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[Richard Rempes]

Hoping someone can help with subwoofer rattling issue. I have four 4719A cabinets loaded with original 2441 8 ohm drivers. Half are reconed, half are original. Obviously these cabinets are pretty old and I'm not the original owner, so I'll guess on the safe side and say they've seen quite a bit of use. Last year we noticed a very un-musical hard (presumably) wood-on-wood slapping sound on BD hits and full-on rattling with the lowest of bass guitar/synth notes. This is happening with all four cabinets, regardless of the original and/or re-coned 2241s loaded in them. I pulled every driver and checked for VC rubbing - all seem OK. We finally tried an unorthodox test that involved me "bear hugging" the cabinets while they were making this noise from the back and compressing my body as tight to the enclosure as possible. The hard slapping/rattling stopped. All four yielded the same result. On to tearing the drivers and the back panel insulation out to inspect the internal 2x4 bracing. Everything appeared tight - even removed every accessible wood screw to verify boards were glued to the back panel. I find nothing loose, so my decidedly uninformed conclusion is that there is insufficient bracing in these cabinets. Have any of you experienced this issue with these older 4719A cabinets and if so, what did you do to rectify the problem? Add bracing? Fix some weird thing that happens with these cabinets that is not obvious? Scrap the cabinets and put the drivers into something lighter and better sounding? I've attached a screenshot from a Sketchup drawing I made that shows the bracing with the back off.

[Steve-White]

Drivers can rattle, enclosures can rattle.  Most likely the plywood in the cabinets has dried out and de-laminated over time.  Maybe from moisture as well.

Rather that try and explain how to get loose plywood lamination's back together (which I would undertake in my shop without hesitation) and then get 25 other recommendations.

I'll give you this - pull the drivers out and grills.  Rap them with a rubber mallet to be sure.  Call around to local cabinet shops and have a pro work on them for you.  No big deal to repair, maybe coat a paint on the inside when repaired.

Rock on.

[Paul G. OBrien]

The removable rear panel and 2x4 bracing is a red flag to me, I don't know for certain but that doesn't sound like an OEM JBL cab to me. These things should be made from baltic birch so the cab alone should be about 100lbs.

[Steve-White]

The removable rear panel and 2x4 bracing is a red flag to me, I don't know for certain but that doesn't sound like an OEM JBL cab to me. These things should be made from baltic birch so the cab alone should be about 100lbs.

You're probably right - the OEM JBL stuff is pretty bullet proof.

[Helge A Bentsen]

FWIW I bought 12 subs at a auction last year, two of them made a lot of noise when I tested them.
Initially suspected the drivers, upon further investigation I found that the baffle was loose in both of them.
Tightening them up with glue and screws solved this.

[Tim McCulloch]

It's been a long time since I looked inside a 4719 but I don't recall 2x4 bracing, nor was there a removable rear panel.

I'm 98.7% certain the noise you're hearing is coming from loose wood joints, and not necessarily where you expect them to be... (Helge has found loose baffle boards, I found loose handles)

On the 2241, removed from the cab... you need to check for a loose spider.  If the adhesive has partly released, the coil former/cone will not be properly controlled. Double spider suspensions present additional opportunities for this.

[Steve-White]

2241

[Richard Rempes]

The removable rear panel and 2x4 bracing is a red flag to me, I don't know for certain but that doesn't sound like an OEM JBL cab to me. These things should be made from baltic birch so the cab alone should be about 100lbs.

Paul - just to clarify, these are OEM 4719A cabinets. The pic I posted is a Sketchup CAD drawing I made with the back panel removed to show the bracing. Each loaded cabinet weighs 200lbs. The backs of my 4719A cabinets are not removeable! I've included some pics of the 2x4 interior bracing from the actual cabinet. All of the 2x4's run from top to bottom, side to side or front to rear, and all have a 1/8" to 1/4" gap between the end of the 2x4 and the panel they run up to. I assume this is by design?

[Mike Caldwell]

Did you try it without the grills on the cabinets.

Try Steve's rubber mallet test, put a little force behind it when you swing the mallet, the slightest loose thing in a speaker cabinet can make a loud noise and not just on sub cabinets.
Using a tone generator may help localize the noise.

You mentioned "bear hugging" the cabinet made the noise stop, that more or less rules out the woofers.

That said by today's standards the 2241 is not the most high power sub driver.
When you running the system how hard are you driving it and how much cone movement/excursion are you seeing on the woofer?

[Paul G. OBrien]

Those 2x4s are not original... it even looks like PT lumber but that could just be the pic, but in any event the stamp on the lumber makes it a hardware store item not something JBL would use. And I don't see what purpose they serve if they don't extend all the way to the panels, the whole idea is to prevent flexing of those big panels so they have to be a tight fit and must be attached as permanently as possible with high strength glue.

If I were doing this I'd use sculped interlocking plywood braces but to do that well one of the outside panels has to come out, the baffle would be the part I'd remove. You could also try redoing the current method with lumber or large dowels but again those have to fit tight and I don't know what luck you will have doing that through the driver openings. I suppose you could also just glue some shims in there to take up the gap.

[ProSoundWeb Community]