Bill Fitzmaurice

You left out the pedals. That makes it eleven, and not in the good way. 😒

Mechanical coupling, yes, as I noted to keep the speaker from dancing. Acoustical coupling, or decoupling, no. Many of those seen on silly expensive speakers look like they must do something significant, and it's mainly audiophiles who fall for the scam. It's quite odd that so many of those claiming to have 'golden ears' listen with their eyes. 🤔

24 hours is more than enough. For many years my valve amps took the ride to the gig in the back of a van, where there was little to no heat, while being stored during the week in an unheated shed. Mind you the over night temperatures in my area during winter are -5C and lower, often dipping to -20C. The time between when my amp got into the heated club and when I fired it up was about an hour. I never had a problem.

They were very good friends with Ox, Squire and Lemmie. 😉

Cutting mids will lose you in the mix, but using a pick restores them compared to fingers. I use a pick most of the time, as I like a strong mid presence, but when I want a mellow tone I switch to my fingers.

Thicker foam of lower density can be beneficial on particularly soft stages. But too thick can result in the cab rocking. Spikes don't do anything useful from a sound standpoint. Where they can be beneficial is on a carpeted floor, gripping through the carpet to prevent speaker 'dancing' at high power levels, especially long-excursion subs. The quasi-magical properties attributed to them by some are just more audiophile piffle.

Mechanical decoupling is an audiophile myth. What vibrates the stage is the acoustical output of the speaker, not mechanical coupling from the cabinet, which would be the tail wagging the dog. What can occur is that the vibrating stage will cause the cabinet to vibrate. The best way to prevent that is with a piece of yoga mat. More on the subject: https://ethanwiner.com/speaker_isolation.htm

Translation: It has low sensitivity. To put that into context a 3dB sensitivity difference requires twice the power for the same output. 6dB requires four times the power. IMO knowing sensitivity is very useful, as are frequency response and displacement. Without knowing these one cannot make an objective comparison with other products, and that's the point. 😒

There's no replacement for displacement. Well, there is, horn loading, but then you're talking about a much larger cabinet. The displacement of a premium 4" driver is around 30cc. A middle of the road 8" is around 75cc, a middle of the road 10" is around 150cc.

+1. Kick is big bottom, not much low bass or mids, but with an upper midrange for the 'click'. Mids on the kick not only compete with the full mix, yourself included, they compete with the toms and snare.

Keyboard players who lean heavily on the lower keys are the worst. It turns everything to mud. They're supremely guilty of playing what sounds best when they're alone.

That applies to bass players as well. Full lows and moderate mids sounds great, be it at home or when playing alone on stage. But it's not always that way when the full band kicks in, nor when you go out into the room.

With respect to using XSim, it's not a modeled response per se, as it uses the measured response and measured impedance of the drivers to arrive at the result. All it does calculation wise is to plug in the effect of the crossover components, so it's as accurate as the tolerance of the components used. Having used it myself I can attest to it's accuracy, which is also better than a traditional calculator as it can account for the ESR of both the inductors and capacitors.

An alternate driver is the 18 Sound 10NW 650 16 ohm. In the same enclosure it has better than 6dB more maximum SPL through the critical 60-80 Hz range than the Celestion, while the 16 ohm coil gives an 8 ohm cab with two parallel wired. That 6dB translates to one 10NW 650 equaling two BN10-200x. The Pulse xl10-20 is good in the lows, but the mids are a bit spotty due to the lower Fs. I'd use it in a sub.

Four corner ports work best, as they do double duty as braces. The 70 Hz displacement issue doesn't affect frequency response up to 100w. Above that response would no longer be linear. Usually poorly. In any event the 115/410 combination makes no sense. The standard reason for using it is that the 115 improves lows while the 410 improves highs. But 115s don't necessarily go lower than 410s, 410s don't necessarily go higher than 115s, especially off-axis. Most 410s have more driver displacement than most 115s, so where volume is concerned two 410s will usually go louder than a 115/410. The right way to get maximum lows along with the best highs is achieved with different size drivers operating in different passbands. PA and Hi-Fi have used that configuration for 50 odd years. A few electric bass cabs do so, but very few. To say that electric bass cabs are lagging behind the curve is putting it mildly.