John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

Hi All...
Looking for a specific panel material & cloth material (hopefully something easily available) to create low-cost versions similar to "RealTraps" wrapped panels. Any advice is much appreciated
b willy

A post from Pinkhimpy just answered my panel q... any advice on the cloth covering and adhesive? is it best to use facing on one or both sides? thx much,
b willy

One more thought... Would the effectiveness of the plywood/703 bass trap(s) design be negatively affected by a cloth covering?

Please have a look at the links at the bottom of this page
http://www.bobgolds.com/AbsorptionCoefficients.htm
starting from Jon Risch's Absorbers to Vshine's Wall Absorbers, for some ideas.

If you use a cloth covering that you can breath through (i.e. wrap it around your head and not suffocate) then it will not change the absorbtion coefficeients much if at all. Speaker cloth certainly falls into that category. So does chicken wire, and burlap.

Cloth that you can't breath through is less predictable. But generally speaking it'll probably reflect some higher frequencies, but let low frequencies through. Garbage Bags certainly fall into this category, as does felt.

You can glue cloth with 3M Super 77 spray, but any place that you've got glue, especially thick glue, that fills the pores of the cloth, will change it's absorbtion coefficients, as well as change it's stretch/appearance. So I'm thinking that you would wrap the 703 like a christmas present and glue only on the back. Alternatively you can sew the cover like a pillow case.

Thx Z

The only thing you want to keep in mind is that cloth you can breathe through *too* easily will also let fiberglass fibers through, and they'll probably make their way into your lungs. Bad juju.

Thanks much for the warning... I'll find a less harmful way to do Tom Waits vocals

A good trick is to wrap the fiber with a thin plastic (I use garbage bags) and then cover them with some fabric, looks nice and it is healthy, and it still works perfectly!

When I made mine, I used muslin (cheap cotton). I looked at burlap and thought it looked crappy and would fray all over the place and piss me off. To keep the fibers of the 703 from getting into the air, I put a layer of thin polyester batting (comes in fluffy or flat style... use flat) in between the 703 and the muslin wrapping. The batting acts like a spiderweb. I constructed mine like a christmas present - I wrapped it up and glued the muslin to itself using non-toxic fabric glue for cotton. The guy at SPI where I bought the 703 said "if you use a glue, make sure it's a non-solvent glue". So I basically didn't put any glue on the 703 at all.

More info w/ sound samples before and after -
http://www.pinkhumpy.com/basstraps.html
also
http://www.johnlsayers.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2930

i was thinking of some landscaping cloth.
to seal in the fibers.
any thoughts.

Check E-bay under the "Fabrics" search or "Textiles" or even "Curtain Material". You can find alot of fabric on there to cover gobos, diffusers etc. I recently found a 54" wide bolt of fabric 37 yards long for 60 bucks! Its enough to cover every diffuser I have. Now wheres my staple gun????

I use a layer of thin plastic over the whole wall before the cloth cover. The fibre particles arent so much a problem in walls as the fibres drop vertically - it's in the ceilings that the problem really occurs.

cheers
john

So John, how many mil would you recommend on the plastic thickness?