DIY Gobos from Doors

How To Build Acoustic Gobos Out Of Regular Doors

Materials that I used to build these go-betweens

1. (2) 2'-8” x 6'-8” x 1-3/8” hollow core wood doors
2. (3) panels from a 4'-0” x 6'-8” x 1-3/8” hollow core wood bifold door
3. (detached (3) 12” panels from the set
4. (16) door hinges, 3-1/2” x 1-7/16”
5. About 55 sq. ft of carpet
6. About 55 sq. ft. of 3” acoustic foam or equiv. 24x24 and 12x12
7. (7) +50 lbs post type wheel casters
8. (3) pull handles
9. 16 oz. can of 3M Super 77 Spray Adhesive
10. (3) tubes of Liquid Nail, Heavy Duty, Construction & Remodeling

Tools that I used for this project

1. hammer
2. Phillips & flat head screw driver
3. router
4. caulk gun

One of the important things that you'll need when first starting off is enough floor space to lay out your doors for both doing the routing on the door hinges and cutting your carpet. Since I had access to a shop I did both there and not at home.

Keep in mind that I'm sure there are many ways to build gobos, this is just one method that I used. The overall height of the walls can vary greatly to your specific requirements, for my uses I preferred to keep the doors the stock height of 6'-8”. They could easily have been cut down to say 4' or 5' high. Or you could use (2) or (4) doors instead. Again, many different possibilities.

At times it could be helpful to have an extra hand to help manipulate to walls into position when there are being hinged together.

Order of construction

1. Measure everything exactly and cut your carpet (if using carpet)
2. Use router to channel out new hinge locations on the doors, be as exact as possible
3. Create any access holes in the doors if needed
4. Lay doors flat on the floor and glue carpet pieces on using Liquid Nail. For a tight glue job, add some weight on top of the carpet pieces while glue is drying over night.
5. After glue is dry for the carpet, drill holes in bottom of door and insert the post wheel casters
6. Assemble doors together with all hinges in place
7. Screw in pull handles on outer door edges (1-3/8” side) and somewhere in the middle (I did this just for being able to move the partition around without disturbing the acoustic tile, also you might want to consider any thing else that should be here before you put the foam on, headphone hanger, wiring harness, etc.
8. Using the 3M Super 77 or equivalent, attach the acoustic foam. Be wary of fumes and overspray.

That's pretty much it! With all of the tools and materials it should take you about 2-3 days to complete leisurely.

Microphone Placement

All depending on the size of your gobos this may or may not be an issue. Microphone placement can be achieved through placing the mic stand in the gobo space, through a door hinge opening point (though you can't open the hinge point all the way because it will pinch), by cutting a hole in the door for the mic stand to poke through or dropping the mic over the top of the gobos, it's all up to you but need to be thought out prior to construction so that you don't have to go back & cut holes in doors, carpet and foam..