Cab's: Best, worthy, custom, etc.

[Zeus_Mutation]

I'm in search of the perfect cabinet. This search has me feeling more and more that the Holy Grail would be easier to find.

I love the word "Best" on TB. It evokes more responses than most anything else I see. The overwhelming answer when asked is in general... what YOU like is best, for You. Which is really a none answer. This started to irk me enough to create a thread.

Best - Why won't we define this word? It's not a scary word. Sure it can become very subjective and yet there is room for clarity.

To my mind, when someone asks for the "best" of an inanimate object the first thought is quality. Quality to me is attention to detail and superior materials. Is there a best hamburger? No. Is there a best diamond? Certainly there's flawless diamonds. These could be considered the best.

I recently read a thread on a different site regarding speaker size, compatibility, and quality. The OP stated he put these fancy speakers (sorry, can't recall brand, I'll look for the post) into a Ampeg cabinet and it blew doors over another cabinet of a high priced & notable manufacture. I must be having problems today because this too rubbed me raw.

I love the idea… put better speakers into a cabinet. Then all sorts of quality concerns and math equations dominated my thoughts. Heck if these popular manufactures use such & such speakers, specced to this or that and I can buy 'em too… I'll have a top shelf product without the price tag. So I started looking into that.

- hopefully that link works.

After watching that video, who could doubt the manufacturing concept?
1. Does the speaker on the left look like it's of a higher quality?
2. Would you be so bold as to call it better based on what we can see alone?
3. If both speakers were in a separate cab of the exact same specs, sounded the same, and cost the same would you not prefer the left one?
Based on it looks (via video) to be of better quality. I'd call that an easy "best." Choose the word "better," still saying the same thing.

Back to the fancy speaker in Ampeg cab guy - He had me thinking "Isn't this why I buy from a reputable manufacture?" The folks with all the tools, engineers, time, and funding to experiment and figure out the very best mathematical solution to the process. I mean, really, are these guys just messing with us and they put subpar stuff in a box and turn a profit? Because if you think so, they should be on a list of don't buy at all costs right?

Not many people go into business with the idea of breaking even. The idea is to profit right. So cutting costs is essential. Where you cut is profoundly important.

Not changing a tried and true successful product doesn't mean it's of superior quality, it may just have character and a history.
Let's take Ampeg for example, this is hypothetical, discovered they didn't need any new materials, design changes, retooling, or upgrades to make their most popular speaker cabinet. That leaves a lot of room for profit, even accounting for inflation. Would you call that the "best" speaker, I couldn't. The standard answer of "if you like the sounds it's the best" would certainly apply. However, there is a company making a speaker with better materials and so forth and that speaker would be better than the hypothetical Ampeg. So when Asked a response could be… Ampeg have been made the same way for 50+ years, but (insert brand) makes a superior speaker if it sounds good for your application. To me, many of these "best" questions are asking who's using the higher quality materials and in which price point. Sound is still king, but quality is a major factor. 925 Silver is what it is because the material is 92.5% uh, silver. lol… We've valued the material by its purity. Speaker materials can be thought of the same way. Some are 925 some are not.

Back to diamonds - If you've purchased a quality diamond you'll know there's much more to 'em than what Jarred or Kay offers. Some diamonds are visibly better than others, but flawless is considered the "best." So, who makes the best speaker itself? Somebody, nobody… I won't accept it's a none answer. Somebody is making one… even if we don't know who it is right now.

If putting said speaker, made with the highest quality materials and attention to detail into a generic cab resulted in superior performance, sound, and durability I'd expect we'd see it as the norm, which I haven't yet. I'm open to enlightenment though…
Now, if said speaker is matched to a cab specifically designed for it, wouldn't it be the best it can be? Still not under the description of 'best' IMO.

Riddle me this… if the cab materials are of the same quality across the different manufactures than something else is causing the price point.
That again lends itself to say there are in fact better and best cabs because of the materials used across the board. Be it plywood or MDF, crossovers, tweeter, etc, etc, etc. If the Avatar's are manufactured with the same level of material and attention to detail why are they so affordable? If Hartke is the same as Markbass why aren't they priced more similarly? This could go on and on…

The answer has several factors, but the simple reason is because some speakers ARE better than others. So the "best" speaker cab would be the one with hight quality materials and the highest level of quality control. That;s not saying its affordable. Do you know who makes that, I don't. Which is exactly why I would go to a forum of experienced users and ask what they've discovered over the years… saying IDK is far better than "whatever sounds good to you" which is a great lesson, but not helpful.

The final part of this 4AM rant… If speaker cabinets within a certain price point are all the same in quality control and materials then why not be explicit and state it. Go ahead… "Any cab in the $300-$500 are all the same, just choose what sounds good to you." or "Don't get hung up on anything specific because unless your spending $1000 there's little to no difference." And if there is in fact no difference, why would any of us pay 1 cent more for one.

Personally, best means highest quality. All day we define something as quality versus cost effective, why not with bass gear?

With great hesitation I click create thread… if nothing else its been therapeutic. lol

 

[LiquidMidnight]

While I do concede there are objective aspects of speaker design and sound quality, I don't think you're going to reach any final answer on the best cabinet or the best speaker. I say this for two reasons. First, cabinet design is always a series of compromises, particularly if you are building a cabinet to actually be used in the real world. This ends up becoming a rabbit hole argument based upon which cabinet has the least amount of comprises. Second, while we can argue until we're blue in the face and even reach argument about objective standards of quality, such as interior cabinet bracing or sound leakage, there is still a large component of taste and subjectivity with a speaker cabinet. Is a superior cabinet one that is ported with a tweeter or one that is sealed and only has full range woofers? There's no clear cut answer there, because both designs produce two different tonalities that are largely left up to the tastes of the individual players. Also, your definition of "best" is somewhat of a tautology. You need to refine what you mean by quality more.

I disagree, however, about Avatar. I owned one, and I found it to be inferior in construction to many other cabinets, regardless of speakers. After owning one for nine months, the joints started to come loose and the cab would rattle on anything lower than a G on the E string. Plus the carpeting started to become unglued. While I gigged the cab moderately, I never abused it. While I'm certain that I got lemon and my cab wasn't indicative of all Avatar cabs, the quality of the Aguilars I got to replace it was night-and-day. I could even feel it just picking up the new cabs.

 

[Korladis]

There is no such thing as "best."

While build quality isn't all that subjective, many of the things that define what we like are.

It depends what your goals are. If your goal for the cabinet is for it to be as transparent and hi-fi as possible, you are going to have a different idea about what the "best" cab is than I might, and vice versa.

There are multiple different factors at play. Build quality, weight, frequency response, power handling (both mechanical and thermal), efficiency, dispersion.

Additionally, each player places different degrees of importance on each of those factors, which are by no means even an exhaustive list.

 

[Zeus_Mutation]

Dang, my rant is all over the place.

I should specify:
First thought on buying a new cab is that I'm buying a speaker, not so much the actual cabinet materials.
I generalized cabinet materials because I was focused on the speaker. I shouldn't have.
Avatar was just a name used. I have no experience with them, but many TB'ers have mentioned them as being really nice. At that great price, I've wondered about the quality.

Obviously there will be sonic differences in human biology alone. To tell people to pick what sounds good for them is very viable, just not always helpful.

Some manufacturer puts their everything into a product, they usually aren't inexpensive either. I'd lean towards those models/series being closer to a perceived best. As in you know the materials & craftsmanship are of high standards and attention to detail is there. Thats so & so's "Best" model.

 

[DukeLeJeune]

Good video.

Woofers comparable in quality to those in the Doyle cabinet are readily available off-the-shelf from many prosound manufacturers, and can also be custom-made to the customer's specifications within certain practical limits. All of the top driver manufacturers are pushing up against those limits, so woofer choice becomes a juggling of tradeoffs. Want more top end? Okay, you need a lighter voice coil... and you just lost low-end extension and/or power handling. Want to get away with a smaller, more portable cab? You must trade off low end extension and/or efficiency. And so on.

In other words, there is no general "best" woofer... but there may be one that is part of a package (drivers, crossover, cabinet) that is arguably a contender for "best" for a particular application.

Which brings us to what I think is the key question, namely, where are the goal posts? What do we want the cab to do? Let's take voicing - do we want it to sound like a direct input into a $20k pair of studio monitors? Do we want it to sound like so-and-so's bassline on that certain song? Do we have a sound in our head that is "our sound"?

Do we want a massive voice-of-God bottom end, or a super punchy bottom end, or just enough and let the kick own the bottom end?

Do we want our mids scooped, hi-fi, or gnarly?

How about the top end... pristine, overdrive-friendly, or "I don't need no stinkin' top end - I'm a bass player, not a treble player"?

Do we want several different voicings from the same cab?

How important is cabinet size and/or weight? Unless you can afford roadies, at some point the practicality of getting your cab(s) to and from the gig can become a limiting factor (that Doyle woofer is nowhere near state-of-the-art in power-to-weight ratio).

One thing the video touched on is an area where I think most of the boutique manufacturers are offering significant improvements over "conventional" cab configurations (like the 410), and that is, dispersion. I think a wider, more uniform pattern is well worth pursuing, as that way more of the audience can hear your overtones and tell what you're doing.

Some manufacturer puts their everything into a product, they usually aren't inexpensive either. I'd lean towards those models/series being closer to a perceived best. As in you know the materials & craftsmanship are of high standards and attention to detail is there. Thats so & so's "Best" model.

Look at Greenboy's designs. Mike Arnopol's. Roger Baer's. Andy Lewis'. Alex Claber's. The "best" for a particular application may well be one of these, or something along similar lines. Or it may be a high-end PA cab, maybe something like Meyersound, depending on where your goal posts are.

 

[Zeus_Mutation]

Great responses everyone, much appreciated!

 

[Bill Whitehurst]

I think Duke pretty much covered it.
Define best in terms of:
extension - just how high and how low do YOU need to go?
price - do you have a budget or is that not at all importatnt to you?
size - do you need that cab to fit in a tiny car or do you have roadies and a big truck?
sound quality - do you need it to be super hi fi or do you want it to have a baked in sound?
looks - does it need to look exactly like a 62 Fender white tolex cab for a Beach Boys tribute band
or is rat fur OK?
The list can go on and on.