The ESP Guitar Company

The short and simple answer is No. A 16 ohm speaker can not emit an 8 ohm response, pure and simple it is what it is.

If you had another cab exactly like it with another 16 ohm speaker & were pluggin them both in then & only then would you be able to set your amp at 8 ohms.

cool?

resistance boxes don't work that way, they are made to create resistance to compensate for what the cab lacks so that it wont ruin the amp, this comes from the cabinet's ohm rating being lower than the amp rating, to always be safe you never want to do this, and that is what resistance boxes (attenuators) are for. If the cabinet's ohm rating is at or higher than the amps rating, then you are safe, however, the only con of having a cab that is rated higher than the a mp is that the volume of the cab will be lower.

if your concern is to match a dual 8 ohm amp out into two parallel 16 ohm out, there is no device that will compensate for your amp, however, plugging the amp straight into your cabinet will not hurt your amp its actually better for your amp, especially if its a tube, your volume will just be approximately 8 db quieter.

^your a tad bit off, parallel 16 ohms means that each of the inputs on the cab are 16 ohms each so you have two 8 ohm amp outputs going into 2 separate 16 ohm cab inputs. if your amp is 8 ohms, it will be about 8 db quieter than it should, which isn't much.

if you have a tube amp you have to plug in all the tube outputs into a cab or you'll fuck up your amp beyond no return.

Why do you need the speaker to be only 8 ohms? There isn't a problem with having more resistance, it's less resistance that causes problems for amps.

^the guy said he has a 112 cab that has a 16 ohm parallel input. all i was saying is that something doesn't sound right with that. one speaker all by itself is defined not series or parallel wiring. so yes obviously i'm confused to this one.

heres what i have:

if hes using a single speaker cab, whatever the speaker rating is, is what the ohm load of the entire cab is. For a single speaker there is no parallel or series wiring, its completely direct to the speaker and out. having a 16 ohm load on an 8 ohm amp will not hurt your amp...ever, for the millionth time, you are only getting half the wattage, which in turn means about 8 db difference, this is volume difference is beyond trivial.

/thread

Sorry deathrollJM,, didn't mean to get harsh. Been a long week & I was sort of posting away without thinking. It's no excuse but, my bad.

But ya, agreed: speaker = 16 ohm? need to set amp to 16 ohms. same goes for any other impedance from 1 speaker-match it. end of story.

the rule of thumb is to always have the amp's ohm rating at or below the cabinet's, even with solid state amps taking a 8 ohm amp down to a 4 ohm cab will make it run hotter than it should and could lead to premature failure. Lots of tube players like to run their amps through a cabinet that is rated higher (ex. 8 ohm amp into 16 cab load) because it puts more resistance on the tubes, allowing them to last longer and run cooler.

thats how i keep it, amps out rating = at or below the cab rating. but even then you can overdo it, i personally wouldn't push and 8 ohm tube into anything beyond 32 ohms, eventually the tube wont be able to recognize that its pushing anything, the wattage would drop too low for the voltage, and hell i wouldn't want to know what would happen.

in electricevil's case, if he has a solid state 8 ohm amp and is running that into a 16 ohm load, everything will run smooth. that is if in a case his amp has two outputs, the cab will need to have two outputs if the amp is tube, connecting only one terminal to a tube amp if it has two = no more amp.