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IKEA sells a little solid-pine kids nightstand called the RAST: RAST Nightstand - IKEA
I saw these a few years ago, and immediately thought they might make a good starting point for an easy DIY speaker cab.
I'm no carpenter, and in the past, I've just screwed one of these things together (the way IKEA intended), cut front and back panels from pine planks and screwed them into place, and made a usable, if somewhat ugly, cab.
I happened to have a RAST lying around unused, and wanted to turn it into a 2x8 cab to use with a low-powered DIY valve guitar amp. The housing complex in which I now live has a wood-shop, with a router and a table-saw, among other things, so I had the opportunity to make a slightly better-looking cab this time.
I was able to borrow a biscuit-cutter and use that to join the four outer panels, all of which came from the RAST. The front panel is plywood I found dumpster-diving at a construction site (finances are tight, I had to get creative!) Outside dimensions are about 20" wide x 16" high x 11.5" deep. The CD is in the picture to give you a visual idea of the size of the cab.
I spray-painted the baffle black, and stapled on some blue mesh fabric I found on clearance sale at Michaels (arts and crafts store). I used the router and a round-over bit to round over the edges of the wood. That was a bit of an adventure, because the router is table-mounted, and the pine planks have slight amounts of bowing, which made it challenging to get a uniform round-over the full length of each edge.
Currently I have a piece of pine plank closing off about 2/3 of the rear, but plan to do some experimenting with both a closed and open back to see if one sounds better to me.
Finally I gave the whole thing a thin coat of clear polyurethane varnish. I probably should sand it down with fine sandpaper and give it a second coat one of these days. But I couldn't resist trying it out first.
The front baffle is held in with screws, so it's removable, and I plan to try a couple of different speaker sizes on different baffles. The baffle that's installed now has two 8" speakers mounted on it, both unconventional choices for a guitar amp. There's one of these: https://www.parts-express.com/grs-8f...-51fw--292-430
And one of these: https://www.parts-express.com/8-ceil...aging--300-010
Used individually, the GRS speaker is a fairly neutral and balanced sounding speaker, which lets the amp decide the character of the sound. The other one - the cheap ceiling speaker - has very little bass, but has a more "vocal" sounding midrange, and sounds quite good for single-note lead playing, though not so good for chords and strumming, due to the lack of bass. One of these days, I may try putting together a simple first-order crossover network and using the GRS as the "woofer" and the other one as the "tweeter" to see how that sounds.
I don't know if anyone else is interested in any of this, but I thought I'd share, just in case someone else finds anything useful here.
-Gnobuddy
I saw these a few years ago, and immediately thought they might make a good starting point for an easy DIY speaker cab.
I'm no carpenter, and in the past, I've just screwed one of these things together (the way IKEA intended), cut front and back panels from pine planks and screwed them into place, and made a usable, if somewhat ugly, cab.
I happened to have a RAST lying around unused, and wanted to turn it into a 2x8 cab to use with a low-powered DIY valve guitar amp. The housing complex in which I now live has a wood-shop, with a router and a table-saw, among other things, so I had the opportunity to make a slightly better-looking cab this time.
I was able to borrow a biscuit-cutter and use that to join the four outer panels, all of which came from the RAST. The front panel is plywood I found dumpster-diving at a construction site (finances are tight, I had to get creative!) Outside dimensions are about 20" wide x 16" high x 11.5" deep. The CD is in the picture to give you a visual idea of the size of the cab.
I spray-painted the baffle black, and stapled on some blue mesh fabric I found on clearance sale at Michaels (arts and crafts store). I used the router and a round-over bit to round over the edges of the wood. That was a bit of an adventure, because the router is table-mounted, and the pine planks have slight amounts of bowing, which made it challenging to get a uniform round-over the full length of each edge.
Currently I have a piece of pine plank closing off about 2/3 of the rear, but plan to do some experimenting with both a closed and open back to see if one sounds better to me.
Finally I gave the whole thing a thin coat of clear polyurethane varnish. I probably should sand it down with fine sandpaper and give it a second coat one of these days. But I couldn't resist trying it out first.
The front baffle is held in with screws, so it's removable, and I plan to try a couple of different speaker sizes on different baffles. The baffle that's installed now has two 8" speakers mounted on it, both unconventional choices for a guitar amp. There's one of these: https://www.parts-express.com/grs-8f...-51fw--292-430
And one of these: https://www.parts-express.com/8-ceil...aging--300-010
Used individually, the GRS speaker is a fairly neutral and balanced sounding speaker, which lets the amp decide the character of the sound. The other one - the cheap ceiling speaker - has very little bass, but has a more "vocal" sounding midrange, and sounds quite good for single-note lead playing, though not so good for chords and strumming, due to the lack of bass. One of these days, I may try putting together a simple first-order crossover network and using the GRS as the "woofer" and the other one as the "tweeter" to see how that sounds.
I don't know if anyone else is interested in any of this, but I thought I'd share, just in case someone else finds anything useful here.
-Gnobuddy
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