Isolation Cabinet (guitar) - Sizes and Types

Sizes and Types

A guitar speaker isolation cabinet has a built-in mounting baffle for a guitar speaker and a permanently mounted microphone clip. A compact isolation cabinet contains a small guitar speaker such as 6½" diameter and sometimes an attached power attenuator to prevent blowing the speaker.

A guitar speaker isolation box is large enough to contain a standard guitar speaker cabinet such as a 1x12" or 2x12" cabinet and a couple of compact microphone stands. Inexpensive but less effective implementations of this approach are to bury a guitar speaker and microphone in a closet, place gobo partitions around a speaker cabinet to somewhat deflect the sound, or form a tent with multiple layers of heavy blankets over a guitar speaker cabinet and microphone.

An isolation booth is a small room large enough to contain a single performer along with a rig, enabling the instrument to interact with the amplifier while isolating the rest of the band from the extreme volume.

Finally, the live room of a recording studio provides sound isolation between an entire band and the control room, allowing the studio engineers to work at manageable volumes and prevent ear fatigue.

The frequency response of an isolation system depends on the number of microphones, the type of microphones, microphone positioning, cabinet dimensions, speaker size, speaker model, and the amount of sound-absorption material inside the speaker cabinet. To control the resulting response, a dedicated equalizer can be used to enhance or reduce specific frequency ranges. The small room of an isolation cabinet does not produce audible room reverb, so that for recordings in general the "flannelly" sound has to be enhanced with an electronic reverb.