by bordonbert Fri Aug 05, 2022 9:18 am
I still have to say you should consider that, even though the cabs may be excellent, there is no guarantee that they will produce the sound you are looking for with your H&K amp. The combination is always more than the sum of the separate parts and sometimes a magical match occurs when all of the theory tells you it shouldn't and, vice versa, a mismatch occurs between bits of gear which, individually or paired with other gear, are extremely good. You say they are not brittle at all and that is no doubt true with other amps, but it is no guarantee that they won't be brittle with the BS. It would surprise me if the brittleness was due to that speaker combination but it isn't an obvious "definitely not the speaker".
Have you tried your amp with any different speakers? If you do I think you will see that the speaker, (in truth the match of the amp with the speaker), is a very significant part of the overall sound. You can't just take the known sound of a speaker with one amp and just plug that same sound in with any amp, the interface of the two generally alters it sometimes severely.
I'll be honest, ported designs for guitar work can often be a bit of a cul-de-sac. I wouldn't see that as a very important factor in the sound you are getting. I've never heard one where the porting was absolutely necessary to get the tone that was produced. Are you able to simply block off or stuff the ports with something on the outside to see if it makes a huge or a subtle difference, or even none at all. We are talking about overall tone here not frequency balance. Balance from low to high can be adjusted with your amp's controls. It is tonal character we are talking about here and that is different. For bass the ports do help as basses obviously go down another octave below guitars in standard tuning. Guitar work is restricted to not very far below 100Hz and the idea of a port is to resonate and reinforce only the lowest frequencies. Above that they actually act like a solid part of the cabinet wall to the sound. It is usually unnecessary to include that for guitar. Most amp systems are designed to start tailing off even above that so the lowest frequencies are already being curtailed a little. They can occasionally also lead to a loose flubby feeling in the lower register depending on their tuned frequency as the open port ceases to have any effect below its resonant frequency and it makes the speaker unloaded by the air spring of the cabinet. It's a more important aspect in hifi than guitar work as it is also much more significant at hifi/bass frequencies.
I don't mean those cabinets are not good in any way, I'm not trying to criticise them at all, just that I wouldn't count on the ported design as being a major contributor to their tone, (remember not just their balance). It would be good for you to swap out those cabinets for a trial just to see how much difference a different setup will make. I don't mean buy them, just try out the amp with others to see if things change much.