Bill Fitzmaurice

Where driving is concerned the Quebecois are only slightly better in following the rules of the road than the Italians. But in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts one has to fail an IQ test to get a drivers license. 🤪

I've done that since my first desk with that capability, a Yamaha 01v, in 1998. 

Old Peaveys had no trouble with 2 ohms. Back in the days of discreet transistor output stages it was easy to go to 2 ohms, you just used more transistors to increase the current capacity. It's not quite that simple with Class D modules. Sure, they can do it, but it's going to up the cost. However, note that the minimum impedance load tends to be rated at full power. You can run at 2 ohms at 1/4 power and keep the current demand within spec. But who's going to advertise a 2 ohm capable amp at 250 watts compared to 4 ohm capable at 1,000 watts? 😲

Not all all. The limit on the Interstate north of Concord is 70/112, so they don't bat an eye if you're doing 80/129. If you want to see nuts try the New Jersey Turnpike. 90/145 is common, and most of the cars you see doing that are junkers that probably aren't safe at half that speed. And if you've ever driven in Quebec you know that the speed limits there are just suggestions that are usually ignored. 

My speedometer goes to 260 KPH, and as it's a BMW it can reach that. That doesn't mean I have to drive that fast. 130 KPH is quite sufficient. Just because you have a 500w amp doesn't mean you'll ever use that much power. If you were to measure it you'd find that you seldom go over 50w. That's a good thing, as the majority of speakers will only handle at best half their thermal rating before exceeding their mechanical limit. As for peak ratings those are marketing piffle only worthy of being ignored.

On 18/06/2025 at 12:54, Rosie C said:

 

Despite these days of Speakon, I still use orange twin-core mains cable to make my speaker cables, just I use Speakon plugs now  

 

That brings up a good story. There's no bigger lie in audio than that about high end cables making any difference. That doesn't stop audiophools from believing anything and everything. Going back a while Peter Walker was introducing his latest Quad speaker model at a show for the audio press at a hotel in London. When he got ready to set it up he realized that he'd forgotten to bring speaker cables. The drive back to Huntingdon would have taken too long, so he found a local hardware store and bought what he needed. The speakers got rave reviews, of course, but more than a few of the reporters noticed that the cables were orange, and assumed there must have been something special about them. At the press conference after the demonstration one reporter asked Peter what the brand of these cables was that surely had an influence on the purity of the sound. To which Peter replied "Why, Black and Decker!" 

I'd only take a second cab to put it on the ground aimed toward the drummer so he can hear the mids and highs, with the other atop it for myself and the audience.  

They use 6 ohm drivers in the 6x cab, a pair of them in series would explain the 12 ohm option. But you can't wire them to get 4 ohms from a 2x, only from the 6x. 

The shipping should be moot as I'd want to make sure the buggering wasn't just cosmetic. 

Give them a low ball offer then redo the Tolex yourself. I try before buying. 

That's where the voltage and amperage ratings come in. Most wire is rated at 600V. A 1kV amp into a 4 ohm load is 63v. 14 gauge wire is rated at 15A. Said 1kV into 4 ohms is 16A. However, those ratings are for constant full voltage and current. Amps never run at constant full voltage and current. Even 50% duty cycle would be unusual. 

2 hours ago, Freddi375 said:

Does anyone know if I can run an 8ohm and a 4ohm (2 seperate cabs) together 

There's only one case where that makes sense, that's when you have a 2x that's 8 ohms and a 4x that's 4 ohms, with all six drivers being identical, and the amp is rated for 2 ohm operation. Otherwise go with the one cab that gives the better results. 

Kid stuff. When in college my bassplayer (I was lead guitarist, sorry...) asked me to design him a no holds barred cab to house three fifteens. I modified the Jensen Imperial folded horn to fit them. It stood some 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, 2 feet deep. He made it from 1 inch MDF. We never knew how much it weighed but it took all five of us to lift it in and out of his van. We named it 'The Hulk'. 🫢 Entwistle would have been envious. 

Exactly that. All else being equal, although it never is, four tens have 6dB higher sensitivity than two tens. That's equivalent to a four fold power increase. It's more complicated when the drivers and enclosure tunings aren't identical, and they're not all parallel wired, but for the most part adding drivers alone without adding power will still go louder. 

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Being able to take the bass guitar out of the foldback certainly helped with the on-stage clarity for the other members.

Perhaps. Since the lows from your own speaker radiate omnidirectionally they should not be in the monitors. The mids and highs are directional, so they should be in the monitors. For that reason the bass feed to monitors should be high passed at the transition frequency to directional, around 250 Hz. 

"If it sounds good it is good." -Duke Ellington

20,000 mAh sounds impressive except mAh stands for milliampere-hour. That means a more sensible/honest rating is 2 Ah. That well may be compatible, but you want to be sure of it, and that the USB cable is rated for at least that. 

3 hours ago, Richard R said:

I wondered why anyone would quote a cable rating in W not A 

 

Because both amp and speaker ratings are written by marketing departments, not engineering departments. Watts sell gear, amperes and volts don't. Wire capacity ratings come from engineering departments. 

I would think that putting a mic in front of a double bass wouldn't work well, if at all.

That's why the cabs have two jacks. Make sure the impedance load isn't too low for the amp.

Close enough, side by side you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Blue Aran has them listed but with a long lead time for whatever reason.

That cab as it turns out has roughly 50 Hz tuning, which is pretty much ideal. It's a bit small in size, frequency response is better with one driver than with two, but that's pretty common with cabs designed before the advent of Thiele/Small modeling. A moderately priced driver that works well in it is the Lavoce WXF 15.400. The cab being small it won't deliver massive lows without a considerable amount of bass EQ. but between their 400w thermal capacity and 6mm excursion a pair of them will work very well, far better than any vintage driver would have, including the JBL E140.

If anything the laser beam highs from guitar cabs mean they're what needs the most to be in the PA, both out front and in monitors. For all their fussing over gear they tend not to understand how it works very well. No one needs more than a 1x12 combo. But somehow far too many of them think it's still 1965 and they need rigs capable of filling Wembley with no PA.

1 hour ago, JPJ said:

For most of our gigs, mic ‘ing the drums is a bit overkill for front of house

Not necessarily. Running instruments through the PA in small to medium rooms isn't about volume, it's about dispersion. No matter how loud the drummer plays the higher frequencies will always be coming from his kit and won't fill the room. The same applies to all the instruments. Where levels and balance are concerned leave that to your sound man, because he can hear what's out front, you can't. Most of the time my sound man is me, so the only way I can gauge what's out front is to have that same mix in the monitors. If I didn't have them I'd have nothing to go by. I just high pass them at 150-200Hz to keep the mud out. If you do it right you're unaware of what the PA out front is doing while on stage it sounds just like a good studio session. 

On the subject of drummers and big monitors, in one of the worst examples I've ever heard the drummer had a 2x18 monitor right next to him so he could feel his kick drum. The trouble was with every kick it fed back though the mains and the ringing boom masked everything else. The sound man was clearly an idiot, having no idea as to what was happening or how to fix it. I left halfway through the show, unable to handle it any longer. Now one could say that wouldn't happen with an experienced drummer who had a clue, but it was Max Weinberg. I'd say it's a safe bet that Bruce's crew does a better job. ☺️