particle board cabinets ?

Kevin Ruddell · Post by **Kevin Ruddell** » 31 Dec 2005 4:37 pm

I removed the speaker from my Peavey Classic 30 amp to put it in a separate cabinet and when removing the screws for the reverb tank and power cord retainer some sawdust fell out . I'm assuming the cabinet might be made of particle board, but I'm not sure. Is there any difference in sound between a particle board or birch wood speaker cabinet ? Just curious.

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 31 Dec 2005 4:42 pm

Huge.

Particle board cabinets are 1) sonically dead, and 2) HEAVY.

Birch ply or solid pine are much preferred and used in higher-quality amps and cabs. They almost have a "singing" quality to them. Particle board constricts the sound and just deadens everything. But it's cheap, and that's why you find it on cheap amps.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 1 Jan 2006 3:20 am

I've read the opposite from major speaker company (JBL) design and building documents and other speaker design documents for home (stereo) system speakers.

Supposedly the density and rigidity of particle board (good cabinet makers grade - not the stuff you buy at Home Depot) is an excellent speaker building material. Hard woods obviously would also make good cabinet material.

However, there are very few commercial combo amps or speakers that use the high priced hardwoods. Almost all use some type of particle board or plywood (and a few use pine wood).

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 1 Jan 2006 3:21 am

Like Jim, I notice a big difference in sound. I generally prefer solid pine, as used in earlier Fender amps, or birch plywood, as used in blackface Fender amps. Especially with a Fender amp, they add a nice coloration.

But let me say that I have played through some particle-board amps that sounded very good, for guitar. For example, a Laney amp, with a Fane speaker in a closed-back cabinet. I actually put the speaker in a pine white Tremolux cabinet, also closed-back, and tried it with the amp - it didn't sound right, to me. I guess the cabinet resonance didn't match the amp/speaker colorations. Another example was a '68 solid-state Vox Viscount, which I think was pretty much a Vox Beatle amp in a 2x12" combo cabinet. It sounded great, in its own solid-state Vox way.

I do agree with Jim on the weight factor. Both those amps were quite a bit heavier than comparable pine/birch-ply cab amps.

Tony Prior · Post by **Tony Prior** » 1 Jan 2006 4:21 am

considering most of these SMALL amps, Classic 30 size, are OPEN back amps. the wood itself is not of extreme importance other than to basically hold the whole thing together..

An enclosed cab such as a ported Bass cab or an eclosed Guitar amp cab this may be of more importance.

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 1 Jan 2006 9:03 am

Jack - there's a difference with stereo equipment, where you want a sonically-neutral platform for speakers. High-end speaker system manufacturers stress the design of the cabinet as having no specific affect on tone - meaning they don't change the signal by stressing particular frequency ranges.

With a guitar amp, the amp itself is an instrument and a certain "live" quality not desired in audiophile equipment is MUCH desired in guitar amplification. It's something that was probably pure accident in the 40's and 50's, where Leo Fender basically used solid wood for cabinets because it was cheaper.

The exceptions to desired resonance in instruyment cabinets are with bass and keyboard systems, where cabinets are "tuned" and the wood is much less of a factor.

I don't agree about small cabinets either. A tweed Champ or Princeton almost sounds like it has reverb due to the resonant quality of the solid cabinet. OTOH, small Peaveys, Crates, etc. sound totally dead to my ears when run dry, due to the resonance-killing effect of particle board.

Jay Ganz · Post by **Jay Ganz** » 1 Jan 2006 9:16 am

Dave,
All of my Blackface Fenders are finger jointed pine also, not birch plywood. Their speaker baffles are a type of wafer board. I've had birch plywood steel amps in the past that sounded great, but I sorta prefer aged solid pine.

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 1 Jan 2006 11:04 am

Jay, I stand corrected. The main cabinet on a Fender amp is indeed solid, fingerjointed pine up through about 1971. The baffleboard and back panels are what are plywood.

Apparently, starting in 63, about blackface inception, the blackface baffleboards are MDF, i.e., fiberboard. The back panels appear to be 2-ply, from many examples I've seen. That is probably where I got the idea that the whole cab on later models was ply. I've had to recover a bunch of back panels, but never needed to do a whole cabinet.

This link has a lot of useful info:
http://www.provide.net/~cfh/fender2.html#amps

Just based on basic vibration principles, as the ratio of panel thickness to panel area gets smaller, a cabinet panel will vibrate more, assuming the same material. Such a cab will have more resonances which contribute to the tone production of the amp. So as cab size gets smaller, if the thickness of the wood remains the same, it should contribute less. That is my experience, but some small amps thin the cab panels down. I had one old Gibson GA-8T that had a very thin and resonant cab - it was one of the finest sounding small guitar amps I ever heard - I hope my friend who wound up with it still has it.

One variable not really discussed here is mating speakers and amps to cabinets. A cabinet appropriate for an old Jensen speaker is not necessarily appropriate for a high-power EVM or Black Widow. The same goes for the difference between a Deluxe Reverb and a typical 200-300 watt steel amp.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 1 Jan 2006 6:00 pm

I kinda agree witgh Tony. Real wood cabinets might sound better if they were left as just a speaker cabinet, but by the time you add the amp chassis, reverb tank, extra hardware (legs, handles, vents), a coating of adhesive, a few pounds of Tolex vinyl covering, and then leave the back open, you're kidding yourself if you think the cabinet's resonance does very much for the sound.

The baffle board, yes...but the cabinet itself, decidedly not.

That said, big cabinets almost always sound better than small ones (probably due to the baffle and fewer standing-wave problems). Also, if any amp sounded better than a Crate, I'd have to believe that most of the difference came from the amp and speaker, and not the cabinet. Crates are a notoriously cheap amp, and you wouldn't expect them to sound like a Fender.

Kevin Ruddell · Post by **Kevin Ruddell** » 16 Feb 2006 5:29 pm

An update on last months' topic. I just put my Eminence Delta in a Rick Johnson cabinet and I have to say Jim's comments were totally on the money regarding the difference between particle board and wood speaker cabinets . Rick's cabinet surely does sing compared to the relatively dead sound particle board cabinet. It does indeed have a singing quality as Jim states . It won't improve your slants but is a big improvement over the PB "sound". I would gladly pay extra money to buy a Peavey amp that is equipped with JJ Tesla tubes and has a separate wood speaker cabinet if it were available. They have already addressed the tube rattle and shortened tube life issues by issuing the Classic 30 in a separate head