12XN bass cabs

In short

If you want to compare like for like performance, compare one of our 12"s with TWO of anyone else's 12"s. The radical new design of the 12XN550 combines the very high sensitivity of a pro-audio mid-bass driver, the very high excursion of a pro-audio subwoofer and a response curve which has been optimised to sound great on and off-axis with bass guitar. Massive output AND awesome tone.

And in depth

Once you get into the realms of high-end pro-audio drivers, they divide into basically two categories. One category is that of the mid-bass driver, as found in PA tops. The other category is that of the subwoofer driver, as found in PA subwoofers. All our original Barefaced cabs were built around these top-quality drivers. If you step down a level of cost/performance you find the drivers which are found in some of the best 'boutique' bass cabs on the market. These drivers sit in the mid-bass driver category in terms of parameters but often have some tweaks to make them sound better for bass guitar (usually to fatten up the default sound and modify the treble response). Come down another notch of performance and you find the drivers typically found in the classic brand name's premium products. There are a few more levels below this as magnets gets smaller, frames shift from cast alloy to stamped steel, and manufacturing tolerances become less tight, reducing manufacturing cost but also lowering sensitivity and power handling and increasing distortion.

Putting the 12XN in perspective

In case you haven't noticed, we have a one month trial period with our cabs, so you can make sure that our cabs do what you want both tonally and in terms of loudness. There is absolutely no point us using marketing hyperbole to sell our cabs - they have to do what we claim! Specs mean very little without accurate reference points and the Eminence DeltaLite II 2512 and Faital Pro 12PR300 are the two most popular neodymium 12" drivers used in high-end 'boutique' bass cabs, some stock, some as OEM variants with the tone and performance tweaked, so below we have a chart to compare correctly optimised equal sized 1x12" cabs with our new driver and these two drivers:

A 2x12" (or a dual 1x12" stack) containing a matched pair of these drivers will have 3dB more sensitivity, twice the thermal power handling and volume displacement and the max broadband & LF SPL will be increased by 6dB. A 3dB increase in sensitivity means you need half as much power to reach a given loudness. The reason the max LF SPL is so much lower for the 2512 and 12PR300 is because both loudspeakers reach their linear excursion limit at little over 100W, whilst the 12XN550 will handle over 600W before reaching its limit. This chart shows that one 12XN550 has comparable output to two 2512-II or 12PR300 drivers.

What does this mean for anyone considering switching to a Barefaced cab?

If size/weight is critical and your current rig is loud/fat enough then you can go a size smaller: i.e. replace a mid-sized expensive cab (4x10", 2x12") with a 1x12", or replace a large expensive cab (6x10", 8x10", 4x12", 2x15") with a 2x12". If your current rig struggles with loudness/punch/fatness/depth then you can replace your cab with a similar sized Barefaced cab and expect a substantial leap forwards, with a comparable increase in output to doubling up your current rig but with improved tone. If your current cabs are older or less expensive then expect an even bigger difference in clean output (especially in the lows) and tone.