Now if 5.3ohm load wouldn't you want to tap into a 4ohm?
Load should be less (more resistance) than the tap?
With a SS amp you are safer with higher impedance, but with a transformer coupled tube amp I think a little under is better than a little over.
Yeah, I've been thinking of re-wiring the newer (16ohm) sunn cab to an 8 or 4ohm anyway if it can be done. 8 ohm would be fine with me but I'm just not sure how to do it.
What is the impedance of the individual drivers? That's important to know, because with a 4 speaker cab you have 3 nominal impedance options; the same as the individual drivers, 4 X the individual drivers, or .25 X the individual drivers.
Usually a 4 speaker cab is factory wired series/parallel, which would indicate 16 ohm drivers in your 16 ohm cab and 8 ohm drivers in your 8 ohm cab.
This would make your options 32, 8, or 2 ohms for your 8 ohm cab and 64, 16, or 4 ohms for your 16 ohm cab. I don’t see a match there, do you?
Of course this is all speculation until you see what’s
actually inside.
Also, if I run 2 4ohm cabs off a beta bass amp, if I want to retain the 4ohm load do I run series or parallel?
It can’t be done, period. If you run two 4 ohm cabs you either get 8 ohms or 2 ohms, 4 ohms is not an option.
Okay, I have the 2 4ohm cabs figured out (running in series from the 4ohm amp output) but if I run the 1200s (the back has an 8ohm speaker & a 4ohm external speaker output) how would I go about it? Should I run both cabs in series (5.33ohm) from the 4ohm output?
Two 4 ohm cabs in series would be an 8 ohm load, not a 4 ohm load.
For one thing, if you run your 16 and 8 ohm cabs in series you will end up with a
24 ohm load, which in a best case scenario would be slow death for your 1200S, it might even reach critical mass in short order.
If you run parallel you will get you 5.33 ohms, but I would run it from the 8 ohm tap. I don’t think the tap matters too much with a mismatch that close, but I think it’s safer to err on the low side as I mentioned above.
HOWEVER… If you run a 16 ohm cab with an 8 ohm cab you will get a
huge disparity in power distribution, as I mentioned in a previous post. With a 120 watt 1200S, at full power about 80 of those watts will go to the 8 ohm cab and only 40 will go to the 16 ohm cab.
Before you ask for more advice you need to open up the cabs and determine what they are loaded with. You might get lucky and find that someone has already swapped out the speakers for ones you can use in your application!
