Cleanout: 1940s/2017 Isolation Cab

I haven't been recording or playing live grungy or distorted for more than a year and a half and I think it's a trend for me, so I'm letting this cool contraption go. I've posted on it before, but wanted to update its information. This is a 1940s turntable cabinet that I've modified for use as a cool-looking isolation cab for recording electric guitar.

Inside, a cheapish, 20w-rated Vox 10" 16-ohm speaker is mounted in the middle of the box with a Sennheiser e609 amp mic pointed at it. The 16-ohm value works for 8-ohm amps/heads but just drops the signal a bit, which is why I chose to use it since the idea is to keep things on the quiet side. All of this is padded with a lot of foam in front-of and behind the speaker. There's room for an XLR cable to sneak in the top and there's a jack for speaker-in on the "back" of the box.

I've used this a number of times live and it really works. While it's not 100% quiet, even when you have an amp head turned-up, the most you get out of the box is a mellow, muffled, whump. This lets you record at night (and not drive the family crazy) or play with acoustic musicians on-stage or while recording without a lot of bleed. The mic grabs the signal nicely and you can then put it right into your board. Of course, because there's not much air to move in the box, it sounds a little "boxy" with a dry signal. I add a touch of reverb at the mixer board or recording project to liven-up the sound. It still sounds way better than any sort of load-box or emulation.

It's best-used with a low-watt tube head to drive it -- no more than 5-10w. Just turn down for clean and turn up for grrrrrrrrowl.

Here's the inside.

Note that while the XLR cable is pictured, it's just for reference and not included. I do have a short speaker cable, however, that will go with it.

The box itself is 16x13x9" and weighs about 8-10 pounds.

Here's the speaker-in jack. You connect this to your amp's speaker-out.

The original turntable speaker grilles have been covered with pine behind them.