Are most 210 cabs designed with the speakers on a diagonal to horizontal?
Who makes quality horizontal 210's? These would be a way to get a vertical 4 ohm 410.
I recall David Gage claimed a few years ago to have Epifani NYC t-210 cabs with the 10's on the horizontal. My current Epi 210's certainly are not, so when stacked you get this:
I presume creating the mother of all comb (over
) filters....
Don't think the comb-filtering situation is all that bad. The diagonal orientation of 2x10s and 2x12s should be almost as good as vertical, especially if the drivers are positioned almost vertical (e.g. G-K 212MBE) rather than at about 45 degrees (e.g. G-K Neo 212-II.) The onset of comb filtering for "almost vertical" is only slightly different from vertical. Why? In antenna array theory (my old gig, and quite similar to audio array theory, even regarding wavelengths but of course not polarization), the total pattern (spatial distribution of intensity) is approximately the (array factor) x (element factor) and there's a "collapsing distribution theorem" pertinent to the array factor. The math for CDT I'll skip, but it's no accident that live sound uses vertical line arrays to give wide horizontal pattern and narrow or controlled vertical pattern. To understand CDT, look at a photo of stacked 2x10 or 2x12 cabs and drop a vertical line from the center of each driver to where it intersects the floor. Now look at the maximum horizontal distance H between the intersections. It's zero for vertical cabs, maybe 0.4xD for cabs like the 212MBE, about 1.0xD for 45 degree cabs like the Neo 212-II and slightly more for your typical 4xD, where D is the nominal driver diameter. These are guesstimates and I'll let others fine-tune them. Anyway, the smaller the H, the less that comb-filtering is an issue from the array factor standpoint, so an almost-vertical cab is definitely better than a diagonal or 4x10 or 4x12. A calculated onset of comb filtering would be about 3 kHz for the array factor of an almost-vertical 2x10, vs about 1 kHz for a diagonal 2x10 and less than that for a 4x10. No doubt somebody with good software can refine these estimates and there's the additional issue of where crossover to the tweeter or midrange occurs.
The other part of the result, the element factor, includes the horizontal width of the cabinet. Again, smaller is better regarding comb-filtering. Here, the "almost-vertical" 2x10 at about 20" is nearly as narrow as the vertical, at about 18", compared to about 24" for a diagonal cab and at least 24" for a 4x10. Part of the element factor is the room-boundary influence, but that's similar for vertical, almost-vertical, diagonal and horizontal cabs. There are also effects of mutual coupling between drivers, but those are difficult to calculate and probably similar for the different cab orientations.
Anyway, the horizontal pattern and comb-filtering properties of "almost-vertical" and "vertical" cabs are gonna be similar and both will be better than diagonal or horizontal cabs. Your sound will be more evenly distributed off to the sides.
The vertical-plane patterns are also similar for vertical and "almost-vertical" cabs, both of which are better than diagonal or horizontal orientation. Of course there are the additional factors of "getting the drivers up to ear-level" plus the "is my tower of power gonna fall over on a shaky stage?" factor. Not to mention tone and the zillion other factors. I'm just suggesting that a little bit of diagonality doesn't hurt much. Personally, I wouldn't rule out "almost-vertical" cabs, especially since the vertical ones seem to be fewer.
Didn't Kustom make vertical 4x12s or maybe 4x15s? I played some once.
