Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

J

JacobThe13th

New member
Okay so I have made no purchase yet but I love low end for my guitar so I was thinking of buying a bass cab for my orange cr120h (basically a solid state rockerverb). Both speaker outputs are 16 ohms but the cabs I'm looking at are 8 ohms. Would that work?
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

look for a bass cab with the same ohms as your head.
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

The cabs you are looking at would require more (ideally) to push them as designed/intended. I sometimes lower the amount my bass head pushes out (below what the cabs can handle) but i never send out more than they can handle. 8ohms is higher than 16ohms. You definitely will not be overloading them. I'd try it out and look this up because I'm sure there is some decent literature out there about exactly what you have planned. Good luck!
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

I just thought of this. could I just have a split speaker cable and plug both 16 ohm outputs into the cab? I figured if two 16 ohms made 8 and plugged it into one cab it would make 8 and 8. I'm just throwing ideas around.
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

I just checked the Orange site, and the CR120H is rated for a minimum of 8 ohms; ie a single 8 ohm cab or two 16 ohm cabs. DO NOT try to connect both speaker outputs to a single speaker. If your cabinet has multiple inputs you should probably only use of of them as impedence divides when running in parallel.

If you have two 8-ohm cabs, they'd be a load of 16 ohms when wired in series, but only 4 ohms when wired in parallel. The outputs on your amp are wired in parallel, so hooking them up to a pair of 8 ohm loads would yield a total load of 4 ohms which may damage the amp.
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

Why would you use a guitar amp with a bass cab? Yeah that wont sound like pewp at all... If you want more low end by a dang EQ pedal. The voicing of bass speakers are all wrong for a guitar. It wont hurt anything if you match the ohms up but its just not as good of idea as you think.
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

Myaccount876 said:
So with a tube amp:
- 8 ohm amp into a 4 ohm cabinet = OK
- 4 ohm amp into an 8 ohm cabinet = BAD
Click to expand...

Not to be a d*ck or anything, but your information on tube amps is backwards and incorrect. Connecting a 16 ohm cab to an 8 ohm tap or a 8 ohm cab to a 4 ohm tap is absolutely safe, though it may cause distortion due to the impedance mismatch. If you look at the owner's manual for a Mesa mark-series amp, they specifically state that using a 16 ohm cab on one of the 8 ohm outputs is fine as these amps only had 8 and 4 ohm taps. OTOH going the other direction ie 4 ohm cab on an 8 ohm tap is how to wreck an output transformer.
 
Re: Guitar amp into bass cab with different ohms?

dystrust said:
Not to be a d*ck or anything, but your information on tube amps is backwards and incorrect. Connecting a 16 ohm cab to an 8 ohm tap or a 8 ohm cab to a 4 ohm tap is absolutely safe, though it may cause distortion due to the impedance mismatch. If you look at the owner's manual for a Mesa mark-series amp, they specifically state that using a 16 ohm cab on one of the 8 ohm outputs is fine as these amps only had 8 and 4 ohm taps. OTOH going the other direction ie 4 ohm cab on an 8 ohm tap is how to wreck an output transformer.
Click to expand...

It's okay; no offense taken. Better someone corrects me than someone reading incorrect information I put up and accidentally damaging their equipment.

I double checked and yep, it is too low cabinet impedance/too high tap impedance than can kill an OT. Thankfully I've never had to do a mis-match.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top