Have anybody tried building harp amp cab using hardwood ?

[silpakorn]

Hi everybody, my first post here and hope I drop my question into the right place I'm gonna start to build my first amp soon, I've never done it before either the electric part or the cabinet but I'll try to do them both. For the amp I think I'm gonna start with 5F1 kit since it's the easiest one for beginner to start with, just to learn some basic amp building skills. For the cabinet actually I wouldn't mind ordering it online but since I'm living in Thailand the shipping cost would probably be somewhere around the cost of the cabinet itself, so I figured I better learn how to build one myself. After searching for the information for awhile I now kinda have the idea how to build it and also got a carpenter friend who's confidently told me that the cabinet is pretty easy to build ( I showed him 5F1 cab plan ) and he also suggested that hardwood might be a good chioce since it's easier to work with ( no cracks, warping, better looking and you don't have to deal with tweed or tolex ) which I'm kinda leaning towards that. The problem is, I have a feeling that hardwood might effect the sound somehow, I mean they might shaping the sound towards their own characters rather than just doing it's job of holding the speaker and the chassis and being transparent to the sound of the amp/speaker.. Have anybody tried this with harp amp yet ? Can hardwood change character of the sound or is it just my feeling ? Should I stick with the traditional style of pine/tweed or a hardwood cab can be just as good ? Any thoughts/comments will be appreciated.. thanks

[soundguruman]

Hardwood is better, they don't use it cause it's too expensive.

[MWJB]

The best wood to use is the wood that sounds best...whether, hard or otherwise.

You have to think about how the sound of the different woods will affect the overall sound, a 5f1 is quite a bright sounding, spanky amp for harp...a "doinky" sounding cab may well be overkill.

Go round to your carpenter and look at some samples of different woods, tap them with something, how does the wood itself resonate, is it warm, or dark, or is it bright & ringy? Cabinets do affect the sound, few are neutral and just "transparent" as you assume.

It just so happens that the best sounding bassman amps that I have heard for harp used the pre LTD plywood cabs. On the other hand companies like Kendrick have used canarywood, but their TC35 harp amp is a very different amp from either a champ, or a bassman...like any part, they don't make sound on their own, they need to be part of whole to be evaluated.

[soundguruman]

Birch or aircraft grade Birch plywood, seems to be a top choice, I prefer Cherry or Walnut.