One 4ohm cab or two 8ohm cabs?

[CL400Peavey]

Brief run down, as this has been discussed to death and there are other threads dedicated to the issues.

Power handling between unmatched cabs is a problem. Cabs with different specs will produce different level of sound with the same input. So while one cab sounds fine, you may be pushing the other too hard and not be able to tell until you blow a speaker. (for me this is the biggest issue)

Secondly different speakers project differently, so you end up with phasing issues. It doesnt produce the sound you want to the crowd you are playing for.

So I would match my cabs. The Avatar cabs get great reviews. If you can swing two 8Ohm 410 cabs, that would give you the most volume. If you decide to go with one 4Ohm cab and are concerned that it wont be loud enough, check out the 412 cab. More cone area = more volume if all the other specs are the same.

I have been very tempted by the 412.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

What about mixing cabs is negative?.

Do a search. This topic gets brought up at least twice a week.

 

[DWBass]

Depends on the cab! I have a 4ohm 600w Genz Benz GB410T and good lord is that thing loud! While I know many use 6x10 and 8x10 cabs, I just can't see the reason to use 2 of them unless there is NO P.A. being used! That's just insanely loud! I guess Rock and Metal have different volume standards than all the rest of the genres!

 

[Tom Howland]

I always prefer say a 2x15 4ohm cab to two 1x15 8 ohm cabs.
The 2x15 4 ohm cab just seems tighter to me.

 

[Bjess002]

Thanks. The clarification is appreciated. My searches haven't yielded any helpful results thus far.

 

[David Jayne]

As far as the 4x10+2x10 idea, the ticket for the OP would be to wrangle a 16 ohm 2x10 with as similar as possible a design as the 4x10; that, sitting on the 8 ohm 4x10, will give him a 5.3 ohm 6x10 with equal power going to all 6 speakers.

If that 2x10 had a series/parallel switch, it could be used (switched to 4ohms) by itself for little gigs.

+1. This is EXACTLY what I did.