16 ohm cabinet into a Mark IV?

[temps]

I am going to pick up a custom Matamp cabinet for my Mark IV (they sound waaay better then Recto cabs and even a halfback cab I passed on awhile back) ...but its 16 ohm and the Mark doesn't have a 16 ohm in! What can I do??

Is my only option changing out the speakers (I didn't specify impedance so I got 16s)? Or is there something else I can do? Rewire the speakers maybe, to make the cabinet 4 ohm?

 

[disassembled]

My 290 and 20/20 power amps only have 8 ohm and 4 ohm taps and the manual says it is ok to run a 16 ohm load into the 8 ohm input. This will result in a less punchy sound but the tone change isn't drastic.

You could also rewire your cab to be 4 ohms but you would only be able to run 1 cab at a time as the lowest load the Mark IV can see is 4 ohms.


Greg

 

[eltrain858]

yeah, or if you wanted to run two cabs you could use a serial box with two 4 ohm cabs

 

[Russ]

Yeah just rewire it to 4 ohms and you are set provided you only use that cab at any one time unless as was noted you use a series box.

 

[temps]

I only ever play half stacks, plus Matamp cabs are waaaay too expensive to ever run a full stack... so 4 ohms it is.

 

[Russ]

It was just a thought if you ever decided to run one on each side of the stage.

 

[siggy14]

I would avoid rewiring your cab to 4 ohm, this means you will be wiring the thing completly serial. The problem with that is, one speaker blows so does your amp. Remember in series, one speaker gets taken out and you loose the whole load, which means amp goes up in smoke!

 

[temps]

I thought it just was bad for the output transformer and that I could get away with it for a little while before any real damage is done?
Also, the Mark is "only" 85 watts and the cab is 400 watts RMS. I don't think I will have many problems with blowing anything haha

 

[Schmoog]

actually if you rewire your cabs to 4 ohm they will be all parallel. wiring a cab with say, 4 16 ohm speakers in all series would get you like 64 ohm impedance, all parallel would give you 4 ohm

 

[siggy14]

Good point, forgot about that!

actually if you rewire your cabs to 4 ohm they will be all parallel. wiring a cab with say, 4 16 ohm speakers in all series would get you like 64 ohm impedance, all parallel would give you 4 ohm