Pierre-Yves said; somatic, what is your preference ?
EV, Yamaha, other ?
Markbass is to expensive for me...
Maybe I will mix PA & bass cabs ?
Thank's for your post ... I LOVE Australia...
It's hard for me to give recommendations as I don't know what you have to select from locally, and I usually buy speakers secondhand, and then measure and modify them to suit my needs. I've got the gear and experience to do it.
General recomendations are JBL and Yamaha, especially 3 way units. Yorkville PA can be very good too.
There are a number of great manufacturers of speaker drive units in EU, like 18Sound, Ciare, Beyma, BMS/Coda, RCF, PHL and Precision Devices amongst others. I've used drivers from all these brands and many exceed my reference standards which have traditionally been JBL, and are usually cheaper. Someone in EU must be manufacturing with these drivers; perhaps checking Pro sound forums more local would produce some leads.
The thread I've linked at the bottom should give an indication about what I'm suggesting to try.
jazzyvee said; I have seen a dual; 18 800w EV cab for sale and was wondering if that would be a good addition to my rig or would the bottom end be overpowering? It looks like a PA sub cabinet.
Depends how you do it. Active crossover and biamp it and it'd likely add a sensible amount of low end, whilst taking the load off whatever you use above it. Small speakers excursing a lot to produce low frequecies create more distortion. The enclosure you mention is most likely a PA sub as I've never heard of a 2x18 bass enclosure.
Aslo, the PA manufacturers give far more accurate specs than the bass cab manufacturers (Acme is a notable exception), mainly because they need to provide arctitctural specs that need to be accurate and repeatable, and PA guys often have good measuring gear, so the manufacturers will get called on an BS specs they produce.
IME, musos tend to be a bit tribal with gear so they'll beleive anything a favoured manufacturer says, and few havw any sort of technical understanding at all. This I know from long experience as I've fixed a lot of gear and heard the bizarre ideas given about what the faults are.
For those in the US, this thread might prove interesting if you haven't already seen it. It's long, but read the first couple of pages for basic info, and the last couple for gigging experience and reviews. If they were available locally, I'd snatch up a couple myself.
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=336504
