decent 1x12 cabinet/pa speaker

[Billy_the_ego_maniac]

I mainly use a LINE 6 POD for my guitar tones and I am sick of running it through combo amp or amp heads and getting the tone sucked out of the settings I choose. I would like to make a 30 watt or a 50 watt 1x12 speaker cabinet to plug it into. Can anyone tell me some of the basics of what I need. I dont want any eq or drive or level controls on it, just an input and a headphone jack (that would cancel out the speaker when pluged in). I also understand taht I would have to build something to house the speaker and that is easy enough for me, its the electronics that I need help with.

[brett]

Hi.
I'ts not quite clear to me what you want, but here goes....
Starting at the end, I can highly recommend Sammi 12" 50W speakers.  Quite efficient, excellent tone.  You won't notice the difference between these Sammis and a Celestion greenback reissue except for the HUGE price difference.  The Sammi will cost you about US$50 if you've got a good dealer.
If you want a clean amplifier, so your effect unit thing shines through, you can get an old hi-fi amp at the pawn shop.  Under normal circumstances they sound terrible for a guitar, but post-Pod it should work ok.
There are also plenty of fairly clean guitar amps out there.  You would need to go for something with a fair bit of power, so that headroom isn't a problem.  My old MusicMan 65 (2 x EL34s running at 350/700V) is clean until it's seriously loud (especially when switched to 700V).

Don't know if that helped..

[JimRayden]

Hi.
I'ts not quite clear to me what you want, but here goes....
Starting at the end, I can highly recommend Sammi 12" 50W speakers.  Quite efficient, excellent tone.  You won't notice the difference between these Sammis and a Celestion greenback reissue except for the HUGE price difference.  The Sammi will cost you about US$50 if you've got a good dealer.

I don't agree on you there. I'm guessing the POD has amp AND speaker simulators in it, so I think what he wants is a hi-fi speaker.

That leads to the question, why do you run into guitar amps anyway? Just connect straight into the band mixer. You'll have the hi-fi resonse and you'll sound more powerful.

---------
Jimbo

[MartyMart]

There's a "speaker sim" switch on a Pod that can be turned off, to use with
a gtr amp ( stops the wasp in a jamjar from happening)
With it left "on" then you have a recording - direct to mixer output that
sounds " a bit" like a gtr amp.
You can plug that direct to a "hi-fi" amp with simulation, however that's not
going to sound right when you add a "low fi" gtr speaker !

Either :  get a gtr amp to use with it, with speaker sim "off"
Or go through desk/hifi with speaker sim "on" but without a separate
gtr speaker , just the "hifi" or PA  speakers will work better in this case.

Marty.

[Billy_the_ego_maniac]

ok you guys aren't exactly hearing me correctly so let me state it again. I want basically a box with a speaker in it and an input and a headphone jack thats its. I want the POD to plug in to the input and control all the settings (eq, output, reverb, drive) and by the way the POD has a little switch that allows me to turn off the speaker resonance option and it has quite a few speaker sims built in with a no speaker setting (essentially DI). I hope that is clearer, I want this for my own recording (yes I go direct all the time with it, but I also want a small cabinet to mic for certain purposes) and for jamming, not gigging. I hate using amps with the POD, PA speakers and REALLY CLEAN amps sound very nice, but usually the amp or the cab tends to suck bits of the tone out.

[MartyMart]

ok you guys aren't exactly hearing me correctly so let me state it again. I want basically a box with a speaker in it and an input and a headphone jack thats its. I want the POD to plug in to the input and control all the settings (eq, output, reverb, drive) and by the way the POD has a little switch that allows me to turn off the speaker resonance option and it has quite a few speaker sims built in with a no speaker setting (essentially DI). I hope that is clearer, I want this for my own recording (yes I go direct all the time with it, but I also want a small cabinet to mic for certain purposes) and for jamming, not gigging. I hate using amps with the POD, PA speakers and REALLY CLEAN amps sound very nice, but usually the amp or the cab tends to suck bits of the tone out.

Sorry Billy, now I understand you even less than before !!
You can't just plug the pod into a "speaker" without an amp to drive it ... 
So, do you want to build your own "amp" then, or just use a head/speaker cab ... which
you've just said that you dont like
A decent "HiFi" amp with a small full range PA speaker, should do the job .....

CoNfUsEd ........  Marty.

[Bob N]

What I've done in the past is I picked up an old DuKane commercial PA amplifier (70v kind with 8 & 4 ohm outputs as well) on evilbay for pretty cheap and pumped it through a single 12" guitar speaker in a closed box I built according to the speaker's specs. It performed quite nicely for the price (around $100) and I even got a couple of mic preamps out of it as well. Not the IDEAL setup, but best bang for the buck and performed pretty darn good considering it IS just for a guitar's limited frequency range...

[Billy_the_ego_maniac]

well I apologize for not obviously not knowning all that I should know. I thought the POD (its a pod 2.0) was able to plug directly into a PA/cabinet without the need for a power/preamp, my line 6 book says that the POD has enough output to bypass this (or I may be an idiot and completely misunderstanding everything I have read...which is possible). Would it be possible to build a cabinet and hook it up to a small mixer and run the POD into that? If not whats the actual need for a power/preamp section on the cabinet that I would like to build, doesnt the POD provide that (albeit a bit differently)?

[Bob N]

The POD itself has no power amp section and cannot drive speakers of any kind outside of a set of headphones. The PA and the guitar cabinet provide the Power Amp section to be heard through speakers. In order to drive a set of speakers of any kind, you need a power amp. Even a mixer doesn't have the power amp to run the speakers unless it's a powered mixer which usually costs quite a bit. Anyway you slice it up, unless you're listening to yourself through headphones, you need a power amp to drive the speaker(s) you want to listen through...

[Billy_the_ego_maniac]

ok then what would be needed to build a basic and decent cabinet with a power amp built in (again with a decent 30/50 watt 12inch speaker)? Also if a power amp is needed whould I need to have an ouput/level controll on the amp (I am assuming yes)? Would I also need to have any other controls built into it.

[MartyMart]

ok then what would be needed to build a basic and decent cabinet with a power amp built in (again with a decent 30/50 watt 12inch speaker)? Also if a power amp is needed whould I need to have an ouput/level controll on the amp (I am assuming yes)? Would I also need to have any other controls built into it.

Here's a suggestion,  as building a decent little power amp etc is NOT easy and involves
huge voltages which can kill you ..... it wont be a 9 volt battery amp !!

Buy a second hand "Keyboard amp" ( as you want it full range right ? )  such as a
peavey KB-60, this is like a PA cab/clean amp in a combo package and is often used
by "Accoustic guitarists" because it's so "clean" and full range.
This would sound great with your Pod 2, keeping the switch "on" on amp simulation
will keep the same sound as the headphones.
The KB-60 also has a headphone out ( if i remember right ) and a "mic in" socket

Peace,
Marty.

[JimRayden]

I personally have considered building a SS amp but after adding up the cost, it's not just worth the effort. Buy an old transistor poweramp and a PA speaker and see if you can hack it up to form a combo. Or use them as a head/cab setting.

Or just buy a keyboard combo, as Marty mentioned. Either way you'll pay less than building one from scratch. And it'll propably of a better quality.

And to my amazement I found out that in SS amp world, the commercial amps are way cheaper and of a better quality than DIY, as with tube amps it tends to be the other way around.

------------
Jimbo