Ohms question

[jmv]

According to the 'fender amp feild guide', my amp's 2 12's are each 8 ohms, so the cabinet is 4 ohms total... the amp has the speaker jack, as well as an extra speaker jack... if i were to hook up another cab, what ohmage would it need to be?? Because it seems like hooking up anything would get the ohmage pretty low, which isn't acceptable, correct??

Reason i ask is, my freind who plays bass was checking it out, and thought it was cool that he could get a distortion sound... he had never tried that before. We were wondering, however, if we could hook up his 1x15' cab, which is 8 ohms, in addition to the regular 2x12... but wouldn't that bring it to somewhere around 3 ohms, and isn't that too low??

Neither of the jacks have anything labeled about ohmage, the regular 'speaker' jack just specifies 50w.

 

[Pandemonium]

Re: Ohms question

That would be around 2.6 ohms. My Bandmaster uses three 10s with what I'm told is a 4 ohm transformer. That's the way Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares designed it so I guess you'd probably be safe there, but if you use dissimilar speakers like that you'll end up blowing one or more of the speakers eventually, probably the 15. I speak from experience on that, not only did I do it once, I was dumb enough to do it again.

 

[jmv]

Re: Ohms question

That would be around 2.6 ohms. My Bandmaster uses three 10s with what I'm told is a 4 ohm transformer. That's the way Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares designed it so I guess you'd probably be safe there, but if you use dissimilar speakers like that you'll end up blowing one or more of the speakers eventually, probably the 15. I speak from experience on that, not only did I do it once, I was dumb enough to do it again.

okay... but why do dissimilar speakers not like eachother?? Is it just vintage gear?? Cuz i know that, for instance, some of the gibson amps come with 1 or 2 10's and one or two 12's...