Iso Box for recording

[WRGKMC]

I'm thinking about building an Iso box for recording this weekend. I'm going to mount a speaker in a closed box and have a mounted goose neck for a mic where I can move it around for the best tones recording. I have a bunch of extra speakers, mics, wood cables you name it to do the job in no time. The only thing I may have to get is some hinges and locking latches for the lid.

 

I will have to pad it and I do have some acoustical foam. I may make it removable with Velcro so I can switch between various levels of reflection.

 

I may make it with a valve to vent the speaker on the back side. I have some PVC and PCV valves I can use for that. Having a ported speaker produces different tones from a sealed cab and having that available like a water tap may be interesting.

 

I don't need the iso cab for containing room noise. My studio is bomb proof for sound, but having the isolation so I can hear the results through the monitors is a key item for recording and is a much better answer then using headphones.

 

I still have to decide on the speaker size. 8", 10" 12" and even 15" is possible. I may even build a 2X12 can that has the mic section latch on to the front. This would allow me to remove the mic section and use the 2X12 cab playing live. Both the mic and speaker sections will have external jacks added as well just to avoid hassles with cords.

 

Any ideas you can throw in I might have missed?

[Phil O'Keefe]

I'd make the cab for one or the other - live use, or iso. The more isolation you want, the heavier you're going to need to build the box, and the heavier the box, the less likely you are to want to gig with it. An iso cab will usually wind up being larger and heavier than you'd want / need for live use, and a live cab will probably not be heavy enough to be effective at isolation.

 

In addition to using heavy wood, I'd also recommend lining the inside with a limp mass vinyl layer, then putting any foam or fiberglass over that. You can actually order limp mass vinyl from Home Depot fairly inexpensively - a 4' x 8' sheet is under $30.

 

I'd definitely recommend dividing the interior into two sections with a speaker baffle board - one area behind the speakers, the other in "front" of them. I'd also recommend running the baffle board at a bit of an angle to help reduce standing waves inside the iso box.

 

Heavy duty casters and handles will help if you ever need to move the box... but they probably still won't make a heavy-duty iso box suitable for live use IMHO.