We have a Horizon smoker. They are made in Perry, Oklahoma. The company is owned by Roger Davidson, the former VP and brother, to Joe Davidson, of "Oklahoma Joe's" fame, long before the company was sold to the "lets contract them out of cheap foil and have them made in China." Our model is the 20" RD Special, and it is so easy to operate that even my PHD-buddy can make it work. Any piece of wood which will fit into the fire box will work, it drafts very well, and the cook chamber temps can be well-evened by use of the sliding deflector plate.
I have direct experience with two individuals who purchased the Yoder Cheyenne and all of us regretted their buying decision. Sadly, they seem to suffer from design flaws that are not apparent at first blush, as they seem to be about the same as the Horizon of the same size. They do not draft well at all, to the point that Yoder started telling people that they needed to swing (I kid you not) the smoker around as the winds shift, so that the breeze would always be forced into the air intake. Sounds like fun, don't it! Much of the heat and smoke will exit through the upper INTAKE vent. Yoder's slight lowering of the intake vents has not been well received by my observation. Then, Yoder told people that their cookers really needed to be used with Yoder-supplied special kiln-dried (read...expensive) wood. But wait, there's more: they went so far as to say that all fires should anly be built towards the very back of the fire box, and only on the far right hand side, at that. All this in hopes that these cookers might start to perform like they were capable or something.
The major problem seems to be that the entire fire box is just positioned too high in relation to the cook chamber. This makes tending them too much of a chore when compared to a smoker that simply...works. Wet wood, dry wood, breeze from wherever the hell it wants to come from, briquettes or wood (oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the "official" Yoder directive, among others, to very precisely lay out a continual bed of charcoal so the damn things might send enough radiant heat all the way to the food), my friends with the Cheyennes wanted to borrow my Horizon all the time, as it simply works, and well.
We also own a Yoder pellet cooker, a YS640, and are most-impressed with it's design, construction, and ease of use. It's built like a tank and produces delicious foods. We don't hate Yoder but we do think they took a huge swing-and-a-miss with the Cheyenne and then compounded the original error by doubling down with all the crap recommendations concerning "how can I make my Cheyenne work right" questions, that the internet is full of. The Yoder Kingman smoker has a very good reputation but it migh be a bit larger than you are seeking. If I had it to do over again, I would have ordered our Horizon with a 24" cook chamber instead of the 20". This would allow full slabs of spare ribs to be placed crosswise in the cook chamber, increasing how much meat we could cram in there. When we ordered it, 20" inches seemed absolutely huge, but seemed to shrink as more and more people kept showing up around BBQ chow time, of course they bring sides and beer so it all works out. My wife thinks we need to get a much larger smoker.
There are many fine offset smokers out there, I (and a bunch of my friends) just don't think the Cheyenne is one of them.
Good luck with your search!
