They will all be the same on each speaker hopfully. You can test them with a 9V battery to see the cones jump outwards when + is +, don't hold it on for a long time, just touch it on and off to see which way the cone jumps.
The way you have them wired you're lucky you didn't play loud or you would have blown up the speakers and possibly the amp with them. The amp is only happy with 4 ohm. 4 8 ohm in parallel is 2 ohm so potentially they would draw a lot of excess current out of the amp.
Parallel is the + of each connected together at the jack. Don't do that!
You need to change both cabs to series and then run the cabs parallel on the amp for safety. You could run a series cable arrangemnt but the speakers are only 50W apiece and your amp would have 200 trace watts which is more like 400 real peak thump watts driving 4ohms. Danger is your mddle name.
So swap the cabs to series wiring. Jack tip goes to + of first speaker, - of first goes across to + of second, - of second goes to barrel of jack.
When you set up the two cabs put them in a vertical stack. The sound will carry a lot better around the room and you'll hear yourself so much better.
I'm curious what you used for a design for your cabs? Was the original sealed and not ported?
By the way, I've never seen any 4x12 trace cab, let alone a combo. I'm wondering if someone put a bass head in a guitar combo.
