Beautiful boombox echoes from within double-bass enclosure
It's not new—the SKDUBS GOLD double bass boombox fiddle was made in 2005—but it's wonderful enough by far to warrant a belated look. Only three were built, apparently, and the remaining example is $15,000.
Built in a real double bass, the media are listed as "spraypaint, casters, oak, plywood, metal, iPod, two tube pre-amps, B and C mids and tweeters, Electro-voice woofers, JVC tweeters, Crown XLS 602 Poweramp, and Behringer equalizer."
SKDUBS GOLD[David Ellis via Dvice]
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I guess I should RTFA, but wouldn't a box that's made for resonating make for a terrible speaker enclosure?
Yeah, surely the *last* thing you'd want is something designed to vibrate. I wanted to contrast it against some kind of "speaker in an inert blob of acoustic brick" but couldn't find much of anything.
You'd probably have to tweak the equalizer to reduce the amplitude of frequencies from the music that resonate with the bass body.
This doesn't strike me as a great set up (and, as a bass player, not the best use of an instrument). In the photo, it doesn't even look that good--it reminds me of the corner of the big box electronics store where they mount all of the car stereo components.
Maybe if it had some steampunk style speaker covers and control dials ...or internally mounted speakers that projected sound into the body and out of the F holes.
I knew that looked familiar...
http://i32.tinypic.com/30dbkep.jpg
Well, they did make it 5 years ago and are still trying to sell it...
I also agree that it is pretty ugly - one of the things I find beautiful about stringed instruments is their sense of symmetry and balance, as well as a nice wood grain and varnish. This thing wouldn't look that great without the speakers, but using all those plastic speaker rims (and yellow cones, for chrissake!) just makes it look like a hack job piece of shit.
Besides, if I was going to spend $15k on a stereo, it would have a used car attached. That way, when I got fed up with the shitty sound quality, I could just drive it off the end of a pier somewhere.
It looks like a movie prop.
It wouldn't necessarily sound bad due to resonance. English speaker makers like Mission and Harbeth have perfected 'thinwall' cabinets that were light and did not attempt to eliminate resonance with mass. Inert enclosures are only one way to go. The bass body would not have inherent peaks and dips in response, which is what you want to avoid.
Here's a Japanese company that makes speakers with cones made from wood veneer. There are several other manufacturers of wood cone drivers. These would look nicer on a bass body.
http://dream-creation.jp/product.php?product_no=5
A Behringer EQ in a 15.000$ stereo? Ridiculous!
Behringer EQ's are well regarded in some circles for being "true-respone" or WSIWYG eq's, ie.: "Changing a 1/3-octave setting changes sound only within that band". There are others that do so, but at 10 times the price, so it is cheaper to buy a behringer and pay someone to upgrade many of the capacitors and (conveniently socketed) op-amps to improve the analog audio performance.
But I think that this is more of an art piece than a serious loudspeaker.
#7, those wood speaker cones look fascinating. I wish I could hear them though.
Here's a headphone set that's made from wood in Cambridge, MA. They retail for about $1000.00
http://www.gradolabs.com/frameset_main.htm
So, is the wood volume control knob a $1000 optional extra?