espec1000
Well-Known Member
After searching around for a new cab and trying to decide between all these different brands, I decided to go the 'Do-it-yourself' route and build a Bill Fitzmaurice XF2x12.
If you're not sure who Bill Fitzmaurice is, he's a speaker cabinet builder for music, home theatre, PA, and a bunch of other stuff. This guy is a genius when it comes to building the perfect cab. Here is a breakdown of what the XF 2x12 is all about (taken from the site):
"Electric guitar speakers are intended to be loud, yet most of them share an incongruous common trait: you cant hear them. To be more exact, you cant hear the mids and highs unless youre directly in front of them- and sitting on the floor. That's because guitar cabs have very narrow dispersion in the mid and high frequencies. To compound matters theyre usually placed on the floor just a few feet in back of the player, so those directional frequencies pass around knee level. Even worse, to look right beneath an amplifier thats 20 to 24 inches wide, dual driver cabs place their drivers horizontally. This narrows the horizontal dispersion angle even more, and causes comb filtering in the highs. In an audio engineering course on how not to build a speaker the typical electric guitar cabinet would be around the top of the list.
The simple solution is to vertically array the drivers, which would widen horizontal dispersion, eliminate combing and put the source closer to the players ear level, but the resulting tall, thin cabinet would look funny with the amplifier overhanging both sides. Guitar players themselves have never had a problem with looking funny, but they do draw the line when it comes to how their gear looks. Enter Plan B: the cross-firing XF guitar speaker."
Basically the idea is to build a baffled speaker cabinet so the speakers project in towards each other (cross-fire inward) and a rear tilt of 15 degrees for projection.
I'm going to post some picture of the progress and then maybe a little video of me demoing it when I'm done
Materials:
1/2 " Baltic Birch: Yes
2 12" Eminence Swamp Thangs (16ohm): Yes
Tools and junk: Yes
Wish me luck!
If you're not sure who Bill Fitzmaurice is, he's a speaker cabinet builder for music, home theatre, PA, and a bunch of other stuff. This guy is a genius when it comes to building the perfect cab. Here is a breakdown of what the XF 2x12 is all about (taken from the site):
"Electric guitar speakers are intended to be loud, yet most of them share an incongruous common trait: you cant hear them. To be more exact, you cant hear the mids and highs unless youre directly in front of them- and sitting on the floor. That's because guitar cabs have very narrow dispersion in the mid and high frequencies. To compound matters theyre usually placed on the floor just a few feet in back of the player, so those directional frequencies pass around knee level. Even worse, to look right beneath an amplifier thats 20 to 24 inches wide, dual driver cabs place their drivers horizontally. This narrows the horizontal dispersion angle even more, and causes comb filtering in the highs. In an audio engineering course on how not to build a speaker the typical electric guitar cabinet would be around the top of the list.
The simple solution is to vertically array the drivers, which would widen horizontal dispersion, eliminate combing and put the source closer to the players ear level, but the resulting tall, thin cabinet would look funny with the amplifier overhanging both sides. Guitar players themselves have never had a problem with looking funny, but they do draw the line when it comes to how their gear looks. Enter Plan B: the cross-firing XF guitar speaker."
Basically the idea is to build a baffled speaker cabinet so the speakers project in towards each other (cross-fire inward) and a rear tilt of 15 degrees for projection.
I'm going to post some picture of the progress and then maybe a little video of me demoing it when I'm done
Materials:
1/2 " Baltic Birch: Yes
2 12" Eminence Swamp Thangs (16ohm): Yes
Tools and junk: Yes
Wish me luck!
