Ohm and speaker questions?

[upnorthbacon]

My new Vox Night Train came in the mail yesterday and I hooked it up with my Blackheart 1x12" speaker.  I have a 15" Bass amp that I wired in an output jack directly to the 4 ohm speaker.  I was previously running my Killer Ant through it for fun and it actually sounded great.  I was wondering if I can possibly run my Vox amp which has an 8 ohm and 16  ohm outs through both the Blackheart cab and bass cab?  The blackheart has two parallel 16 ohm jacks and the bass has one 4 ohm jack?  Obviously I don't want to ruin my amp, I was wondering if this was possible though?

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Short answer is no.  I don't know the ohm rating of the Blackheart that would be powering everything, but when adding ohm values in parallel, the total value is always lower than the lowest value of any of the pieces.  If the bass speaker is 4 ohms, I already know the total ohm value is less than that.  Again, I don't know what the Blackheart is rated for, but it probably isn't less than 4 ohms.  With one 16 ohm speaker and one 4 ohm speaker, your total ohm load is 3.2 ohms.  I wouldn't do it.  Because your 2 speakers are so mismatched the 15" will be louder anyway.

You could always run a lineout, tuner out, effects send to the input jack of the bass amp.  This keeps both systems separate.

[=CB=]

Doing mismatched loads through speakers can be interesting.... but not always good.

Basic rule of thumb - tube amps with output run by tubes through an output transformer, can take lower ohm loads "ok", but not higher.  The reverse is true of silicon "solid state" amps, where you dont ever want to go into a lower impedance load than its rated for, but higher is ok.

When you run a tube amp into a higher impedance, it plays havoc with both the tubes and output transformer.  If you run it into a high enough impedance, it'll fry the transformer.  Run any tube amp into an infinite impedance (aka "no speaker attached") and it fries pretty quickly.  However, if you run the tube amp into a direct short - it just sits there, unless its iron is being used to some serious degree beyond its rating.

[jackthehack]

The BlackHeart cab is 16 ohms...

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Duh.  For some reason I thought the Blackheart was a combo.  The Vox is powering it.

[jackthehack]

No, Blackheart makes really nice, solid 1x12 cabs with a "special" Eminence 16 ohm speaker installed. Sound good, but are definitely "British voiced", swapped the 2 I have out with Vintage 30s