I’ve found that just because I get consistent gravity readings doesn’t necessarily mean that the beer is ready for packaging. Often there’s stuff the yeast needs to clean up or it needs more time to drop clear.
He uses conicals, Mark, so all he has to do is lay down and open the valve…
Wow. 4 Weeks seems long - is that for certain styles? I’ll try 2 weeks. That will mirror the time scale I’d been using when doing a primary & a secondary.
Are you keeping the fermenters at fermentation temp for those whole 2-4 weeks, or do you drop the temp a bit before bottling/kegging?
Ahhh, thanks for pointing that out. Now that’s a telling argument for the expense of a conical. May just have to go there.
Agreed. The clearing part speaks for itself(easy in carboys, how about buckets?). How do you determine if the yeast need to clean up? Aroma, taste, both?
First 1-2 weeks at fermentation temps, then I raise the temp to be sure it’s all finished. IMO, you can never go wrong giving it a little more time.
I either open the bucket and look or, more typically, put some in a 20 oz. PET bottle with a carbonator cap. I hit it with 30 psi and put it in the freezer for 30 min. or so. Then I have a cold, carbed sample to base my decision on.
Agreed. It’s always better to go a little longer than not long enough. When my beer reaches terminal gravity I usually let it sit for another week or so to clean up. It certainly won’t hurt to let it sit a little longer on the yeast. Autolysis takes more than four weeks to even start.
Don’t kick me out of the club just yet! I still ferment in carboys and better bottles quite frequently. 
I probably seconday about 50% of the time. I find that it drops a lot more yeast out of suspension, that would otherwise drop in the keg.
Yeah, if you never move your kegs until they’re drained, you don’t need to secondary. But I only have one fridge for kegs, and it only holds 3, so I am rotating kegs in and out of the fridge all the time. And if you secondary before kegging, you don’t have as much yeast to stir up when you move the keg.
A lot of times I secondary in a keg, then jumper cable the beer into a clean keg to get it off the flocculated yeast. That seems to work best.
To answer the OP, clarity is not necessary for that style, but you may want a longer fermentation time on such a big beer. I would give it at least 3 weeks in primary, personally. Clarity will not hurt the beer, though.
I sometimes use secondaries as bright tanks when I know my keg will get moved around a bunch and I want to harvest the yeast from primary. When I do this, I crash to 30F, then rack into secondary and add some kind of fining agent like gelatin or isinglass, then I wait a few days before racking - that gives me crystal clear beer from the very first pint.