The Boogieman Sub and the High Octane Guitar Amplifier

I'm not quite sure how this new hobby found it's legs, but it's starting to take hold. I find myself drawn to building things, so far things that involve wood, wires, and speakers. Let me explain.

I was sitting around one rainy and cold and rainy Saturday when I picked up a monthly catalog I'd received in the mail from a company called Parts Express. Basically Parts Express is an audio nerd's paradise. They sell, as parts, almost anything you can imagine that has to do with speakers, amplifiers, and car and home stereo installation. This is great audiophile reading. That month's flier had an article about building your own sub woofer. This makes perfect reading on a rainy day for someone who enjoys his music (and annoying his neighbor if not neighborhood). Now to be clear, I have a sub woofer. A nice one in fact. I've had it for years. Heck, I just paid $300 to have the manufacturer of my sub recondition it. I felt that after ten years of service and at least a dozen moves across town or across the country it was about time. It was humming, but that turned out to be a ground loop. I digress. Anyway, I'm reading this article about a design for a do-it-yourself sub woofer called the Boogieman. It's unique characteristic is it's shape, a flat and wide box. Somehow this appealed to me. A low to the ground sub with four drivers, internal porting, and a simple wiring setup based on a pre-built amplifier. Cool. Next thing I know I've just hit the 'Submit' button on Parts Express' order entry web site. The parts were on their way. A wave of guilt washed over me. What the heck was I doing? I was committed now, or so I told myself, and so I set my mind on the project. There were many decisions to make. In the end, I should have something like this.

I decided that rather than use MDF particle board and a covering that my Boogieman would be solid teak. That way it would fit in with the style and colors in my apartment. In my head, it's space saving design goals meant that it could fit into my now quite full living room and fade into the background. So with the parts on the way I took the plans and started off for the Home Depot and the premium lumber yard around the corner from it that I've used in the past for teak repair on my last sailboat. The nice thing about the lumber yard is their ability to begrudgingly make all the necessary cuts for me. I don't have a garage, or a real power tool setup so part of the challenge for me was to find a way to build this beast in my living room with minimal tools and minimal disruption to my life. I hate clutter and disorder so turning my living room into a wood shop without causing me angst was going to be a challenge. Just the type of logistics challenge I enjoy.

Turns out that solid teak three foot by four foot doesn't really exist. That's the size of the Boogieman depth and width. In my head that size was small. When I found some nice 3/4" teak plywood to be cut for the top and bottom pieces I was shocked when the cuts were done and the pieces were, to my eye, huge. They could easily have been the beginning of a dining room table, this sub was much larger than I had envisioned. This type of optimistic mistake in not uncommon for me, so I got a bit of a laugh out of the situation. I was committed now, I had parts on the way and wood cut. I had to finish this out even if it meant that I was going to sell the sub on eBay after assembly.

With the pre-cut wood the only real wood working I needed to do was on the bottom piece. I needed three holes for the speakers and one for the amplifier. The right way to cut those holes out is with a router, which is loud, and it makes a huge amount of fine wood dust. There was no way I was going to make those cuts in my living room.

Home Depot and other large one-stop-shop warehouse-style stores are okay for somethings, but they have no soul when compared to smaller, local sometimes family run stores like my local True Value Hardware store. This is especially ture of the one on Charles Street in the Beacon Hill neighborhood here in Boston. It's one of those tiny shops stacked to the ceiling with nearly everything you need for basic repairs and maintenaince, only in small amounts. Most important quality of this type of store for me is their friendly disposition and the willingness of the employees to provide personal help in their wood shop in the basement. I took my wood down there with my router and spent an hour making noise and dust in their basement with some help and when I was done I had my cutouts finished and ready for install.

The rest was easy really. Laying out the internal pieces of wood for the ports, where the screw holes should be, and how to mount the speakers and amp took time, and precise measurement, but were easy. This was fun, I had to think things through twice and cut or drill once. The challenge of getting things right the first time was a refreshing change from software development which is a constant iterative process of refinements that never ends. With this, there was a start and a finish and in the middle things had to be done right the first time.

Wiring was simple and in no time I was hooking up this new beast to my stereo system. After a while I had it placed in a nice location in my place where it wasn't too noticeable. It took me a week of fiddling around to sonically balance it out with my other speakers and the other sub now positioned across the room centered between the rear speakers. The Boogieman sits behind the center channel and takes signals from the main left and right speakers. When playing jazz, blues, rock, or classical music this speaker setup (Bowers & Wilkins for the mains, center, surrounds, and rear with Adcom components) presents a wonderful and fully voiced sound stage.

This experience, now finished, is something I'm surprisingly proud of. The satisfaction I get from listening to the speaker while knowing that I built it is more than the satisfaction of listening to the B&W speakers that I won on eBay (although there is a certain different satisfaction to that too). It's inspired me to try my hand at something more complex. My thinking is that the Boogieman was a warm-up, and that I'm now ready to play with high voltage. Next up is a vacuum tube based guitar head amplifier.

To be sure, I have a guitar amp (three really, but one is really large, high quality, and highly prized). I have a Bedrock. I've blogged about it before. So, as before, I don't really need to build another one. That said, I think that when finished, if I actually accomplish my goal, I'll find the same level of pride and enjoyment I derive from the sub only this time it will be my voice through the guitar that I'm sounding out rather than someone else's work. I think that's cool, so what the heck.

I took a look around the web (how did anyone survive before the internet?) and found a lot of resources for do-it-yourself tube guitar amps. I settled on the High Octane Amplifier as outlined on the Silvatone site.

Not only was this a great looking amp, the sound samples were juicy and exactly what I'm targeting in my playing. What really sealed the deal for me was the extensive photos, designs, CAD drawings, parts list, supplier references, instructions, and links to various tutorials elsewhere on the web for fun things like applying Tolex (the black covering on the exterior of the amp). This project has the right level of complexity in terms of wood, wire, and finish.

So, I find myself on a cold and rainy Saturday morning just having finished ordering most of the parts for this new project. I'm feeling a bit guilty again, but not so much as before. My mind is already starting to plan out the steps I'll take to build this and list the tools I'll need to do a good job. This project has a bit more danger to it too, the electronics have the potential to cause serious harm due to very high voltage so unlike the sub I'll have to be extra careful when wiring it up. That won't be the only new challenge, but it is the one with the most potential for disaster. I think I can pull it off, and if I do I'll have something I can feel good about for years to come.

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