With two 8 Ohm speakers, is there an easier load ?

[Noel Grassy]

I mean a better performing load between my two choices? 4 or 16 Ohms?


Do any of you Express owners move your Presence tap wire from the traditional 8 Ohm Impedance selector lug to one of the other two?

Has the performance resulted in an improvement?

[rooster]

There was an article by Gerald Weber in Vintage Guitar Mag a few years back. His thought was basically that the 16 ohm tap used the most wire in the OT - therefore - it must be better. When you think about it for a while it doesn't really fly, of course

Anyway, another thought is that if you do use the higher impedence OT tap - and therefore the higher ohmage speaker load - the wire that you use and the connectors will not be as critical. Let me explain this. If the 16 ohm speaker load itself is 14 ohms DC resistance, (typical), and the cables and connections are 2 ohms, (just as an extreme example), the speaker load is going to see most of the energy from the OT. Which means the cheap seats are still going to hear you pretty well. If you change the equation to a 4 ohm speaker load (3 ohms?) with that 2 ohm cable/connector, it is pretty plain to see that the cable is going to receive a pretty good share of the OTs energy. The volume drop here should be noticable if you A/B'd the two.

Of course your cable and connectors aren't going to total up to 2 ohms - I hope - but my point is, it is something. And here the higher impedence load would not be as impacted as much as the lower impedence load. Does this make sense to you? This fact that a Marshall amp's cabs are typically 16 ohms says a great deal about English/European amplfier design. They were clever to take the cabling and connectors pretty much out of the equation. Compare this to a tweed Bassman at 2 ohms, for axample. And yes, a great a sounding amp but not something designed for extended cables and speaker cabs.

My .02, anybody else?

[Noel Grassy]

Rooster, Thanks for the logical choices you posted. I can wrap my head around those concepts & it's specifically what I was curious about. I often though Marshall's pre-occupation for wiring their cabs 16 Ohm was based on some strange British electrical custom rather than empirical electronic behavior.

I'll be wiring the Sunn 2 x 12 cab for 16 Ohms and test driving this afternoon. I have two new Tone Tubbies, 1=AlNiCo & 1=Ceramic magnets.

Thanks for sharing your valuable knowledge with me,

NG.

[M Fowler]

I have always foud the 4 ohm load best for me; however, the 4x12 stereo cabs are 8/16. My super reverb is at 2 ohms and doesn't sound good using anyother load either. So it all can get confusing but when I build my own cabinets I usually choose the speaker and wiring to give me a 4 ohm load. The only time I don't is when I want to run a stack for guitar (2) cabs or PA system 2 cabs then they are 8 ohms together at 4 ohm load to the power amp.

Mark