Sunn Solarus

[bkeeley]

So I used to own a Solarus head. I sold it because i was moving away to school. I now have purchised one again.

There is differences in the last one compared to the newer one. I could use some expertise here...

My original had no mid boost, and had a 16 ohm output (along with an 8ohm).  I always used the 16ohm out.

My newer one has a mid boost switch (which is irrelevant at this point in the conversation) and only 4 or 8 ohms output.

How will this ohm output affect my setup?

I was previously using a 2 speaker cabinet that took the 16 ohm output, and now I don't have that same output on the head, any in-sight?

Also, can someone shed some light on the differences between my original and the newly purchised one? Why the changes in the model?

[AdmiralB]

Your amp has a 16-ohm tap.  Depending upon style (and, I think, whim of the builder), you either got 4 and 8 hooked up, or 8 and 16.  It would be a ten minute job - including pulling and reinstalling the chassis - to swap the 16 for one of the others.

[bkeeley]

At the risk of sounded dumb,

first off, i have no idea what a "tap" is.

second, did you recommend that i just bring it to morrisamps.com for custom work and have Glenn fix it ?

third, any idea why the changes in the model ? which came first, etc... ?

[Isaac]

A tap is a wire coming out of the transformer.
A transformer is two wire coils wrapped around a common core. Usually, the primary side will have only two wires coming out, positive and negative, with maybe a third for ground. That's also called a center tap. The secondary is wired so that you can use the whole coil, which will match a 4 ohm load to the output impedance of the tubes, or half of the secondary coil, for 8 ohms, or a quarter, for 16 ohms. These are called taps, because you "tap into" the secondary at different points.

The different taps were used to match to different speaker cabinets. normally, if the amp came with an 8 ohm cabinet, it would be wired 8/4, so you could run one cab from the main output, or get  a second cabinet and run two, one from each output. Likewise, if it came with a 16 ohm cabinet, it would be wired 16/8. I can't say how consistent they were about that, though.