I like Acme cabinets and Andy is great to work with, but I found that they are not as efficient as the fEARfuls. I went through a lot of woofers with my Acme cabs. If I were into a more old school tone, I'd probably go for a pair of the Flatwound cabs he makes. I played through one and it sounded really nice for that type of tone. But, Dave, I suggest that you might try a fEARful before you write it out of the Accugroove class. I've played through those and the fEARful is in that realm in my experience.
I don't think other cabinets have taken into account dispersion the way the fEARfuls have. While my Acmes sounded amazing right in front of them, off to the side, they were a little muddy. These cabinets sound great all over the stage. The rest of the band can now hear every note I play with equal clarity and a full tonal spectrum. I've never heard other bass cabs with this kind of dispersion. They are designed so that when you combine them, the comb filtering is kept to an absolute minimum (you can see the mirror image mid/high arrangement in the pic below) and each frequency is projected as from a point source. The crossover components are more like giant hifi components rather than the standard bass guitar cab fare.
Another amazing thing is that the fEARful cabinets are stupid light. My 15/6/1 weighs less than my Acme Low B2 did and the 12/6/1 is even lighter. I didn't even put a handle on it. If you peruse the Talkbass Amps forum you'll find people making these out of composite and are well south of 40lb for a 15/6. It's so much fun asking people to pick these up and watching them brace themselves and then almost throw them at the ceiling! My 1995 Subaru wagon can now pass other cars going over the mountain passes out here in Colorado. It wasn't so easy hauling commercial cabinets.
