The higher "figure of merit" for a bass reflex usally makes it the choice over a horn for a reasonably compact bass guitar speaker. In the early 1970's there were some rock bassists using horns of compromised mouth size and path lengtb - if nothing else these little 8-12 cu.ft. horns with ~100hz mouths made a lot of noise in the upper bass to cut though the guitar and drum's din.

Small horns like La Scala, Peavey FH-1, etc exhibit a lot of distortion below their practical cutoff (this is one case where a vented back chamber may be of assistance)

For the blues/R&B I played, a 15" Karlson w. JBL D-140 had a nice solid sound - more so than reflex boxes - I actually had to cut the bass a bit on some stages.

Wayne - have you built short PI horns for bass guitar or do you find reflex more practical? Also - to the readers of this group - what have you built for bass guitar or organ use?

(my old standby is 2-2.8 cu.ft. reflexes from one sheet of birch plywood -light and can stack em)

Freddy

My Favorite setup for small stages, studios.

1 Cube 24/24/24" with a D130 One 4"dia 13" long port. It would satisfy.

Medium hall:

The two 15 peavy cabinet, loaded with EVM15B's

Large hall:

(4) 8 10" Ampegs...with 4 heads.

For these guys, basshorns or tons of reflex subs were always needed. It's all about the "bulk efficiency" issue you've discussed before. These days, power is available and inexpensive. And when they have to build up and tear down for each gig, size and portability become very important considerations.

But about "small basshorns" - I don't do them. If you go undersized, then response becomes peaky and EQ is required. They're direct radiators at the lowest frequencies anyway, so that sort of makes it a mute point. Midbass horns can be made small, but good quality hornsubs just can't be shoehorned into a small package.