Official "scorpion" SI build thread.

Well today did not go as planned at all. I must have pissed the HT gods off somehow. No one in my area carries any semblance of quality lumber. I finally gave up and picked up 5 sheets of 3/4" MDF. Here are some things I learned today.

1) Never, Never let Home Depot cut any of your lumber for you. I didn't feel like wrestling 4x8 sheets of 3/4" MDF around so I had them rip them in half. Let's just say I could cut a more square piece of lumber with a jig saw, blindfolded and freehand. So I spent half my day trying to re square everything up the best I could before making my final cuts.

2) It will always rain when trying to bring lumber home. It's the middle of winter and has been in the single digits for a while, and today it warms up to 40 and pours.

3) Workhorse plastic sawhorses will not hold the equivalent of 5 sheets of MDF. I finished cutting the last piece and stacked it up on the sawhorses with the rest of the pieces. About 10 seconds later I hear a loud snap and the sawhorses explode, snapping the 4x8 sheet of particle board and 2x4's everything is sitting on. Almost every one of my fresh cut pieces has dings on the edges and some minor crushed corners. There's no way in hell I'm starting over so I am going to PL the heck out of them and pray everything seals up tight. It's behind the screen wall so aesthetics isn't important.

Aftermath of mess.


Stack of cut pieces ready for assembly.

That's what my wife said lol. It appears I can salvage it so all is not lost.

I picked up a huge tube of PL premium today just because. Maybe I subconsciously knew I'd be needing it later.

Thanks Aaron. Wish I would have ran across them earlier. I have so much going on right now I'm sure I missed a couple places that carry the stuff.

I'm actually glad I went with MDF just for the weight factor. It's going to blow moving it around until it's in it's final home; but once there it should be pretty solid.

How much bracing would you recommend if I'm using 3/4" MDF. The cab is 64" H x 25.5" W x 18.75" D. I was thinking three center braces would suffice but am not sure if that's enough?

I think that's thoroughly braced.

Hmmm. I guess I could do vertical and horizontal. So I would have 1 horizontal (as box is standing upright) separating each driver (2 total), and then 1 vertical with the driver poking through it tying the 2 verticals together (3 total). I will then have some partial bracing at the very top and bottom. This might take up a little bit more airspace than I planned on, but would tie it all together. That thing is going to way a ton when done.

Yours.

3 per cab. I'm guessing total weight per cab loaded with drivers is going to be pushing 400 lbs. And I thought moving my old 300 gallon aquarium about killed me.

Agreed. I looked through his build pics and he churned out a spectacular product.

Well I'm just basing it on the fact that a single sheet weighs 96 lbs. I'll have used 3 sheets per cab after all bracing. I'm guessing drivers are about 40lbs each, so I'm sure I'm pretty close.

I am going with single thickness with double, or possibly triple, front baffle. I've put together the drawings and have a direction. I was pretty locked in for dimensions as it has to fit behind my screen wall between my center tower and mains.

I'm hoping with the weight that it won't be prone to rocking but we'll see. If that does become an issue I can bolt it directly to my stage. It is sand filled and decoupled from all walls and should dampen most of any transferred vibrations.

Coming from my SVS PB12/2 Ultra with 1,000 watts, I'm pretty sure I will be, ummm, satisfied with their performance.

Thanks for the heads up Robert. I'll go ahead and just bolt them down to prevent any possibly future issues. It might help deter theft as well.

All of you guys building cabs, are you really just clamping and gluing? Every cab I have ever built, I have glued and screwed. I'm a little nervous not screwing it. I can clamp it, PL, and hit it with a bunch of 18g nails if you guys really think that will hold down the road.

Thanks guys, that makes me feel better. Guess I didn't need to go spend another 100 bucks on clamps if I have my nail gun handy then.

Well, I stood there staring at my bottle of Titebond and PL premium and went with the PL. Holy crap what a mess that stuff makes. I think I got more on myself than the speaker box lol. The problem with the extra large tubes I'm using is it continues to spew out of the caulking gun even after releasing the switch each time. I also realized it takes less on each panel than initially thought. As Rilla said, the next cab should hopefully go easier.

I do have a question about interior prep though. How many of you have used Acoust X. It seems like it would be beneficial in theory. I will be stuffing the cabs and am wondering if this would further improve upon reducing resonances. It's fairy inexpensive at 26.00 per gallon.


Even though these will be behind my screen wall, I will probably still cover them in Duratex. I was going to paint them but the extra sealing properties of the Duratex can only help further improve the over all solidity.