Micro Cube speaker upgrade

[FXR]

 

http://www.lojeck.com/brian/MicroCubeRepair.html check that out..

 

 

I tried a similar mod after seeing that page. Opening the box and modifying the micro cube for a six inch speaker was not a difficult job.

 

The one problem I overlooked in haste is that the Micro Cube is 2 watts while the nominal input for car speakers is 15 watts or more. That's too inefficient for the 2 watts of the micro cube amp and the sound at low freq and volume just sucked after the mod. The car speaker killed the tone. It was a bummer. It was just too much low freq. (The Jensen website has an explanation of why the inefficient speaker sounded sucky) The car speaker is also a full spectrum speaker. So there are low and high sounds trying to be produced by it we don't want or need.

 

So, I put the thing aside for a while and didn't think much about the ruined amp until a few days ago. It worked great as a DI for recording still though.

 

Later while looking for something else, I found the Jensen MOD 6-15 at tube depot. For 22$ I took a shot at it.

 

Instead of mounting it by dropping it in the front of the amp, I had to put it in from the rear, but the new 6 inch hole was perfect size and the screw holes matched up. It was about a 5 minute swap. Things looked pretty good.

 

So we plugged in and started trying it out. She sounds good. I'm not too crazy about the black box emulation with it, but all the others seem spot on. The black box (fender?) seems to have a low freq issue and I hate the low end of that model. But the Stack sounds awesome and works with reverb, delay and lots of gain with no issues.

 

You millage may vary, but this seems to be much better than the stock 5 inch from roland and it's certainly better than a car spearker if you plan a speaker upgrade.

 

Here are the pics of the fist car speaker mod. I didn't take pics of the Jensen upgrade. Micro Cube Mod

[csm]

MicroCubes are MAJOR BASTARDS to disassemble. When I was still trying to fix mine rather than replace it, Cobalt Stargazer and I spent an entire evening taking it apart, and it's obviously built to be as user-nonserviceable as possible.

 

Makes a lot more sense to take a line out of the back (which TOTALLY bypasses the existing speaker) and plug it into something else.

 

Which is what I do every time I play an 'acoustic' gig.

[FXR]

I agree, the disassemble shown in the example article is just nuts. It's also unnecessary.

 

I took the new speaker template and traced the new hole I needed over the existing hole. I used a drill to perforate the new hole line. Then I cleaned up the shape of the hole with a coarse rasp.

 

I didn't want to break down the whole cabinet to use a jig saw which is not possible with the recessed face board the speaker is mounted to.

 

There's always more than one way to skin a cat.

[linusâ„¢]

i ended up breaking down my cabinet and tried a few different speakers.. ended up with a pioneer 3-way car speaker. sounds way better than stock..

i made interchangeable speaker baffles so i could get the closed cabinet sound to decide what speaker i liked. after i picked one i just glued it all back together...

 

couldn't be happier with it.

[DriveBy]

I sprayed the cone of mine with lacquer. It seems to have helped.

[jonPhillips]

I bought one the tiny Micro Cubes for my kids. I jammed on it for a little while. I love that little amp! I was shocked at how that little thing could fill the room with thick realistic tone. Superb little amp.

 

This +1.

 

Talking about modding a Micro Cube is like talking about modding a piece of toilet paper.

 

Just use the {censored}ing thing for the job it's designed to do...