you know oranges and the avatar compies are not actually thicker than a fender or marshall cab? Fender has no 'framing' over the front grill, Marshall has a little making the sides appear double thick. orange has the so-called picture frame invented as a marketing gimmick by chris cooper when he realized marshall's were just regular thickness plywood and only looked sturdier because of the front cosmetics ;-) Original 70s Hiwatt cabinets used thicker plywood though and due to the added stiffness, back 'vent' that ports the hiwatt 4x12 and uniquely voiced fane speakrs they stand out amongst closed back cabiets, though tis a love it or leave it thing, not for everyone. But yeah, straight mashall cabs and orange cabs? plywood fender cabs (some were pine)? all the same basic construction

Really? I had no idea. I did the measurements between the Oranges and the Contemporaries and they were the same but not between them vs. Fenders and Marshalls. The more you know!

well, they LOOK different because of the frame, but in reality its just a bit of extra wood on the front and its still the same thickness birch ply sides. Dead serious. If you google search you can even find an interview with Chris Cooper of Orange talking about his idea to make the cabs look extra sturdy with the 'frame front'! To the ebst of my knowledge Hiwatt is the only cab that's thicker plywood and not by a lot. Too thick makes a dead sounding closed back cab and Hiwatt helps the sound of their traditional 4x12 with the vent type ort on the bottom of the back panel so the whole response of the enclosure is tuned differently than offerigs from amrshall, fender, orange and whoever. To the ebst of my knowledge Marshall based his original straight 4x12 on the dimensions of a tweed bassman cabinet and just blew it up proportionally to accommodate 12 inches using the same thickness wood, but in European birch ply instead of solid pine. He borrowed the fixed baffle and back from the blackface fender piggybacks, added a center brace to support the back and break up standing waves from the larger speakers and that was the 'tall' marshall 1980. He then slanted the top cabs like the slanty 8x10s he ahd been making (pete Townshend had him make lanty 8x12 cabs but wound up having them cut down because marshall was right that they were too big to gig) for looks and made them a little shorter so they're more square than rectangular at the front but eventually just made all of the cabs the same height. Everyone else borrowed his dimensions and construction/bracing system. Even hiwatts are just slightly modified with thicker plywood and the port I mentioned. The real differences from most cab manufacturers are cosmetic.... orange has the big frame out front and fenders maintain blackface cosmetic with no framing over the grill and no slant cab option for stacks. Most other manufacturers copy fender or marshal's cosmetics. There ya go, the 4x12 in a nutshell.

it always comes back to tweed fender in amplifiers.... well, not vox, but everyone else.