Is it worth building an isolation room for guitar amps?

petejt

petejt

Active member
I'm drawing up a conceptual plan for my (longtime) music studio in the basement of my future home.

The live room will be big enough to hold a 4 to 5-piece band including a drum kit.


But I'm wondering about building an isolation 'booth' as a pit in the floor for guitar amps. The roof of the pit will be the floor of the live room. I can crank them right up and not blow everyone else away while playing in the live room, or have to hide in the control room.

Is it worth doing? Or just design a smaller 'isolation room' next to the live room for the amp cabinets?
 
I'd vote for the smaller isolation room. This way you don't have to sacrifice ceiling height in your basement (or build a weird foundation) and it can also double as a storage closet if there is enough space and shelving.
 
I'd say use technology to overcome the volume issues. Unless it's easy to reverse, or you never, ever plan to leave, virtually no one will want to buy a house that's had the basement "remodeled" in that fashion. Not even other musician's. Don't knock your home's value for something like that...
 
Here are my thoughts with a small studio of my own in my basement..

What are the dimensions of the room and more importantly the ceiling height? For drums, i hope you can get 8 foot ceilings at least. Overheads need a bit of room so they sparkle a little.

Boxiness can be your biggest problem if you isolate too tight. If you can build a small room with a reasonably high enough ceiling with rockwool insulation all around, you can minimize sound bleed and get some good mics on it. I would make this room the size of a double closet (not necessarily as high though but why not if you have the room) and deeper than a regular closet for sound waves to bounce. So lets say 5 feet wide, 5 feet high (enough to get a cab off floor) and maybe 4 feet deep) You could put baseboards around it and really make it part of the decor. If full height of a closet, middle down could be for the cabs, top for shelving and to sort mics and gear). Just beef up the back side of the door. But if it is already in a more or less sound proofed room, you can leave as is and it acts much like a gobo would. (closet will look better than a hole in the ground!)

Live tracking room would be great, if you could squeeze something like 20x10 feet for drums and to roll cabs out into with gobos if you want a live track field. Small control room on other side of glass with double door would be the best OR you just setup your DAW in the same room and make sure you have bass traps in corners and some panelling spaced slightly off the wall.
 
IndyWS6":2duasdra said:
I'd say use technology to overcome the volume issues. Unless it's easy to reverse, or you never, ever plan to leave, virtually no one will want to buy a house that's had the basement "remodeled" in that fashion. Not even other musician's. Don't knock your home's value for something like that...
Click to expand...

Bingo. If you leave the house with a closet, that can be used for space. If you remodel some sort of a hatch in the floor, people are going to be thinking WTF sort of cool storage is this. Ultimately, a music studio when you leave, could be seen as a home entertainment/theatre room for the next owners. They might dig that and it definitely is not an eye sore if it is done right and the drywalling and baseboards/door casings look right. Also, no matter what you think, if you work a regular 9-5 job, you won't do as much regular tracking as you think. Last time I tracked guitars was 2 months ago now. Been dicking around with editing my drums since then.
 
-put the "pit" in the floor of your basement-

-(it can double as a bomb shelter for the end of days)-

-(my mother before 2YK)-"did you buy enough water and tuna fish?"......-(me)-"no ma,... I bought more bullet's, i'll kill the do-gooder's and take there water,tuna fish & daughter's"
 
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