Duke,
I hope you dont mind me asking a general audio question on your AudioKinesis forum but you are one of my favorite guys around the various audio forums so you get to bear the burden 
Ive noticed you've started working with some high end 18" woofers in some of your pro audio designs.
Can you make some general observations about their perceived or measurable benefits over a 15" woofer ?
Are they usable in a 2 way for home audio ? Or more realistic for a 3 way ?
As always thanks for your time and patience.
Regards,
Daniel
Hi Daniel,
I'm working on two 118 bass cabs. The Hathor 1855 combines an 18" subwoofer with two 5" cones, and the Thunderchild 118 combines an 18" woofer with a PA-style horn. There was a third 118 cab in the works but I pulled the plug on it yesterday; its midrange section fell short. The Thunderchild 118 is a potential candidate for a mult-role speaker. In fact I'll be sending one out with a pole-mount socket on the bottom so that it can double as a PA cab.
The Thunderchild 118 is my answer to the fEARful 15/6/1 cab. The woofer used in the Thunderchild 118 moves at least as much air as the mighty Kappalite 3015LF but has a much smoother top end, so it's much better suited for a two-way. The TC118 is smoother through the mids, while the fEARful is more aggressive, so take your pick there. Also my cab is smaller, so I'm trading off the massive low end of the fEARful, which some bass players find to be too much. And my tuning is user-adjustable so if you do find yourself in a boomy venue, you can tighten up the low end. The TC118 is also considerably lighter and a little bit less expensive. And I think my crossover kung-fu is pretty good; that would probably be a selling point of the Thunderchild line.
The Hathor 1855 is a 4-ohm cab that moves considerably more air than the fEARful 15/6. It is deliberately voiced for electric bass (whereas the Thunderchild line is voiced to start out as an essentially neutral palette), with a bit of growl in the upper mids. I think its voicing makes more sense for electric bass than the voicing of the fEARful 15/6, which has its midrange peak up in the lower treble region that usually belongs to electric guitar. The Hathor 1855 is lighter than the fEARful 15/6 but more expensive (that big 1200 watt neodymium subwoofer isn't cheap). The two 5" mids add enough life to the rest of the bass guitar's spectrum that the net result works pretty well in my opinion, even if its massive air-moving capability isn't routinely called upon. The open-format mid-chamber, which imo sounds better than a totally enclosed mid chamber provided you can cross over high enough, is a selling point of the Hathor line, as for one thing it makes it easier for the bass player to hear the overtones when he's virtually atop the cab on a small stage.
Take it as a compliment to the fEARful cabs that I see them as a standard for comparison. I wouldn't bother trying to beat a second-rate cab. And I'm just offering a different flavor, rather than claiming across-the-board domination.
Imo the best candidate for home audio among my bass cabs is the 8-ohm version of the Thunderchild 112. If higher output was needed, then the 4-ohm Thunderchild 212 is probably the front-runner. The Thunderchild 115 and 118 could be used for home audio, they just wouldn't be my first choices. All of them are really in undersized boxes for high-end home audio, where we'd really like a lot more low end extension and can trade off portability to get it.
If I was doing a home audio cab with 18" woofers, it would probably either be a three-way or use a large-format 1.4" throat compression driver. That wouldn't be a bad idea for electric bass either, but would drive the price and weight up without offering a major improvement for that application.
I use the Faital 18FH500 in the Thunderchild 118 (and yes its on-axis response really is as smooth as the published curve suggests), and the 4-ohm version of the Faital 18HP1060 in the Hathor 1855.
Not sure if I answered your questions; if not, hit me again.
