Before Boogieman hits me over the head 😉 , I wasn’t intentionally dissing 15″. It does move a lot of air and that’s really useful for keeping the low through, say, a hoedown. I tend to play riff-type or melodic basslines and rarely hold a note for long. I could benefit from both cabs but I don’t do venues that justify carting a lot of boxes (I’m getting older and lazier, I know). If forced to use one cab, some would choose a 1×15″ but I (and I suspect you too Mack) would choose a 2x or 4×10″. Would I go 2×15″? No. Must tell a funny story…

A 2nd-hand shop used to sell allsorts of castoff, 2nd rate cheap gear. I used to go into such places a lot; they were a good source for obscure brands of good kit that people would get rid of cheap. Anyhoo, I was in one day and they had someting pretty unusual in. It was a 21″ driver (yes, really. 21″) housed inside a concrete mains sewer pipe, a foot or so long. Must’ve weighed an absolute ton, lying there on the floor. I was told that none of the amps in the shop could turn it over (mostly old 100W SS stuff). I went home and brought in my valve Superbass and gave it a go. There was this tremendous booming bass, buckling floorboards and bulging out the store windows. Frightening. The shop guys were like overgrown kids, yelling at me that I HAD to buy it. No way; it was impressive, it really was, but I could imagine my car sunk onto the base of the rear shocks and oversteering like a pig around town.

Just to clarify the valve/tube thing. In England (and, allowing for translation, most of Europe) those glass things are called valves. Thermionic valve is a pretty good description of the job they do. In the US, they’re called tubes. So a tube amp is a valve amp. The original Ampeg SVT (reissued these days as the SVT Classic) uses tubes in the preamp and 6550-type tubes in the power section. I think, off the top of my head, that the SVT II is a hybrid, with a tube preamp and a solid state power section. Other SVTs are all-solid state. It’s a bit confusing.

Even more confusing is why so many bass players complain about the weight of a tube amp (true) but then cart an 8×10″ or 2×15″ cab down three sets of stairs to get to the stage. Even the worst of my valve heads are not much more than 25kg, around 60lbs.

Certainly, the 4×10″ + 1×15″ is a classic combination, and with good reason. I don’t use the 15″ myself, something Boogieman has berated me for 😉 , and I know what he means, but it’s not my style. I find the 10″ gives that punch you’re talking about. The 15″ shifts air.

Before I go much further, I ought to ping Lee into looking in here. I don’t know how much he carried on with bass, but he swapped PMs with me when he took it up. On my suggestion, he got together an Ashdown Evo 500 (SS power amp with blendable SS and valve/tube – the terms mean the same thing – preamp sections) head, the Ashdown Blue 4×10″ cab and an Ashdown single 15″ driver that was going very cheap. I don’t know if he got around to putting the 15″ into a cabinet.

Getting a bit technical here… The Ampeg 8×10″ cabinet, when Ampeg originally designed it, was meant to get around the woolyness of many 15″-based cabs of the time. They could suffer from an uneven response because even the 15″ wouldn’t quite deliver the low Hz of the E to the same amplitude of higher registers. The 8×10″ never meant to cover the lower end fundamentals, but was supposed to capture the higher orders and deliver a balanced (and quicker, punchier) response across the strings.

That’s the theory/blurb, anyway. These days, it’s absolutely no problem finding 10″ drivers, using new materials, that have a fairly flat output down to a four-string’s low E 40Hz. The Eminence B102 is used a lot, but I had to go a bit further for my 5-string’s 30Hz. You don’t need to worry too much if your 1×15″ is in use at the same time. A 4×10″, although a pain to cart around, makes life a bit easier for the cab designer than a 2×10″. You could do with a cab that’s close to the stats of your current 15″ to keep a balance and Eden and SWR spring to mind, although Aguilar, Acme, etc etc have their seconders.

I’d need to have a look at the Yorkville details, but I’d be more inclined to go 10″ cab. You should be able to try out an ext cab using your bass and your Yorkville in a good store; rather than just hand over money and hope for the best. I could babble for hours, but others may have a POV; particularly Boogieman although he’s living out of a suitcase on the road a lot. I’m off to ping Lee now.

Far from an odd subject, this is a really good thread that should’ve been looked at by now. For one thing, you’re not the only one mixing brands around by any means. I remember on The Bottom Line forum a thread called “Riggage for Giggage”. It wasn’t really a discussion; more of a chance to brag about the gear you own. Still, far from everybody had Eden amp/Eden cab or SWR/SWR setups. It was very commonplace for people to mate gear up.

My own story isn’t exactly relevant to you, but it does illustrate how cab-swapping can really be worthwhile trying. I use valve heads; not the Ampeg SVT (nice, “Boogieman” here loves ’em) but British EL34 types. For a gig, my mainstay is a Marshall Superbass variant. I’ve had it since 1981 and it’s a great head but it took, literally, decades to get the cab right. Because I really disliked clanky solid-state rigs of the 80s and 90s, I tended to try allsorts of “vintage” cabs. Various old brands (WEM, Orange etc) loaded with Celestions, Goodmans, Fanes… 10″, 12″, 15″… everything had a wooly flubbiness to it.

When the Fanes started to go, I pulled them out of the 2×10″ and replaced them with some techy, ali coned things. I don’t even remember the make and I don’t fancy pulling the cab apart but, crikey, it completely opened up the sound. The valve grunt and grit was still there but I’d suddenly gained a heap of clarity and articulation. Showed up some of my terrible habits awfully, too. I still have some “vintage” drivers that I play through when using smaller heads, but I wouldn’t touch them for a gig.

Like I said, it doesn’t help you in recommending a particular combination but hopefully it does tell you that experimenting with different cabs and drivers is worthwhile. I do like Ashdowns, and Lee_UK here got some in when trying out bass. He tends to post only in the guitar cat, but it’d be worth PMing him if you’re curious. And Boogieman here must’ve tried a hatful of speakers in his time.