Audiokinesis Thunderchild 12- These look cool, but I have not heard much about these cabs.
Thank you for including my cab in your list. Actually I think my Hathor 1203 would probably be a better candidate for your situation, it's voiced more like a traditional bass cab, whereas the Thunderchild series comes closer to a "hifi" voicing.
I want a cab with better dispersion. My 410 cab sounds different everywhere on the stage.
Dispersion is an area where my Hathor 1203 outperforms my Thunderchild 112.
IMO all cabs should list displacement, but only Barefaced does. You'll get all sorts of replies why manufacturers don't list displacement, but they don't hold water.
I'm guessing that comment is alluding to Greenboy and me, as we're the other two manufacturers included in the original post.
Greenboy and I use stock Eminence Kappalite woofers whose displacement is very easy to look up. Barefaced uses a custom Kappalite variant and Alex does not use the same yardstick to measure displacement that Eminence uses. So if we really want to make a true apples-to-apples comparison, we would have to look at how the displacement figures were generated for the woofers in quesion. There are different equations and protocols for arriving at a figure for x-max (as well as other specifications), some more optimistic than others.
I have no doubt that Greenboy and Barefaced both make excellent cabinets.
One thing to be aware of with the long-excursion uberwoofers that Greenboy, Alex and I use, is that they probably will not fart out even when pushed into their thermal danger zone, so you need to pay closer attention to whether the cab is starting to compress or sound muddy. Those are indications of a hot voice coil. These woofers can handle a lot of power, but they are not indestructible.
Duke has begun offering some electronic trickery that allows the AK to toggle between 8 and 4 ohms.
I don't know the technical details of what was in the Accuswitch.
The key piece of background information needed before my explanation will make sense is, an "8 ohm" woofer can have a voice coil DC resistance down around 5 ohms. Eminence has several "8 ohm" woofers that work well for bass guitar which have a DC resistance very close to 5.0 ohms. I asked the engineer who designed these woofers if anyone had ever complained that two such woofers in parallel (resulting in a DC resistance down around 2.5 ohms) presented too difficult a load for a 4-ohm rated amp. He said no, never.
Several of my cabs use what might be called a "high 4 ohms" woofer, including the latest version of the Thunderchild 112 (but not the Hathor 1203). By adding a small amount of high-power-handling series resistance (by-passable via a switch), it is possible to make this sort of woofer appear to be a "low 8 ohms" woofer, as far as the load the amplifier sees. The penalty is a roughly 1 dB loss of efficiency relative to the 4 ohm woofer all by itself. The theoretical benefit would be that, in "8 ohm" mode, the cab can be paired with another 8-ohm cab and driven by a 4-ohm-rated amp for gigs where a single cab isn't enough. Imo the secret to this being practical is, starting out with a "high 4 ohms" woofer to begin with; if too much series resistance has to be added before the cab can qualify as an "8 ohm" load, the losses will be too great.
So the actual difference in the cab's effective DC resistance is much less than what's implied by calling it a "4/8 ohm" switch, which is why I always put it in quotes. It's more like a "3.9/5.05 ohms" switch.
The added series resistance also modifies the woofer's T/S parameters a little bit, changing the low-end characteristics slightly. The cabs with the "4/8 ohm" switch also have multiple pluggable ports to help tighten the low end back up if needed.
