DIY build - garage studio ALMOST DONE!

[SenatorClayDavis]

Let me add - thanks again to all of you for your help and props. It does help to know that there's interest in what I'm doing, and I can see by the large number of view counts that continue to jump whenever this thread gets bumped that there must be a lot of you. This project certainly has been a challenge, and definitely not for the feint of heart - I hope that it's helping any of you that have been thinking about doing a project like this to either go for it, or run like hell away from it and go rent a lock-out!

I think there's lots of us that love what you're doing and are living vicariously through you in this build... I think this is something most GABers would love to do if only we had the time/space/money/expertise. This thread isn't necessarily something everyone can contribute to constructively, but I think we're all interested and supportive.

It's been super cool to see this coming together - keep doing what you're doing man!

[BlackWolf]

Let me add - thanks again to all of you for your help and props. It does help to know that there's interest in what I'm doing, and I can see by the large number of view counts that continue to jump whenever this thread gets bumped that there must be a lot of you. This project certainly has been a challenge, and definitely not for the feint of heart - I hope that it's helping any of you that have been thinking about doing a project like this to either go for it, or run like hell away from it and go rent a lock-out!

I think there's lots of us that love what you're doing and are living vicariously through you in this build... I think this is something most GABers would love to do if only we had the time/space/money/expertise. This thread isn't necessarily something everyone can contribute to constructively, but I think we're all interested and supportive.

It's been super cool to see this coming together - keep doing what you're doing man!

This!

[Tortuga]

I think there's lots of us that love what you're doing and are living vicariously through you in this build... I think this is something most GABers would love to do if only we had the time/space/money/expertise. This thread isn't necessarily something everyone can contribute to constructively, but I think we're all interested and supportive.

It's been super cool to see this coming together - keep doing what you're doing man!

This brought a big smile. Thanks Senator!

This!

You too, buddy

[Tortuga]

...bass traps, cont'd

Work is still going on - I hope to finish up the covers tonight and get them into place in the morning.

The three 'normal' corners all went together similarly. The forth, however, presented a challenge, in that the outlet box was inside the 17" frames I had been building. Rather than make that part or the whole trap smaller (and thereby a little less effective, as well as strange looking), I decided to cut around the box. This requires more framing, and will present a challenge when I start covering the outer frames with material.

Here's what I ended up doing. As you can see, the outlet is still accessible. It'll be a little harder to get at the right sockets when I put the outer frame on, but it's good enough for government work, eh? And yes, I'm fully qualified to speak as a government worker - I work for a public agency, after all



After getting the interior framing completed, my attention turned to the outer frames. These will attach to the interior frames with either screws or velcro. They're going to be covered with acoustically transparent cloth (burlap), so that the bad vibes will go in, and let the rockwool do their job keeping them from coming out. I didn't get any pics of the parts, but you can see how they go together from these pics.





I know I keep raving about the pocket screw jig - these frames went together in about 10 minutes each, including measuring (each is a little different), cutting, drilling the pockets, and assembling.



Then we painted 'em black, so they dont show too much through the burlap. Here's the guy I hired to do most of the labor. You heard it here first - he's gonna rock out the world big-time when he gets older



And yes, I did some of it, too. In addition to being a future rocker and probable engineer, it appears he can take better photos than me.



Here's the 3 'normal' ones



And here's the special one, with the cutout for the electrical box



A lot of the sites I've researched about rockwool have included warnings about fibers in the air causing respiratory and itchiness issues. All the time I've been working with the stuff - putting it in the walls, making cutouts for electrical boxes, and now cutting many triangles and carrying them back and forth from my shop - I've never once had any issues with it. I've been mostly in short sleeves and not wearing a mask, and no problems - not even coughing. This is very different from the regular pink insulation and the blown-in crap that's in my attic - I itch and cough all day long when I get near that stuff. Despite that, I'm sure that some people react different than others, so I figured I'd better do what I can to encapsulate the rockwool, since the burlap I'm using is really porous.

I used lightweight 4 oz polyester batting that I got pretty cheap at Jo Ann Fabric - yes, I did go into that place and buy fabric, and no, they didn't take my man-card.

Wrapped it over, under, and around the sides of the rockwool. You can see it in the pic below. Also note the vertical stops I put in to keep the stuff from falling forward, which I'm sure would ruin someone's day (probably mine )



Last night I did some final prep work - covering the last of the rockwool and painting the inside framing black, which will be very close to the burlap. I'm hoping that the white batting will be far enough back that it'll not be seen through the burlap, but I may have to do something about that, too.

As I said, I'm about to start covering frames tonight in the hopes that I can clean all the crud out of the room and start loading in all my gear. Will post pics as soon as I can set my guitar down

[Tortuga]

Managed to get quite a bit done this past weekend. Lots of updates coming this week. Back to bass traps...

Because the triangle framework - at least the front-most pieces - would be somewhat visible underneath the fabric cover, I went and painted all of it black. Here, you can see the problem corner (the one with the electrical outlet in the way), and see how it turned out.



This is the fabric that I used - black burlap. Cost me around $25 to do all 4 corners.



...and yes, here I am being all domesticated again. There was a very distinct fold-line in the fabric, so I used our fabric steamer to get the material 'relaxed', then hit it with the iron at high heat. Did the trick.



Covering these frames is very similar to covering an amplifier speaker frame, which I've never been real good at. Just on a bigger scale. Luckily, this isn't fabric that has distinctive lines in it (like the silver stuff Fender uses, Marshall basketweave, etc.), so you won't be able to point out all my mistakes. I didn't get many pictures during the covering operation. It's stessful and it pretty much sucks - last thing I wanted to do with a staplegun in one hand, and frantically trying to pull / straighten the material over the frame, was to stop and take a quick snap. Suffice to say, I'm done with covering frames for this year.

Here's one of the 'normal' ones

[Tortuga]

This frame was a bit difficult. Because I wanted to have the frames follow the contours of the wall (no wall is straight that's framed with wood), I cut each horizontal piece of the covered frame to match the length of the pieces they'd be fastened to. That way, the outside vertical of the covered frame wouldn't have any gaps to the wall. Hard to explain, but basically, each horizontal piece was a little bit different in length.

Surprisingly, I only wound up with one frame out of square (checked by measuring the diagonals). I used screws and a piece of string to temporarily correct the out-of-square issue, which allowed me to cover the frame with the material in it's corrected state, so that it'd fit to the wall without developing sags and ripples in the material.

You can see it pretty well in these 3 shots. Worked like a champ - when I tried it out after removing the string, it stayed almost perfectly straight







Covering this, along with the frame that had to accommodate the power outlet box, were a bit tricky to do right. Many explecatives were used in the creation of those frames , but they all turned out ok.

[ajaxlepinski]

Wow! You are certainly doing things the right way!

[Tortuga]

Wow! You are certainly doing things the right way!

With a little help from my friends

Not sure if I noted this yet, but I did get in a tryout of the room on Monday night. Despite the still-remaining flutter echo, I was astounded by the improvement in tone I was getting not only from my JCA stack, but also my old Fender Pro Reverb. Had that little guy cranked on 4 and the crunch was KILLER. Hit it in the front with my old DOD OD250, and it was . I've only had occasion to crank the Fender a couple of times, and was never all that impressed with any kind of amp distortion coming from it, but I had a huge grin on my face the whole time - I swear, everything sounds better in there. I really think the bass traps are going a long way towards tightening the room, and I can only imagine what it'l be like when I get some better treatments on the walls.

I'm still behind on the updates - will try to get some up later this evening. Just got home from work and finished dinner - heading out to put my recording rig together.

One other thing - I'm expecting to post an NSD (New Studio Day) up after this coming weekend. My buddy is coming out to help me officially christen the studio on Saturday. As an added bonus, he's coming armed with some cool gear, including his old Boogie Mark II (actual version tbd, but seriously hoping / expecting it to be a C+) that hasn't seen the light of day since the late 90's, and we're going to do a full check-through before powering it up (if all appears ok) and giving it a little bit of a workout.

[Tortuga]

Unfortunately, the white batting showed through the black burlap a lot more than I had hoped. I used leftover burlap to cover it up.



Same upper-right with the extra layer. Big difference.



Had enough leftover material to cover 3 of the 4 corners. Will worry about that later.



And, done

[SenatorClayDavis]

Yeah it definitely does look better with the burlap doubled up like that. Nice clean looking traps

[Tortuga]

Yeah it definitely does look better with the burlap doubled up like that. Nice clean looking traps

Thanks - I'm pretty happy with them. Only thing is, I think it did change the amount of effectiveness of the traps - I think I'm hearing a bit more of the 'ring' in the flutter echo now that I've put 3 layers of material over the rockwool, and I'm not noticing the 'deadness' I was feeling when I'd walk in the room. Could just be my overactive OCD - the room sounds really tight with the amps cranked, so I'm really happy at the moment. I'm sure it's going to get even better when I get some panels on the walls.

[Tortuga]

Last step in the construction process (HELL YEAH! ) - baseboards and door casing.

As with covering the bass traps, I didn't get good snaps of the initial part of building up the moldings, but there's enough to show off the finishing and installation process that should give a good idea of what was involved.

The moldings I wanted were going to be beefy, man-cave material - none of this frilly ogee, cove, bead nonsense that's more at place in the house. I made some samples from scrap material I had laying around and came up with a simple design that I'd mill out of a single sheet of 5/8" MDF. Basically, they're 5" tall baseboards and 3-1/2 casings with 1/4" roundovers on the exposed edges.

First step was to measure everything out and figure out my cutting plan. The drawing on the left gives me rough measurements including extra needed for joining at corners. The right side identifies which baseboard piece goes where.



My shop space is pretty tight, so running sheet material through my table saw is pretty tough. What I do, instead, is break the sheet material down outside with my circular saw using some very cool homemade guides and a 'sacrificial' table I build up a few years ago. I was able to rough-cut the five 5" pieces and three 3-1/2" casing boards in fairly short order, then ripped them to finish width on the table saw, so that they were all consistent.



I'm actually trying out some molding ideas I want to do in the house, so I did my casing sort of old-school style with big plinth blocks

[Tortuga]

Then came the painting. 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of black paint. Big & Bold



After letting them dry, I took final measurements and started chopping everything down to finished sizes



Lots of angle cuts - where the baseboards meet the bass trap frames, inside & outside corners around the A/C niche, and the 2 walls that required splicing.



Measuring for outside corners



Not too bad - putty is my friend



When extending baseboards, you splice at an angle - not butt the two pieces together. This helps hide the join - especially as things settle, expand & contract, etc.



Because this is a studio, and part of the sound mitigation strategy relies on the walls being sealed air-tight, I don't want to be mounting anything to the drywall unless it's backed by a stud - a nail or through the drywall that's not backed will allow some sound to escape. For that reason, I wanted to be able to quickly locate studs without having to grab my stud finder, and decided to fasten the moldings using screws at each stud. I had already marked the walls at the bottom during the painting steps, so it was fairly easy to transfer the locations to the molding. I preset my square at the halfway point on the molding, placed the piece into position along the wall, and moved the square to each stud mark. Then marked the screw point using my center punch. Once I got going, it was almost as fast as using a nail gun.

[Tortuga]

Couple of pics mid-way through





And the finished product. I put a little detail in the door header piece that looks pretty cool. All in all, I'm really happy with the way it turned out.







Almost ready to rock!

[ajaxlepinski]

Totally awesome!!! Looking like you had this guy on your team:

[Tortuga]

Totally awesome!!! Looking like you had this guy on your team:

NORM!!!

That's a helluva compliment. I'll take it!

[Krunchmeister]

Looking nice! Parallel surfaces add to the flutter . If you put up some acoustic foam on just 2 connected walls then it will make a big difference.

[Tortuga]

Looking nice! Parallel surfaces add to the flutter . If you put up some acoustic foam on just 2 connected walls then it will make a big difference.

Thanks, and yeah, through the warnings I've gotten here as well as the research I've done, I knew I was going to have some challenges with echo. I'm getting the room ready for it's first jam this weekend, so it's all about gear right now, but I do plan to start building up some panels in the next week or so to see if I can eradicate most of the flutter without making it a totally 'dead' room. To be continued, eh?

[cudbucket]

Very nice. I like your Grizzly saw too. Have a Powermatic 64A myself. I take a screw driver to those outside miters that don't quite close. If you burnish the corner with the barrel of the screw driver, it pushes the wood fibers together and the joint looks as tight as gnat's azz. In your case, you'd just have to re-touch the paint.

[Tortuga]

Very nice. I like your Grizzly saw too. Have a Powermatic 64A myself. I take a screw driver to those outside miters that don't quite close. If you burnish the corner with the barrel of the screw driver, it pushes the wood fibers together and the joint looks as tight as gnat's azz. In your case, you'd just have to re-touch the paint.

Thanks for the tip - might do something like that. I'm not terribly concerned with the way it looks - it's more concern for things getting caught in the gap and pulling.

The saw I have is killer. Started with a hand-me-down Sears contractor-style, and spent way too much money trying to fix it up - Biesemeyer fence, linked belt, new motor, etc. Thing that finally killed it for me was when the arbor developed a wobble. Did a job for someone I know (built a room inside his garage for his kid), and part of the payment was money towards this saw. Cost me something like $650 shipped for a very heavy-duty cabinet saw with an excellent fence that's running 3hp on 220 in my shop. Grizzly makes really great schtuff, and their customer service was excellent at replacing the minor damage I had (new motor cover and top blade guard) during the shipment. I'm also familiar with the Powermatic saw you have - my dad has one. Excellent machine.

[Tortuga]

Almost forgot to post this pic of the first load-in from Monday night.



Ran my JCA50H on near-half volume for a 10-15 minutes. My wife said the noise level outside the garage was noticeable, but nothing more than a loud TV would be. She couldn't hardly hear it from within our house at all. Was roaring in the room - my kids wouldn't even come in.

Also ran the Fender amp at 4-5 on the dial, and was shocked by how good and loud it sounded, especially when pushed with the old DOD 250OD I have. The amp / old speaker sure had a flubby low-end to it. Definitely going to be doing some work on that amp in the future, including a new speaker or two.

Wednesday I set up my recording computer, and got things going well with that. Last night I hooked up the PA. Surprisingly, the small 85 watt mixer is pretty loud with those speakers, and may suit my needs just fine (good call, Mamberg!). The pots are definitely going to need some cleaning, as it was scratchy on many of the knobs I tried, and the volume was jumping all over. Did run my old POD XT through it, and that was a blast, too.

Tomorrow, my buddy is coming over - let the break-in / christening begin!

[nakedzen]

Looks great! Happy new studio day!

[Tortuga]

Ha - you beat me to it - was going to claim that on Monday!

Thanks

[Thurston]

I've been following this thread since the beginning, but can't remember if you said how you came up with the bass trap design. Did you do any sound measurements and design work or just assume that the traps would help?

Reason I ask is that I'm setting up my own room and am not sure how much I need to do to figure out what I would benefit from.

Did you hear a noticeable difference with the traps? Edit: nevermind I just read above that it improved things

[Tortuga]

I've been following this thread since the beginning, but can't remember if you said how you came up with the bass trap design. Did you do any sound measurements and design work or just assume that the traps would help?

Reason I ask is that I'm setting up my own room and am not sure how much I need to do to figure out what I would benefit from.

Did you hear a noticeable difference with the traps? Edit: nevermind I just read above that it improved things

Hi! Glad to hear from another of you

No science was used in determining what to build or how to go about it. Google was my friend - found lots of how-to's, and went from there. Some of what I read seemed to indicate that building up a mass of any sort in the corners will go a long way towards eliminating problems. I definitely do hear a big difference with the traps - I think they were more effective before I covered them with 3 layers of cloths, but I think what I came up with is a pretty good compromise of effectiveness, safety (air quality), and aesthetics. I did get a pretty good test this past weekend, and am really happy. Very much looking forward to getting a few more panels up on the walls, but I'm ecstatic with how it's all coming along.

Hope this helps.