Guitar speaker cabinet
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A guitar speaker cabinet contains one or more guitar speakers - as many as eight, often 8" or 10" types. A speaker cabinet can be open-back, sealed or vented. A 4x12 cabinet is a guitar speaker cabinet containing four 12" speakers. A cabinet is usually mono, but may have two inputs for a "stereo" amplifier. Two speakers in a cabinet may be wired in parallel (lowering the impedance) or in series (increasing the impedance). Larger multiples will usually be series/parallel to maintain an impedance of 4 to 8 ohms. For vacuum tube amplifiers, the overall impedance of the speakers in the cabinet must match the impedance of the output transformer of the amplifier, or damage to the amplifier components can occur. Conventional wisdom holds that with solid-state amplifiers there is less need to precisely match the impedance of the speaker cabinet to the impedance selected on the amplifier, but as a rule mismatches should be avoided.
Often what is referred to as a "guitar amp" is in fact an amplifier, one or more speakers, and a cabinet to house them. A combo amp for guitar is, in other words, a single integrated cabinet that contains an amplifier and speaker(s). A 2x10 combo amp contains two 10" guitar speakers. Speaker complements are often abbreviated so that a 4x10" cabinet is written as 410 cab and a combo amplifier with a single 12" speaker is referred to as a 112 combo amplifier.
A guitar speaker isolation cabinet contains a guitar speaker and one or two microphones in a single- or double-layer soundproofed box. These are almost exclusively used in recording studios and/or during live performances to prevent "bleed through", hence, maintaining isolation in the mix.
