I'll just assume all's that's gonna guess done guessed.
So here's the harsh slap in the face from the fish of reality:
1) Dually
2) SVT 212AV
3) Four10
4) 12/6/1
So... There were preferences, but which is which wasn't obvious to everyone.
My recordings were of course not beautiful, but if you heard the speakers in person, you would recognize the character.
Surprisingly, people seemed to confuse the 12/6/1 with the Four10. To me, the Four10 sounds old-school and 12/6/1 is very clean and modern.
First I'll say that all four of these cabinets are really great, and if I weren't such a spoiled brat I'd be happy and GAS-free with any of them.
I learned a lot by comparing them, I'll try to impart my impressions, but to paraphrase that dude, it's a bit like farting about architecture.
Here's how I hear them:
- The Dually has very organic attack and a present upper mid. Not a lot of deep lows or glassy highs. VERY efficient 4 Ohm cab, very classic rock sounding.
- The Ampeg 212av has a beautiful but BIG low mid bump, not very much in the lows or high mids, and a bump in the highs. It ends up sounding like it has a big powerful bottom, but without producing much actual low frequency content. Neat trick. It's also quite efficient, although not as much as the Dually. But it produces this same basic sound no matter what you do with the eq. This is a really special cab, it seems to sound much better than it should.
- The Four10 is THICK THICK THICK sounding. Huge. Its low-mid bump is there, but not nearly as big as the Ampeg's, plus it has more high mids. Gigantic bottom, but still relatively "tight" and defined sounding. It responds well to eq, so you can make it sound brighter and more aggressive in the highs by cutting bass or boosting highs. Another non-intuitive sound-blending thing - it sounds so bottom heavy, but when playing along with a CD, it has a lot of "cut" and growl in the mix, instead of getting woofy and indistinct. It has some similarities to both the old-school Ampeg and the modern 12/6/1. With some bass cut my P5 with rounds and a pick sounds MEAN. I look forward to playing this with a band.
- The 12/6/1 is very very clean. Cluzzzeeeeeeen. It's by far the most polite sounding of the group, extending much lower and higher than anything else. The lows are very wide and organ-like, not what I would call "tight". The mids don't have the chewy fat sound that the other more traditional "bass" cabinets have. On the other hand, it really does reproduce what you put in, so it's the only one that can do a decent job reproducing (certainly for a bass cab) a recording of a classical piano concerto, or an R&B vocal group.
So, yeah. They all sound great. They can all get hella loud. The Dually is the most efficient by a fair amount. The Four10 is the easiest to move around.
