Building isolation booth for guitar cab recording.

Blacktoothgrin · 23rd November 2006

Has anyone had any luck with building an isolation booth for guitar cabs only, mainly just for home usage. I like "hifi" sounding guitars, probably because I practiced with pod for years. Lately Ive been facing the cabinet in the opposite direction of me, micing it up, putting my head phones on and practicing. I like it a lot more than a POD. The only problem is the cabinet gets pretty loud to get the good tube tone, and I probably piss my neighbors off. I'd like to be able to riff it out late at night fairly loud on the cabinet without angering neighbors. The other problem I seem to have is my room is pretty crappy. The "C" note seems to vibrate a lot of stuff in the room and the mic picks up flubby bottom end because of it. Bottom end vibrates a lot of stuff too so I have to be very liberal with my bass/low mid usage. Would an isolation booth be able to quiet it down enough and is it even possible to build a booth that has some life to it (non boxy etc)? If you can take some advice from me, don't practice on a POD! I got to shredding on it and then when I went back to my tube amp for real band practice, it was scary.

Pasta4lnch · 23rd November 2006

HAH! I tried to build one. Another one of my hair brained schemes! . . . well it sucked!! (I'm horrible w/ tools

) So I dropped some more cash on a vocalbooth.com box

(I had a bad experience w/ them, I thought the box was designed poorly - they put the door on the top of a box made for a 4x12. no way I can lift that myself and they just wanted me to disassamble it eveytime. Nothing doing, so I flipped the box and re-inforced it - i didn;t think I should have had to do that on a $1000 box)

that being said - if you are tool savy this definitely seems do-able. there is nothing you couldn;t get from depot and, say, auralex.

as far as the sound, my loudest amp is 20watts and I still close the door of the room it's in. It's loud but not crazy. Maybe a few moving blankets would help more but I've gotten no complaints from neighbors. I don;t know about paying in the middle of the night . . .

mds · 23rd November 2006

I tried one of these out and was pretty impressed. It isn't super versatile, but they thought the design out very well.

Mike

23rd November 2006	#1
Blacktoothgrin Gear interested Joined: Oct 2006 Posts: 20 Thread Starter	Building isolation booth for guitar cab recording. Has anyone had any luck with building an isolation booth for guitar cabs only, mainly just for home usage. I like "hifi" sounding guitars, probably because I practiced with pod for years. Lately Ive been facing the cabinet in the opposite direction of me, micing it up, putting my head phones on and practicing. I like it a lot more than a POD. The only problem is the cabinet gets pretty loud to get the good tube tone, and I probably piss my neighbors off. I'd like to be able to riff it out late at night fairly loud on the cabinet without angering neighbors. The other problem I seem to have is my room is pretty crappy. The "C" note seems to vibrate a lot of stuff in the room and the mic picks up flubby bottom end because of it. Bottom end vibrates a lot of stuff too so I have to be very liberal with my bass/low mid usage. Would an isolation booth be able to quiet it down enough and is it even possible to build a booth that has some life to it (non boxy etc)? If you can take some advice from me, don't practice on a POD! I got to shredding on it and then when I went back to my tube amp for real band practice, it was scary.

23rd November 2006	#2
Pasta4lnch Lives for gear Joined: Nov 2005 Location: NYC Posts: 1,326	HAH! I tried to build one. Another one of my hair brained schemes! . . . well it sucked!! (I'm horrible w/ tools ) So I dropped some more cash on a vocalbooth.com box (I had a bad experience w/ them, I thought the box was designed poorly - they put the door on the top of a box made for a 4x12. no way I can lift that myself and they just wanted me to disassamble it eveytime. Nothing doing, so I flipped the box and re-inforced it - i didn;t think I should have had to do that on a $1000 box) that being said - if you are tool savy this definitely seems do-able. there is nothing you couldn;t get from depot and, say, auralex. as far as the sound, my loudest amp is 20watts and I still close the door of the room it's in. It's loud but not crazy. Maybe a few moving blankets would help more but I've gotten no complaints from neighbors. I don;t know about paying in the middle of the night . . . __________________ myspace, youtube, facebook

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23rd November 2006	#3
mds Lives for gear Joined: May 2005 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,469	I tried one of these out and was pretty impressed. It isn't super versatile, but they thought the design out very well. Mike