some questions about my "new" bass cab

[Earthman]

hey sunn lords,

i'm now the proud owner of a 610 s cabinet, serial no. C 008752.  i was wondering if any of you had any info about the history of this sweet rig, since i just answered a craigslist ad that said "late sixties."  do you know how to verify that or pinpoint the year? 

also, of the six original transducers, one has been replaced with a fender, and one needs to be reconed.  any advice or pitfalls that you are aware of?

i can't wait to have this guy up and running so i can blast my earth sound research b-2000 through it!

i play bass through the earth and sunn!

thanks.

[rick.heil]

a 610??? Most excellent! 


Some advice - its gonna be louuuud. 

[largeal]

hey sunn lords,

i'm now the proud owner of a 610 s cabinet, serial no. C 008752.  i was wondering if any of you had any info about the history of this sweet rig, since i just answered a craigslist ad that said "late sixties."  do you know how to verify that or pinpoint the year? 

i also saw that listing and cabinet - that 610 is a 70's GUITAR cab - NOT a 60's SUNN product - using it for bass?  ...it has no porting, may sound nice with bass up close, but was really designed for Guitar - may be still OK for bass, but be careful with those old guitar speakers and volume when playing bass through it ...... and ENJOY!

[Earthman]

thanks for the info, largeal.   the guy who sold it to me said that it was originally marketed as an either/or cabinet, like a bassman or something.  since it's 10's and it handles 200 watts (and it was such an amazing cab), i was inclined to believe him.  my bass amp has 4 6L6s which means it's no where near that 200 watt threshold, right?  in what other ways could playing bass through it inadvertantly wreck this thing?

is there anything else i can do to preserve the speakers?  playing at low volume isn't really an option. i guess i could replace them with newer jbls or something, but they really sound great the way they are (i had practice earlier today).  plus it would cost so much. 

i'd also like to learn more about the porting issue.  about half the bass cabinets i've owned have had ports (unless the others were hidden somewhere...).  without getting too technical about acoustics, why would the others not need them?


thanks again.

and rick.heil, i'm shooting those devil horns right back atcha. \m/

[rick.heil]

sweet, someone else who rocks out!

well, about those ports.....

the point of having ports (or not having) is really a function of how the cabinet is designed and what it is designed for.  usually, ports are used for subwoofers and such to increase efficiency and/or "thump" for car subs (that's my big experience with subs).    if your cab didn't come with ports, that means it was designed without ports in mind. Think about it this way - the air inside that cabinet is getting bounced around almost as much as the air in front of the cabinet.  the way that air bounces around changes your tone. 

In my car sub experience (closest to bass), ports mean more rumble, sealed means more punch.  Hope that makes sense to you as a bass player...I know, of course, some of that tone is a function of your amp too.


I'm no expert in cab building, but I did a some quick google research and came up with a few sites you might want to visit for some basic knowledge (I found them helpful):

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Bistro/3491/speaker.html <-scroll to "vented and sealed  enclosures"

http://www.vintagebass.com/thedudepit/showthread.php?t=19383 <-a discussion


Hope they help.

[Isaac]

If you want to learn the basics of cabinet design, I suggest The Loudspeaker Design Cookbook by Vance Dickason.

[rick.heil]

As usual, Issac, you have way better luck with links than I do.  Is that why you have those pretty blue stars next to your name? heehee.

[EdBass]

sweet, someone else who rocks out!

well, about those ports.....

the point of having ports (or not having) is really a function of how the cabinet is designed and what it is designed for.  usually, ports are used for subwoofers and such to increase efficiency and/or "thump" for car subs (that's my big experience with subs).    if your cab didn't come with ports, that means it was designed without ports in mind. Think about it this way - the air inside that cabinet is getting bounced around almost as much as the air in front of the cabinet.  the way that air bounces around changes your tone. 

In my car sub experience (closest to bass), ports mean more rumble, sealed means more punch.  Hope that makes sense to you as a bass player...I know, of course, some of that tone is a function of your amp too.


I'm no expert in cab building, but I did a some quick google research and came up with a few sites you might want to visit for some basic knowledge (I found them helpful):

http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Bistro/3491/speaker.html <-scroll to "vented and sealed  enclosures"

http://www.vintagebass.com/thedudepit/showthread.php?t=19383 <-a discussion


Hope they help.

Huh?

[rick.heil]

i'd also like to learn more about the porting issue.  about half the bass cabinets i've owned have had ports (unless the others were hidden somewhere...).  without getting too technical about acoustics, why would the others not need them?


thanks again.

[EdBass]

i'd also like to learn more about the porting issue.  about half the bass cabinets i've owned have had ports (unless the others were hidden somewhere...).  without getting too technical about acoustics, why would the others not need them?

Open cone transducers (speakers like your cabinet has as opposed to sealed drivers like high frequency horns) emanate sound pressure from both sides of the cone more or less equally. Venting/porting a cabinet allows the cabinet to use the sound pressure from the back side to reinforce the sound pressure generated from the front side, generally favoring the low end of the frequency spectrum. The higher the frequency the less able this back pressure is to change direction, and (particularly front) ports try to bend this reinforcing sound pressure as much as 180 degrees.
The art of porting is pretty exacting, particularly if you are tuning for a specific response in a specific frequency range.

Conversely, non ported enclosures generally are an attempt to emulate an infinite baffle to utilize only the pure response of said cone transducer(s) without using the back pressure to enhance the response in a particular frequency range.

Horn loaded enclosures are much more frequency specific, sometimes tuned for a very narrow frequency bandwidth.

It's all about the application the cabinet is designed for.

[Earthman]

The art of porting is pretty exacting, particularly if you are tuning for a specific response in a specific frequency range.

Conversely, non ported enclosures generally are an attempt to emulate an infinite baffle to utilize only the pure response of said cone transducer(s) without using the back pressure to enhance the response in a particular frequency range.

so this is why my other cabinet, which has rear facing speakers that are baffled so that the sound comes out the front, sounded like hell when the piece of plywood that sealed the back side of the speaker enclosure was removed.  even if it had been designed for a port, taking off the plywood did not create one with any exactness, so the back pressure would be completely screwy...

i think i get it, but how does it all relate to my 610?  would it have ports if it had been designed for bass?  i'm not really familiar enough with sunn stuff to know if they used that technology when this cabinet was made.

thanks again guys.

and by the way...

if anybody is in the area and wants to see (hear) it in person, my band is opening for mojave 3 saturday at pappy and harriets in yucca valley, near joshua tree CA. 

[rick.heil]

bingo for the other cabinet story.

yeah, if it was designed for ports (which I don't think many Sunn cabs were), it would already have them.


post your band's show in the "Bands" section - you use sunn stuff, so it's all good!

[Robbie Nuke]

I've contemplated using a sunn 610 cabinet, but have never found a used one at a good enough price. They've always been marketed/sold by sunn as a lead guitar cabinet, therefoe the speakers wouldn't be good for bass (except at low-med volume). If they are original they are probably prone to age fatigue if driven hard with bass. I would consider reloading the cab with the Ampeg/Eminence 32 Ohm 10" drivers (as used in a SVT 810E cabinet). They are designed to work in a sealed/infinite baffle enclosure, would handle the power of most amps (about 100 WRMS @) and give a load of 5.33 Ohms wired in parallel (so you could use it with a 4 or 8 Ohm sub-woofer cabinet, if you so desired, without too much of a power mismatch). I wouldn't bother trying to port the 610, too much math trying to figure out the internal volume, theile/small parameters of the speakers, selecting a port size that looks good and works with the phasing (since the baffle panels face each other slightly).

[EdBass]

The art of porting is pretty exacting, particularly if you are tuning for a specific response in a specific frequency range.

Conversely, non ported enclosures generally are an attempt to emulate an infinite baffle to utilize only the pure response of said cone transducer(s) without using the back pressure to enhance the response in a particular frequency range.

so this is why my other cabinet, which has rear facing speakers that are baffled so that the sound comes out the front, sounded like hell when the piece of plywood that sealed the back side of the speaker enclosure was removed.  even if it had been designed for a port, taking off the plywood did not create one with any exactness, so the back pressure would be completely screwy...

i think i get it, but how does it all relate to my 610?  would it have ports if it had been designed for bass?  i'm not really familiar enough with sunn stuff to know if they used that technology when this cabinet was made.

thanks again guys.

and by the way...

if anybody is in the area and wants to see (hear) it in person, my band is opening for mojave 3 saturday at pappy and harriets in yucca valley, near joshua tree CA. 

Your rear facing cabinet is a folded horn enclosure, generally designed for lower frequency reproduction, and by removing the back you completely castrated it for sound reproduction as it was designed. When you opened it up you allow the front pressure to equalize with the back pressure which largely renders it useless.

Ported cabinets have been common since decades before the Sunn amp company was even thought of. In fact, I can't even think of a Sunn cabinet that isn't ported, if I am remembering correctly, the 6X10 has a narrow port running the width of the bottom of the cabinet. Ports are not just for bass, many if not most cabinets are ported to some extent, in fact I can only think of a few totally sealed guitar cabs.