Parts for Stereo 2x12 Cab

[fonom]

Hello,

I'm confident in my ability to wire up most any guitar without piezo type electronics.  I'm wiring up a 2x12 cabinet and I would like to be able to play through each of the two speakers separately because they have interesting nuances and then play through both of them at the same time.  I know that there are two basic ways that I can make this happen - one way is to have 3 inputs where two go to individual speakers and the third goes to both and the other way is to have an input that goes to one speaker and another input that goes to a switch that toggles between the other speaker by itself and both of them.  

I'd like some advice on which is more durable - my intuition tells me the first method sans switch will be less likely to have an incident over time (breaking or setting my amp resistance setting incorrectly to match the cab), however I'm not sure how to make this wiring happen and I'm also hoping that someone can direct me to where to buy good parts and model numbers for the parts if a website has a huge amount of items.  Thank you in advance.  

[mistermikev]

i have two 2x12 wired up in the first way... the advantage is simplicity.  I also have a 4x10 wired up to switching jacks that give me options for reconfiguration... the issue with it is it's not labeled well and I did it several years ago... so it's hard to know now what I did.  there are other options... you can spend a bit and get panels that have labeled switches that will do mono vs stereo but they are more expensive.  If I had to do it again I'd either make better labels, or go with a labeled store bought solution as labels are key 2 years later when you have no idea what you did!!