Didn't know that about the dowels. I like that idea. I used the cleat block way for my arcades. Very strong joint. I'm still undecided on whether to paint or cover. My wife is pretty crafty and brought this to my attention. Vinyl similar to Marshall Tolex The actual Marshall Tolex is wicked costly. This stuff looks close enough to me. I'm thinking about having them send a sample. Thank you for all your help. I'm sure that dowel thing is going to save me some headaches.

Chris, I picked up a Yamaha RX-N600e stereo amp to drive them. The amp will drive 6 channels at close to 95 watts a piece for an 8 ohm load. I am crossing the 4 sets of woofers and tweeters at 3k and just powering the 12 inchers toward the ground as is. That will use up 6 amps there. The speakers are rated for 100 watts a piece with 20 oz magnets. At this point I am planning on mounting the speakers directly to the soundboard and hoping that it does not introduce too much in the way of spurious resonant frequencies. Of course I will need to introduce a new baffle board on the bottom of the instrument to close the box. The volume of the new box will be large and I do not intend to port for anything.

As far as the imaging of the piano goes this is where I intend to hope for the best. The amplifier has a way of taking the 2 stereo channels and pushing them out in typical "surround" fashion. The left and right channels will be the far left and right as normal. The bottom drivers will be left and right from the "B" set of amps. The other two sets at the center and rear will be from the surround center and rear channels. I could have just put the 2 sets of drivers in the cabinet but a real piano is resonating from just about everywhere in the box to begin with. The sound engineer may have used a stereo or quad set of mics to capture the original sound from specific locations on the original instrument but this doesn't necessarily mean that the amplified sound will be accurately reproduced when listening on the piano bench. There are so many reflections off the lid etc that I wanted to create more of the "wall of sound" from the original instrument and let the imaging take care of itself. (If that makes any sense:) ) I owned a pair of Magnepan speakers years ago and loved the wall of sound they produce. It will be an experiment for sure.

Yes, that is exactly the way acoustic grands do it. They send sound out in all directions in three dimensions.

I'd not thought about using an A/V receiver. They have DSP inside that solves a few problems and you can buy them cheap. And I could connect my Mac to an A/V receiver with just a single fiber optic cable. (All Macs have s/pdif optical out)

Appliance Epoxy. Smooth factory-like finish, ultra hard enamel. This stuff is really nice. I put some on a scrap piece I had from the other day and I love the way it looks. Very shiny, very smooth, and only $5 a can. I've still got to figure out what method to use for sealing the edges. I've read that a mixture of wood glue and water works, or prime and sand a number of times. A guy from work told me to try using spackling. Haven't tried any yet. But something is definitely needed. The edges of this stuff are thirsty. Have a look...

I think it might turn out better than I'd hoped.

Cheers
-Z

The build went very well. I didn't seem to hit any snags along the way. Got some latex enamel, satin black for the inside. I ended up not going with the epoxy spray paint. And I'm glad I didn't. I took a chance and stopped by a local fabric store to see if they had any vinyl that would be similar to guitar amp Tolex. SCORE!! I got 9 yards of the stuff for $25. That's less than what paint would've cost. I've never covered anything in vinyl before. Having done so, I'd like to add that I dislike spray adhesive a lot. That stuff gets everywhere and stays. Anyway, here's how it turned out.

As you can see from the shots, the damn spray glue gets everywhere. No worries though. A little goo gone and it cleaned up rather nicely. I'm very happy with it. The only thing I'm still stuck on is whether or not to apply moulding. I just placed the brown trim on the finished cab and I'm not sure I like it. I think it's just because the brown looks bad against the black. I'm digging the thought of an alien green trim on black though. hmm.... I don't know. I've got some metal corners from an old Peavey amp that I still need to add but I'm taking a break for a few days. What do you guys think about adding the trim?

Thanks for having a look.
-Z

2 more.

who needs those cabinets when you can build your own a box of band aids later.

Great job, it looks really sleek.

No trim.

Nice job! How about red with a giant Nord logo?

Looks nice - congrats...

Nice!

I'm thinking along the same lines but with locking wheels to move it around (I play in a couple of different rooms in the house). I'll have to get busy in my shop real soon.

Jim

really nice! just needs some more work for the stand. looks top heavy to the eye. Really nice job with the cabinet though. Throw some polk m70's on the side;)

lol There isn't a stand at the moment. I've just got it sitting on a desk. I'm still working on how I want to build that part. The desk is plenty sturdy for the time being. I'm thinking of getting some Rokit monitors for the inside of the top part. It opens similar to the N2. It's not really important at the moment. I mostly play through headphones.

Thanks for the comments, guys. I appreciate it. I'd still like some ideas for trim though, if you've got some.

-Z