i want to create a portable bass amp.

By visawinhondaac122, 5 June, 2012

hey john, i read ur blogs for awhile and i decided i will make one(just ordered) and yea, im looking for some info on making a cab for it, im a bass player, and sometime i just want to play around with a small portable , like bag portable. if u could recommend size of the cab, speaker and other infos let me know, im just a college student, dont have much info on building stuff like this in my head.

Member for

12 years 6 months

John

11 years 6 months ago

I recommend the Boss BRS40 speaker, it's a 4 inch speaker with a pretty good range. You wouldn't want to use anything smaller for a bass amp, and if you don't mind a little loss of definition on the high end, you could go larger, I even have a 12 inch speaker in a hand-built cabinet that I pull out from time to time. I do like my little 4 inch bass amp though, it's nice and quiet and doesn't wake any of the kids up when I play in the house.

And as for a cab size, I'm at the doctor's office at the moment so I can't measure my bass amp, but I think my box is maybe 6x6x9 inches. You definitely want a slightly larger box for a bass amp rather than a guitar amp.

Member for

11 years 6 months

jeff

11 years 6 months ago

I have an 8 inch Carvin speaker mounted in a 6x9x12 inch box; the box also has a pair of 2 inch diameter vent holes. It works pretty well for both bass and guitar. The speaker is an 8 ohm job rated for 200 watts, so it's not a very efficient setup, but I do like the sound. For comparison, I tried a pair of karaoke speakers wired together in series for an 8 ohm system - a total of 4 little speakers, each being 3 inches in diameter. The single 8 inch not only sounded better, but gave me more volume.

I did a busking event with my Father, where I had stuck all my stuff (speaker, amp, cables, etc...) in a mid-size Coleman cooler for the transportation phase. He had a great suggestion, which is to mount the speaker in the Coleman - it looks like about the right size for a bass cab, and it has nice handles for carrying.

jeff