After posting the pics of the drums, I thought that I would share my little home “away” from home, which is my rehearsal studio in my garage. This will be a long post because I am bored and have time!
The pics are basically in order showing how it is set up right now. Nothing here is posed, it is just how I left it after some neighbors came over and jammed last night, and how it will be when a potential new band for me comes over tomorrow. The key: Keep it locked and loaded…ready at all times! It certainly is.
Pic 1:
This is another view of the drum set (see the "My new drum set" thread) with a view of the speakers above. The corner speaker is a 10” wedge monitor. It is sitting on a rubber cushion and leaning against a rubber bungee. Because of that, it does not transmit much sound and is ready for quick removal for a live gig. All overhead speakers are designed in the same fashion. The other speaker is my 2-12 stereo rig for my guitar. The
guitar rig is one of the racks that you see on the floor next to the drum riser. Notice that there is AC high and low in the place, with isolated 15 and 20 amp circuits. That big angles surface is for a 24 Channel board. I don’t have a decent mixer as of yet (my last band had one), so I am using a little rack mounted one to do everything. It is getting me by for now (3 vocal, drums, keys, and bass run through the PA).
Pic 2
This is a view of the studio wall directly across from the drum riser. I took a low and high pic to show how I conserved space by putting speakers over the keys and mounted wall hangers for the axes. I like to run that acoustic that you see into that old Acoustic bass amp into the speakers above it. That Carvin is such a sweet guitar. The whiteboard is essential for band rehearsals!
Pic 3
This is panning slightly right again. That is the door in the corner. My newer bass rig is on the right with a cabinet for another PA speaker. If you notice, all of the speaker pics show a black “track” running between every cabinet. This was a last-minute add as I was building the studio. All wiring to all speakers and all of the mic cables that are up there run in these tracks. It completely surrounds the studio and passes through every cabinet. That SM57 sticking out there is one of 2 mounted up high just for recording live ideas as my buds and I are fiddling around.
Pic 4
This is looking the other direction on the same wall. The 2 cabinets are for those 10” monitor wedges that I was speaking of (a member of a previous band owned a few, I have yet to replace them). Even without them, the PA is loud enough. With more speakers running at lower volume, the vocals in there are very clear and crisp. No one ever complains about hearing themselves.
That is the jest of it. I have a few more axes stashed away in the house. Some day maybe I will post pics of those. I have them somewhere for insurance purposes (I had to add a waiver to cover this stuff!).
How did I build it? Go get another beverage…then read on.
I did a heck of a lot of reading before I tackled the project. I had some limited construction experience, although I am proficient in such things.
That being said, this is what I did:
I used 1 space of a 2-car garage. It had to be shortened lengthwise because of room for the garage door and the entry door to the house (which happened to be on the only side that I could use for the studio). This left a dismal 9x12 area for a 4-piece, but a challenge I was willing to take.
I took the “room within a room” approach, but due to my limited space, had to have one common wall to the outside (the biggest compromise of the project). The studio itself is anchored into the cement with 2x4’s, but where it meets the common wall, it is only anchored at the top with old motor mounts (that’s right, from a car). The ceiling is completely free from the existing garage cross members with about a ½” separation. That means that the whole studio rests on the cement and only touches the house structure in 2 sound isolated points.
I also took the offset stud idea, but I had to modify it. The idea here is that when you have studs with drywall on both sides, you can fill the spaces all you want, but vibration will travel from the interior to the exterior directly through the joists, greatly reducing the effectiveness of any insulation that is in between the studs. Normally, this is done by assembling a 6” wide wall and having the 2x4 studs spaced the normal 8” apart (staggered). When installed you put one on the exterior side, the next on the interior side, etc. Therefore, only where there are corners, ceilings, and floors do the interior studs touch the exterior. In these areas, however, the studs are reinforced. My modifications involved the limited space, so I used made the walls the width of a 2x4, a rotated the studs 90 degrees so the wide sides faced the interiors and exteriors, and I spaced them at 12” (keep in mind that this structure did not have to bear much weight itself, so it is still very structurally sound).
Since every wall (well, object, for that matter) has a resonate frequency (something very often overlooked in such a project), I used ½” drywall on the inside, and 5/8” drywall on the outside. That help with resonate bass notes that are transmitted through the interior wall from effecting it’s matching exterior wall the same way. Insulation thickness in these walls is just the standard R13 stuff as taking away too much free space in the walls (by using a thicker insulation) would be contradictory in this application. I did use 2 layers of insulation on the ceiling (one layer in the studios ceiling and another between the existing garage joists), and I did put ply above the garage joists creating a deep insulation layer (+ - 7”) while keeping the ceilings from touching.
Everything above refers to sound “containment,” but now I had a very loud reflective chamber to deal with. I had a cement floor and walls covered with sheetrock. I sealed everything (including electrical boxes and such), then added ½” soundboard from Home Depot. This stuff is cheap and does an amazing job. On top of that, I added foam insulation (the egg crate type) everywhere. Some careful shopping can yield good prices on this stuff (I found 4’ by 8’ sheets for $26 each). I used a thin carped pad, and I used the cheap Home Depot carpet to cover the floor. I did do the double-door idea, but in keeping with the resonate frequency idea, I used 2 different types of doors. The exterior door is solid, then I used a cheaper hollow door for the inside. The interior door got a layer of foam on the outside (where it meets the solid door), a sheet of ½” soundboard on the inside, topped with a layer of foam. Both doors are weather-sealed. The sound that I lose through the doors is negligible.
Since space was an issue for our 4 ½ piece band (I do double duty), all amps went up high. I built simple custom cabinets in each corner where I have our monitors mounted (all speakers rest on ¾” rubber mats and tilt downward, being held in by rubber bungees (with safety stops in case of bungee failure)). This was the second largest compromise as speakers hanging from walls will always transmit some sound, but once again, it is negligible. There is also a subwoofer in the room and the system is x-overed. The whole subwoofer idea pulls double duty and actually saves us room. The drum set fits on a single 4’x8’ ply riser. I build a sub that is 11 ¾” tall and 8’ wide. Once face is angled to hold 2 15” speakers (making it 10” wide at the top, 24” at the bottom). It is sealed (if anyone wants to know how I came to coming up with this design I can share it on another post). It sits on the floor with the riser on top. The front of the riser is held up with our milk crate type storage containers (serving as storage as well) full of our cables and such. By pulling the low end out of the suspended monitors and throwing them on the floor, we get containable sound transmission through the walls.
This is getting rather long winded, so I will stop here. If you have any questions or comments, by all means...shoot! I will be glad to get into detail (after all, electrical and ventilation are HUGE in this project). I also have some websites that are beneficial for this stuff. I hope that someone benefits from this!
Here is the absolute cheapest place to buy foam that I could find:
http://www.knoxfoam.com/cgi-bin/Soft...380+1066434851
Wolfman jammin' away during one of his visits!
Linear Mode
