ohms?

[verity38]

I was just looking on www.orangeamps.com and www.mesaboogie.com and i realized that my orange 4x12 can hold up to 16 ohms...i have been putting my speaker cable in the 4 ohm when i play does this make a big diffrence or what does it matter I dont know much about my boogie... :/

thanks in advance

p.s. where can i find a diffrent light cover for my mesa so instead of red it turns like orange or blue

 

[verity38]

can somebody please help me instead of just looking at this i really would like to know if this matters or not.

 

[parsky1]

A speaker load higher than the amps output is a safe mismatch. The other way around would be bad.

 

[verity38]

so sorry i dont understand what exactly does that mean?

 

[parsky1]

If you plug a 16ohm cab in the 4ohm output of the amp this impedance mismatch is safe and is fine. If you plug and 4 ohm cab into the 16ohm output of the amp it would be bad for the amp. 8)

 

[Elpelotero]

here's one that i've seen debated several times on here...

when pulling tubes on a dual rectifier to bring it to 50 watts, which output plug should go on the amp? regularly it is 8ohm into an 8ohm mesa cab. would it be 4ohm into an 8ohm cab or something else?

 

[parsky1]

If you pull 2 tubes I believe you would change from the 8ohm jack to the 16ohm... or if you were using 4ohms at 100 watts... you would go to 8ohms for 50watts.

I've never done it... but I think this is what I read some time ago.

 

[verity38]

alrighty i understand that part but i dont think i asked the question right.

I have a Mesa Head that can handle 16 Ohms and my Orange cab can handle 16 Ohms. Right now im running the head at 4 ohms whats the diffrence between 4 and 16 ohms?

Thanks again and sorry.

 

[parsky1]

Well first off they are two different numbers :roll:

Basically the 4 ohms on the amp is the minimum load of what the amp needs to see from the cabs in order to work right.

 

[ytse_jam]

If your Mesa amp has got a 16 ohm out, use that one for your 16 ohm Orange speaker cabinet. It isn't right to say "can handle", it HAS GOT a resistance of 16 ohm. I think different speaker outputs on your amp send signals with a different voltage/current proportion, so that provided power value remain the same if you use one 16 ohm cab with the 16 ohm amp's output, or if you use one 8 ohm cab with the 8 ohm amp's output, or if you use one 4 ohm cab with the 4 ohm amp's output.
You can plug your speaker cabinet into every speaker output of your amp I believe, since the resistance of your cab is higher than the minimal one requested (which is the indicate one) by the amp itself. It would have been a problem if you had a cabinet with a lower resistance plugged into a speaker out of your amp with a higher nominal output impedance (again, the indicated one): in that case the amp is not able to dissipate all the power on your speakers and you will damage internal circuitry of the amp.
If you plug your cabinet into a speaker output which has got a lower nominal impedance value, you will do a safe mismatch, but the power provided by the amp would be less than the one you could get pairing a 16/8/4 ohm cabinet respectively with the 16/8/4 ohm speaker output of your amp. I don't know if even the tone would suffer because of this...

 

[JPIndustrie]

While I've heard and read in the manual that plugging in the amp's impedance output of lets say 8 ohms into a cab w/ an impedance of 16 Ohms is a safe mismatch (as the cab is able to handle the amp's 8 ohm output),

I've heard the tone suffers a little bit when doing mismatches, and for optimum tone, match the cab with the amp impedance.

I haven't tried both. Is there a tone difference and is it noticeable?

 

[verity38]

thanks very much for the help i guess i will start play at 16 ohms