Premier Rock Forum

Soliciting recommendations for where to source boxes for amp heads. I need to get a few things listed on Reverb. Dumpster diving at the box music store?

Garth wrote: Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:27 am Soliciting recommendations for where to source boxes for amp heads. I need to get a few things listed on Reverb. Dumpster diving at the box music store?

Worth a try.

When I’ve shipped heavy fragile stuff, amps, old synths etc, here’s what I’ve done:

Wrap in bubble wrap, the heavy duty kind with 1” bubbles. Tape the bubble wrap to itself, tightly. Do this again around the other direction.

Cut cardboard panels from a large box and tape these over the bubble wrap.

Do another 2” layer of taped-on bubble wrap.

Choose a shipping box that fits the monster you’ve constructed pretty closely. Fill in the gaps around it with loose bubble wrap - not peanuts, which settle to one side, or garbage like crumpled newspaper, which compresses. Get enough in there so that the inner box can’t shift around. Tape it up and ship it.

You’ll easily spend $100 shipping something heavy like this. Make sure you charge for that.

The moving boxes at Home Depot/Lowe's are pretty good for shipping amp heads, and they're way cheaper than anything you'd find at the FedEx/UPS store. Spend the extra $2 and get the heavy duty ones.

I've also gone to the city's recycling drop-off place and raided boxes out of the cardboard bin.

I just use regular old boxes to ship my heads. Nothing fancy, but then again my builds are relatively light weight. I have a standard size that fit my heads and I just bought a chunk of em from like Uline or whatever. For odd sizes or shipping the 1x12 combos I make I just go to Staples and find something that suits my needs or can be cut down to appropriate size for them.

I make a bubble wrap shell for the head as noted previously. I use the small bubble stuff for easier pressure distribution, and have in 1' wide roll. Roll out two 8' long pieces and tape em together to make a 2'x8' piece. Put the amp on one end and roll it up like a big old sushi roll. Then I use more bubble wrap perpendicularly to cover the ends and faces. Seal with plenty of packing tape and you've got a little shell around your amp. Stick into box with whatever you need to fill the gaps and keep it in place and you're done.

Also, I had an amp sent back for repair a year ago and it arrived packed like this and survived the trip. Miracles are all around us...

Thanks y'all. I'm good on the overall "how to pack" and was planning on packing very closely how you are describing. but might be exactly what someone else needs to see. The video/suggestions on Reverb.com are...ok...although I'm not a huge fan of packing paper (better than fuggin peanuts I guess).

And they kinda flubbed an important step about labeling/tracking the tubes BEFORE they are removed (which I found out the hard way). Best to remove and label them one at a time if you're not an expert!

For the box, it's more just I'm a complete tight-wad and am looking to minimize my shipping costs as well as the whole "reduce/reuse/recycle" mantra and not go and buy a dedicated box if I don't have to. This first batch of sales won't contain any tube amps so that makes it a little easier at least.

If I can't find a decent box that fits, normally I just got out appropriate size shaped pieces from another box, tape the shit out of them, and possible also do another layer, directly onto the bubble wrapped head.

I've done this w/ hot glue to make pretty form-fitting DIY low-dough covers for all my amps that don't have "real" cases. Hot glue seems to hold surprisingly well in this application when it has completely let me down in almost every other application I've tried it with. Better than packing tape for sure.

I suppose this is something to keep in mind if the box is more just window dressing and the real protection is being done by foam walls and layers of bubble wrap. I could probably use an old refrigerator box from Home Depot or television box from Best Buy dumpster in this case - those are usually quite thick. Thx for the idea!

Ok so if you had some speakers that are recommend to run between 80 to 100 wats and you ran a power amp into them that was say 200 watts you would have a greater dynamic range?

Mickey242 wrote: Ok so if you had some speakers that are recommend to run between 80 to 100 wats and you ran a power amp into them that was say 200 watts you would have a greater dynamic range?

A greater dynamic range than...what exactly?

So yes, it's pretty normal (and desirable) to feed speakers with amps that put more power out than they're rated for. Almost always better than underpowering the speakers for sure.

Maybe could you rephrase the question to explain the problem you're trying to solve?

Garth wrote: Almost always better than underpowering the speakers for sure.

An aside but can you expand on this? What's 'wrong' with underpowering a speaker if you're not looking to drive/compress it?