Speaker impedance preferences

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greiswig
Posts: 1002
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:19 pm
Location: Oregon

Re: Speaker impedance preferences

Post by greiswig »

dogears wrote:Two days ago, I wired up my Jenkins 2X12 with a set of 8 ohm Celestion G1265 speakers in series. 16 ohms.

The low end has the exact "splatty" quality you hear in Rugged Road for instance. The series wiring is not as dampened and the texture is definately enhanced to my ear. Not as smooth and controlled, a very cool alternative tone.

I do still like my parallel cabs as well. Just saying that series vs parallel wiring is quite noticeable!
It *is* very noticeable. I had originally wired my cab to be 16 ohms, but we recently auditioned a bass player whose tone and volume required me to crank my amp a good deal louder than I ever had before. I seemed to run out of headroom. This is when I decided that perhaps I should rewire to run at 4 ohms, to see if I had a bit more.

It substantially changed the tone, and in some regards I thought it changed it for the better, which runs directly counter to the "conventional wisdom" cited by heisthl in his first response. It gets hard to run a decent A/B comparison, though, when your friggin' DAW has croaked so you don't have a good way to record, and when you have to resolder the connections between trials which makes for a long time between trials to compare.

Gil's comment, too, makes me wonder to what extent what I'm hearing is related to gig volume versus home "testing" volume.

I had a gig this past Sunday where, wired at 4 ohms and running off that tap, I was really amazed at playing the bridge humbucker on my PRS, playing that cowboy G chord on the overdrive section...geez, there was this amazing combination of string separation, no murkiness in spite of a full chord, and bloom to beat the band. It was neat. I do get that at 16 ohms, too, but it seemed to me like it was a little more so at 4.

So I'm struggling to try to understand what I'm hearing when compared to the "conventional wisdom" I'm getting from ears I respect highly. More experiments ensue...
-g
doveman
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Re: Speaker impedance preferences

Post by doveman »

You guys are way above my head but I think what the OP was asking is ...

If an amp has the choice of 4 ohm or 16 ohm ... same to 8 ohm speakers in either series or parallel ... will the 4 ohm be louder? Both matched.

My experience is that the 4 ohm will be louder ... but they do sound different. In my case, I think the series 16 ohm series on the 16 ohm amp setting sounds a little better than the 4 ohm parallel speakers on the 4 ohm setting ... but slightly quieter. This seems to match up with the "better to use more wire" theory too.
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greiswig
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Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2007 8:19 pm
Location: Oregon

Conventional wisdom

Post by greiswig »

Okay, here's a related question. I got a Twin chassis that I'm going to be modding, but the OT in it has *only* a 4 ohm tap. Is the conventional wisdom of "more windings is better" meaningful in this case? IOW, should one look instead for a Twin chassis with multiple taps, or even one with just an 8 ohm tap?
-g
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