4x12 Preference Poll.

  • Thread starter Thread starter stephen sawall
  • Start date Start date

Traditional or Standard (oversized)

  • Traditional slant

    Votes: 22 22.2%
  • Traditional straight

    Votes: 50 50.5%
  • Standard slant

    Votes: 9 9.1%
  • Standard straight

    Votes: 18 18.2%

  • Total voters
    99
Traditional straight, but slants have their uses too.

I prefer slants in smaller club gigs without great monitoring. The angled speakers seem to fill out the stage and be less beamy.

The low end sounds superior to me on traditional straights though.

Oversized cabs have their place, but it just isn't my jam. If I worshipped the ground Glenn Fricker walks on, and spent my entire life chasing early 00s melodeath tones, I'm sure OS cabs would be my jam.
I’m in this camp. I love my slant and enjoy the throw they have upward for tuning amps in front of it. I also enjoy a straight for deep ness and low end girth. That’s why I always play a straight and a slant at the same time.
 
I’m in this camp. I love my slant and enjoy the throw they have upward for tuning amps in front of it. I also enjoy a straight for deep ness and low end girth. That’s why I always play a straight and a slant at the same time.

If I have the real estate at the gig, I do too.

Wet dry with the Larry is truly selfish and ridiculous, but shit I only live once
 
I prefer a trad straight and always recorded with one. For live I always played slants, easier to hear your sound, especially if you've got a crappy monitor mix.
I was just going to post this. Straight for recording, slant for live.
 
72.8 % total for straight cabs.
69.7 % total for traditional size.
47 % current lead for traditional straight.

A bit surprised to see standard strait oversized getting more than traditional slant.
 
I'm going to be the oddball and say I've been liking a somewhat hybrid. Traditional size that has a straight baffle with about a 2 degree tiltback.
 
I'm going to be the oddball and say I've been liking a somewhat hybrid. Traditional size that has a straight baffle with about a 2 degree tiltback.
That's like my Avatar Vintage cab, although I think it's more than 2 degrees?? That cab is perfect for live playing, sounds fat and you can hear yourself better than a regular straight cab.
 
As far as mesa's go,I owned 4 traditionals and 4 standards.Preferred the trads more.Just seemed to have better everything all around.
Favorite 4x12 cabs these days are diezel,bogner, and stone age.
 
Traditional straight has 50% with a total of 86 votes.

Interesting how different cabs can sound. I found my Ampeg System Selector a few days ago. Being able to change immediately is so revealing.
 
At 91 votes today and little change. Traditional straight with a strong lead.
Cool to see people like a variety. How the amp interacts with the cab and speaker is so critical to response and feel. How critical the speakers and cab is to the overall sound.

I'm considering a few speaker changes to make my cabs more different from each other.
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OS Mesa slant-baffle with the straight shell is my favorite. I have one from 2000 that I mixed the stocks in an x-pattern with a pair of k100.
Does it sound different than a standard slant?
 
Does it sound different than a standard slant?
Not really, and in theory it should be worse since the straight shell sort-of blocks or boxes those top speakers in. I've never compared them side by side though. I think for my taste any of the OS slants have just the right amount of airspace. The traditional straights have only a tiny bit less airspace than the OS slants and I like those too much more than the traditional slants.

I also have a true mesa OS straight with the straight baffle from 2011. It sounds very wide and scooped but can be great once everything is dialed to it. Those work well with more compressed saturated gain styles,,,like metal of course. Probably will never change that cab because it really needs all those v30 mids to sit well IMO.
 
I wonder what the internal volume of each of these cabs is ?

How close is the traditional straight and oversized standard slant ?
 
Not really, and in theory it should be worse since the straight shell sort-of blocks or boxes those top speakers in. I've never compared them side by side though. I think for my taste any of the OS slants have just the right amount of airspace. The traditional straights have only a tiny bit less airspace than the OS slants and I like those too much more than the traditional slants.

I also have a true mesa OS straight with the straight baffle from 2011. It sounds very wide and scooped but can be great once everything is dialed to it. Those work well with more compressed saturated gain styles,,,like metal of course. Probably will never change that cab because it really needs all those v30 mids to sit well IMO.
t. Based Mesa enjoyer & cab connoisseur extraordinaire
 
I wonder what the internal volume of each of these cabs is ?

How close is the traditional straight and oversized standard slant ?
It's very close. Can't remember which forum, but someone did the math way back on a thread like this one and there was not much difference.

If you look at the height difference and then look at the angle that comes out with the slant they would have to be about the same, with the OS slant having just a small amount more.

It's surprising we never hear of anyone modding the airspace from the inside. Like for instance reducing the air on the OS by gluing a strip of velcro down inside the cab at the bottom back, and then tacking/stapling/gluing velcro to a couple foot long piece of 4x4 and sticking it down. Easy to remove too.
 
A few more votes came in with a total of 94. No major changes in the results.
 
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