Is there a difference between a regular cabinet and an extension cabinet?

[guitaardvark]

I'm shopping around for a 1x12 or 2x12 cabinet (4x12 is too big/bulky/expensive for my needs), and a lot of the ones on Craigslist are marketed as "extension cabinets." Is there a meaningful difference between these and regular cabs?

 

[Noodler]

Not as far as I'm aware. I have a 1x12 Hughes and Kettner "extension" cab and it works great with my heads. I think they're mostly marketed as extension cabs because they're a way to "add onto" any cab config you already have.

Just make sure the cab matches your heads impedance rating and you'll be good to go.

 

[c7spheres]

Not much difference, but I think of the word 'extension' as being part of an existing system that iimplies an assumption that it should be automatically compatible with the head or combo it's extending etc. - Otherwise, you just need to make sure the ohm's watts etc will be compatible before hooking it up to something that's not part of the system. Either way you still need to make sure of this anyways, but other things like the speaker and cab voicing etc are what the company presents as an extension cab as part of expanding an existig head or combo, in my view., what they say should work well with it.
- In reality just connect whatever's compatible and see if you like it or not. Always leave a load/speaker connected to tube heads before taking out of standby.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

As long as you match impedance everything else is details.

The one other salient detail IME is that multiple loads of same impedance but different wattage can have power loss/imbalance between the two but there is nothing necessarily dangerous about mismatching wattage.

Just always match impedance.