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Y'all know about ohm cooking?

Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2020 9:36 pm
by Thylacine Dream
So I wanna run my bass through an Epi Valve Jr. head and two 8ohm Kustom 15in cabs.

I could hook the 4ohm output to one cab and daisy chain the other in, of course, but my understanding is that I could do the same with the 2ohm output and get a little extra power and mids, too.

Is this true or am I gonna blow somethin up?

Re: Y'all know about ohm cooking?

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:03 am
by crochambeau
Thylacine Dream wrote:I could do the same with the 2ohm output and get a little extra power and mids, too.
You can't make 2 ohms with two 8 ohm loads, so there won't be any more power (as in heat dissipated at the amplifier). Any tonal difference can probably be marked up to impedance mismatch - not major, most amps are happy with 100% mismatch, but less efficient transfer of low frequency can be perceived as extra mids - but we're veering into pure speculation territory that can vary from set-up to set-up.

If your amp tolerates 2 ohms you can pretty much get away with doing whatever you like (I like leaning toward the upper end of impedance selection on output transformer amps, and then adding amps if for some reason the room volume isn't there).

Re: Y'all know about ohm cooking?

Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2020 5:18 pm
by doommeow
I've more or less just plugged things in blind and crossed my fingers. Not the best methodology, I know, but it's worked so far. :facepalm:

Doesn't the Valve Jr have 4,8,&16 ohm outputs? If your two cabs are in series, use the 16ohm jack. In parallel, 4 ohm.

Or get something like the Z-matcher from Weber.

Re: Y'all know about ohm cooking?

Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2020 10:47 am
by dubkitty
when i saw the thread title i was afraid it was going to be some Qanon shit.