Scxd
Zman, check out the fenderforum.com where there is a gigantic SCXD thread. They talk about your speaker concern there and there are a lot of opinions. Bill M. suggested the Ragin' Cajun after a lot of testing, so I put one in almost immediately after getting mine. Massive magnet compared to the diminutive one on the stock speaker, plus over 100Db sensitivity. This equals a lot more volume and sounds a lot better to me, for a small amout invested on the mod that I did myself. Other guys have tried other speakers as well to good effect.
I think a ten inch speaker is going to have less bass just based on the design of the speaker: I don't think a ten inch speaker can develop the amplitude (is that the word) of a twelve inch speaker at the same frequency and wavelength. That's why the Delta Blues fifteen inch sounds so great and full - fifteen inch speaker, and a lot of guys like bass amps with eighteen inch speakers. But a lot of people like ten inch speakers. Therefore, I would think that a really well designed ten inch speaker is going to be able to produce some great bass tones compared to a less well designed twelve inch one. The cabinet design also has a lot to do with the way the speaker sounds.
Your avatar cabinet sounds better probably because it is better; better build, better speakers, moving more air. Those big magnets on those nice speakers you can get probably help the speakers move more air, more efficiently.
Those ten inch bass speakers definitely do their job beautifully. They hold together the Low B on the five strings without any cracking and popping sounds. Most all of the fifteen inch bass amps that I have played can't handle a strong Low B string played loud without sounding very poorly - of course this is hitting it hard. More of the ten inch ones can. I have a Marshall MB30, in the house amp, with a ten inch speaker in it that handles the Low B on my Schecter Stilletto Elite with EMG humbuckers and and active preamp, all the way to the ceiling - no cracking, popping, or discordant distortion.
I think it is a challenge to make a good ten inch speaker to handle bass wavelengths well. Well, probably not a challenge, because they figured out how to do it already. Probably more of a challenge to keep the price competetive, tuff being able to stay in business as it is.
I still think the stock SCXD speaker sounds WAY better than the ten inch Vypyrs I've played. Subjective on my part, but the Vypyrs just look really cheaply built - no back? What's up with that? Plus the models on the smaller Vypyrs I played didn't sound very good when compared side by side to the actual amps they were supposed to model. How well the SCXD does I don't know, but they say on the fenderforum that it does quite well considering its limitations. I don't think it sounds like my expensive limited edition tweed Hot Rod Deluxe with the Jensen P12n speaker in it that produces real smooth low end response and has a 29oz Alnico magnet on it, but I should A/B them. The SCXD sits above my HRDX in my stack of amps next to my bed.
I've got the Egnater Tweaker, an outstanding head, and I am having the opposite problem: I can't seem to get great single coil sounds out of it on the higher gain settings. I need to tweak it more and see what I can do. I actually want to get a set of noiseless pickups for one of my strats strictly for real high gain amps and pedals. Noise.
That Tweaker combo is supposed to be quite a nice little amp as well, but I'm sure it is more expensive than the SCXD and I think it has a twelve inch real Celestion speaker in it.
