you buy it? (I can't seem to find any 10" wide hard maple where I live - poplar is easier). Is there a good online source?

How did you stain/varnish it?

If you were to do it over again, what would you do differently?

Thank you very much for your time.

-Lowell

I've built 5E3 cabinets out of cherry,maple,walnut,and cherry. All of them worked out fine. Cherry is probably my favorite. It's fairly light, but durable and it looks great. Mahogany is a little soft, but readily available in 10" and wider(as is cherry). My main amp is in a mahogany cabinet that has held up well and still looks good after 5 or 6 years. I prefer hardwood cabinets myself. A 5E3 cabinet is not real big, so no matter what you use weight shouldn't be an issue unless you use a real dense exotic hardwood. I'm a cabinetmaker so they're all available to me. Look around you area for small cabinet and furniture shops that might sell you enough out of stock or could order you some with their next delivery.Dave

[matchless]

Thank you for the replies; I'm very grateful. That's a great tip about checking with cabinet/furniture shops. I'll give it a try.

Daveg - could you discern any tonal differences between the woods you've used? I would imagine that it wouldn't make much difference in a closed back cab - but I'm still curious. I will definitely look into cherry.

Thanks again.

-Lowell

[Daveg]

Originally Posted by matchless

Thank you for the replies; I'm very grateful. That's a great tip about checking with cabinet/furniture shops. I'll give it a try.

Daveg - could you discern any tonal differences between the woods you've used? I would imagine that it wouldn't make much difference in a closed back cab - but I'm still curious. I will definitely look into cherry.

Thanks again.

-Lowell

None that I can definately attribute to the cabinet. The amps I have in them are all slightly different,(tubes,transformers,passive components) and they all have different speakers as well.

Here's a cherry one





Minwax makes a wipe on poly that works real well and is almost foolproof.

[Daveg]

Oh well, the picture didn't show up. Try this:
http://www.freewebs.com/daveg207/davegphotopost.htm

There's a picture of a cherry one at the bottom.

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

I used solid furniture grade cherry once.
Stained it with medium walnut Watco, followed by a couple lacquer sealer coats and a few satin finish lacquer coats.
It looked fantastic but it didn't sound as good as the cheap, uncovered pine cabinet sitting right next to it

[Daveg]

So I guess we're wasting our time building nice hardwood cabinets for our amps. Or covering our cheap pine cabinets with tweed or tolex for that matter.
I like pine cabinets as well. They look nice, and they sound great, but it's hard not to ding them up if you're even just throwing it into you back seat to go jam at a buddy's house.

[sportster4eva]

There's a variety of pine known as Southern Yellow Pine that is somewhat harder . It's used to do floors. I am unsure where someone would be able to get it though. Local home improvement superstores don't carry it, but lumberyards might. I like cherry and poplar too, as others have mentioned, mainly for their strength and appearance. Plus the fact that they don't warp as easily as pine does. I do my woodworking in a basement, and store the planks there as well. It's difficult to keep it dry enough down there, so I have to resort to using up valuable floor space keeping the boards flat, with weight on them to stop the warpage. Most of the time I only purchase enough to build what I need.

[Daveg]

You can probably get the southern yellow pine locally in the form of 1" thick stair treads. You'd likely pay dearly for them though and they'd probably be several narrow pieces glued up.
So, "sportsta4ever" It's about that time of year. Put the amps on the shelf and pull out my old Bonneville.

[Satamax]

Matchless, have you thought about curly ash?

[sportster4eva]

Originally Posted by Daveg

You can probably get the southern yellow pine locally in the form of 1" thick stair treads. You'd likely pay dearly for them though and they'd probably be several narrow pieces glued up.
So, "sportsta4ever" It's about that time of year. Put the amps on the shelf and pull out my old Bonneville.

You'd wind up with a parquet amp.. Could be an interesting look though.? Those stair treads are about $12-15 ea. around here. nah....
An old Bonny eh? excellent! I'm gonna try to find a way to ride and build amps. (not at the same time)
I rode to work this a.m. and it was cold. When i got to work it was a balmy 42 degress. The wind chill at 65mph is 9 deg. I have an hour ride to work. My right thumb wasn't happy at all.

[matchless]

Satamax - no, I've never heard of it. A friend of mine has a strat with an ash body - it's very nice. If memory serves me correct, it's quite heavy with a lot of high end sparkle. Have you any experience with it?

I know that pine will sound the best, but I would prefer something a bit more durable. I will be constructing the cab with my 82 year old grandfather (a master woodworker and retired engineer), and I want it to last a long time because I know he won't be around much longer. The cab will be something to remember him by, along with the time we spent building it.

That said, I'm not completely opposed to pine because I am a bit of a tone junky!

Has anyone used poplar? If so, what is you opinion of the finished product?

Thanks very much for all the informative replies.

[Daveg]

I think the biggest problem with poplar is that it's not real attractive. I make a lot of millwork and casework out of it when it's being painted. It's stable, it machines well, and you can get it in wide stock. I make speaker/amp cabinets out of it sometimes when it's getting tolexed. It's cheap too. It just doesn't look good with a natural finish.Dave

[sportster4eva]

Here's a poplar cabinet finished with amber shellac. First couple of coats were done with clear to seal it up, then the amber to hide the green tint of the wood.

[matchless]

sportster4eva - that looks very, very nice! I think poplar with amber might be the way to go!.

I'm very grateful for all the replies, guys. I'll post pictures in a few months when the cab is finished, and (most likely) more questions as problems creep up along the way.

Thanks,
Lowell

[Satamax]

Originally Posted by matchless

Satamax - no, I've never heard of it. A friend of mine has a strat with an ash body - it's very nice. If memory serves me correct, it's quite heavy with a lot of high end sparkle. Have you any experience with it?

Yep, this for example.



Bye.

Max.

[sportster4eva]

That's PRETTY!! I wouldn't have guessed that was ash.

[pbreyfogle]

Doug fir is kind of like pine and a fair bit harder. Anybody ever used it? Too glassy maybe?

[tbryanh]

Well, while were on the subject of wood.

I am finishing up my first cabinet project, an isolation cabinet.

It is 3' by 1.5' by 1.5', and has a baffle in the middle to hold the speaker. It has a microphone inside and a lid on the top.

I made it out of pine. The raw planks were about 3/4" thick, 9 1/2" wide, and 12' long.

I notice when I hit it with a hammer, it rings. If it was a PA cabinet, not a guitar cabinet, I might want to line the interior with egg-crate foam to try to get rid of the ring.

From this discussion, it sounds like the ringing sound can be desirable in a guitar speaker cabinet. Is this correct?

[scole]

thank you, im glad my drawings are being used, that was what i wanted.
heres a 5f4 done in red oak, it has a thick warm tone
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/scole90/...60762403469959
thanks again
scott cole
scott amplification
pitman nj

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

Is that a cathode biased 5F4?

[scole]

i guess that big cement block gave it away, its also wired for el34's

[scole]

heres the new link to my pics thanks to yahoo's new photo policy
http://www.flickr.com/gp/10451485@N02/4cwyfu

[justinbelshe]

Originally Posted by tbryanh

I notice when I hit it with a hammer, it rings. If it was a PA cabinet, not a guitar cabinet, I might want to line the interior with egg-crate foam to try to get rid of the ring.

From this discussion, it sounds like the ringing sound can be desirable in a guitar speaker cabinet. Is this correct?

It makes sense to me that an amp cab should be made from tonewood, which is why I'm going to try western red cedar on a project soon.

So where do I find these drawings, anyway?

[scole]

heres my page, scroll down on the left side youll see 5e3 cab drawings
http://home.att.net/~scole90/index.html

[justinbelshe]

Originally Posted by scole

heres my page, scroll down on the left side youll see 5e3 cab drawings
http://home.att.net/~scole90/index.html

Thanks, man!

[Marvino]

Hi Lowell,
Our Marvino Amps are all dovetailed hardwood cabs. We use a quality jig with (unfortunately expensive) quality router bits. We have used mesquite, walnut, both with poplar, red leaf and silver leaf maple. The best wood for width (11"), workability, lower cost, clean cutting, is the red or silver leaf maple.
We carefully dry fit all sides. Our joint tolerance is kept tight for an atractive rounded over appearance. It's best not to try glue up/final assembly alone.
If you are going to stain finish hardwood, don't sand any finer than 200 grit. If you over sand, various stains will penetrate wierd and irregular. We now use allinine dye for best stain appearance, followed with a liberal vinyl wash coat and begin applying pre-catalyzed laquer while the vinyl is still tacky. You need low humidity for spraying the pre-cat laquer. It dries quickly and just needs a fine scuff between coats, 3 to 4. You'll have a beautiful instrument cabinet to last generations. Our speaker cabs are of the "dipole type" a back with a "semi tuned opening" in the back. Experiment with a pience of plywood. With hardwood cabs, I have experimented and achieved great sound using thin close knap carpeting applied in the interior sides, top, bottom and back. Of course trimmed back from the back board cutout.
If you lay up hardwood pieces for the back, you may want to glue and brad stiffiner ribs vertical inside the back board, if SPL levels are high with your speakers.
"Your're amplifier is a musical instrument too!"
Best of luck,
Marvino

[pbreyfogle]

I just finished my first amp last month and I made the cab out of doug fir, which is a tonewood of sorts: A conifer, but stffer and brighter than spruce or cedar. Sounds great and is beautiful.

Also, nice quarter sawn fir is readily available as it is often used for trim in houses.

I put on a coat of amber shellac and then about three brushed on coats of Varythane. I didn't even bother sanding that but buffed it out.

See some pics @
http://instruments.breyfogle.org/Gallery/amps.html

[Satamax]

Nice one mate!

I wish i had a comb for doing finger and dovetail joints, but i don't despite my well equiped shop

[Marvino]

Marvino here, thanks for the message and photos! The 5E3 cab really looks nice, I like the amber wood tone with the black grill cloth contrast. I neglected to mention we use a Leigh jig for router cutting dovetails or straight fingers. The neat thing about this jig is you can adjust the size of the joint as well as the spacing of the joints and run both sides together. Look at leighjig.com. Cheers to all!

[pbreyfogle]

Yeah, the jig makes all the difference. It imparts a lot of respect for the folks doing it in the old days with a saw...

I have the basic Keller dovetail jig (http://www.kellerdovetail.com/ ); but before now I've done all right with just the plastic finger templates screwwed onto a 2x4 which then was clamped to the workpiece....

[pbreyfogle]

That's actually

http://www.leighjigs.com/

Thanks for the link.

[turbolx5oh]

Originally Posted by pbreyfogle

I just finished my first amp last month and I made the cab out of doug fir, which is a tonewood of sorts: A conifer, but stffer and brighter than spruce or cedar. Sounds great and is beautiful.

Also, nice quarter sawn fir is readily available as it is often used for trim in houses.

I put on a coat of amber shellac and then about three brushed on coats of Varythane. I didn't even bother sanding that but buffed it out.

See some pics @
http://instruments.breyfogle.org/Gallery/amps.html

How did you cut the rouded corners where the amp goes?

[Casey4s]

Originally Posted by turbolx5oh

How did you cut the rouded corners where the amp goes?

I would imagine with a Jig-Saw, that is how I usually do those kinds of cuts. If you have no jigsaw you can drill a hole in those corners and saw to it.