Guitar isolation box... for $40?!

[GearJunkie]

So last night I was sitting at home thinking about how I could go about playing my amps and cabinets and whatnot in my new apartment without raising hell with my neighbors.

I was thinking of building an isolation cabinet to put my guitar cabinets in and then having inputs and outs for speakers and xlr's for mics. I started drawing up plans, looking at Auralex to put in there, figuring out how much this was gonna cost me and whatnot.

My plan was a 4.5 foot box with those auralex gramma pads at the bottom and a box that was inlaid with auralex foam all the way around the inside. My only problem was that in order to REALLY make this sucker soundproof, i'd need to build ANOTHER box to put that in.

Long story short, I was going to have a 7 foot tall monster in my apartment that I could put any cabinet in.

THEN.... it dawned on me. As I walked into my studio to go online and read up on Auralex, this flight case caught my eye. I've had this HUGE flightcase in my apartment for ages that I pretty much only use for moving stuff around if I'm moving from one apartment to another. I found the case on the side of the road and have been using it since.

So here's where it dawned on me. I didn't need to make a 7 foot tall box to put a ton of stuff in... I could just MODIFY THIS THING!! Granted, I'd need to buy a 1x12 cabinet or 1x10 cabinet or... hell, BOTH, that I could put in this thing, but it would work perfectly. It's got packing foam in it from equipment, but I could easily replace that with Auralex, or even just keep it as is and hear how it sounds. I'm going to put two wall mounts on the front, one with a 1/4 input for the speaker and one with a male XLR input for the microphone. The inside of the case would take those cables and attach the speaker cable to the 1x12 (therefore keeping the amp outside of the box and ventilated) and the XLR's will attach to a gooseneck mic mount that I'll put in there, and I can put any mic I want in there, it's MORE than big enough.

So, long story short, I need to buy two 5/8" mounts, two goosenecks, some wall mounts and boom... instant isolation cabinet. What's that gonna run me? $40? Sweet.

[mikegee]

hi GearJunkie

i gotta say, that's a pretty ingenius solution to your new apartment situation. i'm interested in hearing how it works out for you.

Just out of curiousity, are there such things as isolation boxes (for guitarists) out there on the market? if so, wouldnt it somewhat color the sounds of the amps since the sounds are isolated in a box? maybe not a noticeable difference? maybe it will actually give you more unique tones...

[GearJunkie]

I'm modeling my iso cab after Randall's unit..

http://www.randallamplifiers.com/pro...tion/index.asp

For the most part, they do change the tone a bit, but for real amp sounds without pissing off your new neighbors, it's the best way to go.

things like this are also great in a live setting. get your tone going to the FOH without having to deal with crowd noise and vibrations from the stage.

[Nubus]

I take it you are against using one of those attenuators, or would still need more iso than that. I wonder how much the box will do on it's own. I suppose it would be easy to just dump a boom box in there to see what happens before you go to the trouble of routing out a spot for a wall plate. I have seen people use them on stage, but in that case they simply plopped it down in front of the amp like a portable wall.

[smopo24]

a while back i helped build an amp cabinet; it was huge. it sat on top of an unused bathtub in the downstairs apartment. you could fit a full stack in there and mics. we had carpeting and several layers of wood (along with a deadbolt to keep it locked) to help attenuate it; still the sound leaked- but not by much. luckily he owned the building and rarely used it, but you could definately turn an amp up and not be bothered.