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Go Big

18+2x10 sounded great wish I still had it. peavey 412, was big and weight around 160 pounds, didnt have the amp to push it the way it wanted to so I sold it, wish I could try it with my SVT3, now onto a 215 that I cam trying to get sounding the way I want, speakers are not so good. best set up was old peavey 115 260C combo on top of the 1810, I would kill to have it back.
 
An old Electrovoice cabinet with a 30" speaker I found in the back of a movie theater one time when I was setting up to play a show. It was part of the theater's film sound system but hadn't been used for years.

I hooked a 60 watt tube amp up to it to try it out with my bass. It was absolutely awful. A big muddy, distorted roar with absolutely no mids or treble. Electrovoice really blew it with that one. That speaker was noted for being useless. The cabinet was a bass reflex design and must have been 5 feet tall and almost 3 feet wide. EV also made a 24" speaker around that time. I don't think it was any better.
 
in the 80's i used to always use two ampeg 8-10's in large venues (like the Hollywood Palace, The Beverly Theater and the LA Sports Arena), but i think that the biggest (size-wise) cabs that i ever used was two JBL 4520 (2-D140's in each) in the 70's with a Sunn 2000s head and it sounded incredible. You really needed alot of real estate for them though (i played outdoor gigs with them). The JBL cabs looked like this:

JBL4520_cab.jpg
 
I've never actually compared measurements. These would be the largest single cabs I've owned:

'69 SVT 8X10
Acoustic 408 (4X15)
Sunn 415M (4X15)
Peavey 1820 (18, 2X10)

Runners up would be:
Cerwin Vega B36MF (18 folded horn + 12)
Ampeg Isovent (short but deep, 2X15 + 2X10)

I liked them all except the Peavey. They make good dog houses, though. The others all sounded good for what they did. The most modern one would be the Isovent, it could handle just about any type of music. The Acoustic sounded great with a low wattage head and a 4 string bass; similarly, the SVT and the Sunn did not like the low lows at all. Still have the Sunn, the highs and mids on it are fantastic but I usually kill the bass knob on the amp to spare the old lightweight speakers. The Cerwin Vega had boom and highs aplenty, not much else.
 
Back in the '70s, my high school bought the biggest bass amp around - the Fender 400PS tube monster with their 18" folded horn cabinet. It's like the Acoustic 301 cabinet, but deeper. Talk about overkill for a high school jazz band!! I think we rarely set either the channel or master gain knobs above 2. Anyway, that cabinet was 48" high x 24" deep x 24" wide, as I recall. When we had off-site concerts and festivals, I hauled it around - along with all the band's other equipment - in my mother's full-size Ford Club Wagon van.

- Mike
 

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