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This is the best explanation of impedance on RU-vid. So many other videos are nerdlinger jargon or people trying to fill up 10 minutes of RU-vid with two minutes of information.
Phil, this was a nice simple explanation. You may want to follow up with series and parallel wiring and what happens to ohms when speaker cans are combined.
+Michael Newman When I was in the Army we would have to test engines by putting them on the dino to give the engine resistance. So I thought of it being like a Cab. The Sumo part was just because I wanted to say Sumo. LOL
Find out the ohm of your cabinet. Get a multimeter, everyone should have one. Take out the speaker cable from the head (with the head off of course) but leave it plugged into your cabinet. Set your multimeter to ohms. touch one lead to the sleeve and one lead to the tip of the open end of your speaker cable. It will be within a few ohms of its rating, like 16 ohms is going to read between 13.8-14.2 ohm. Multimeters aren't that expensive, and they are very handy to have. This is just a simple way to figure out your cabinet ohm rating.
No. If you're dropping 2 ohms on your cable then you need a new cable. A guitar speaker that is 16ohms on a good multimeter should read 15.7 or 15.8 not 14 😅 Geez.. you need a new multimeter leads and speaker bro
+Philip McKnight I can't describe how helpful you are for guitar noobs like me! Thank you so much, for the content, you put out for us. I really appreciate it. Keep on doing this, my friend.
The smartest people are those who can make smart things make sense to dumb people... Hours of youtube and reddit summed up in 4 minutes thanks to rhis genius. Severly underrated video!
Dude holy shit , this out of 5 other videos and many reddit/google searches ..This was the only video that made it make sense and gave examples ! Ur amazing
Hi Philip, Thank you for your channel your short to the point approach & eclectic topics means I watch all your videos and am always waiting for your next. I'm a player with many years of gigging (mainly Classic Pub Rock and Blues) under my belt and am lucky to have collected & own some lovely gear. I've played combo's mostly, Fender Blues Deluxe, Fender Vibrosonic and a Blackstar Series one 45 2 x 12 Combo. I had a Marshall DSL 100 Head and Cab for a short time but sold it as it didn't get much use. I bought a Vox AC4 TV for my self and my wife bought me an AC4 BL for our anniversary (She liked the colour ;-) Ive been in love with these little amps since I got them just as the micro head/low power comb thing became popular. Lately Ive been running the two amps in a stereo set up In my studio loving using the stereo effects into two amps. So now for the question, Im wondering about cabinets I'd always wanted one and have convinced my self the AC4's will sound much better through an extension cab with a quality speaker/s. I'm not sure what the best option would be though. Since the Vox's are 16 ohm I would need any cab I got to be a 16 ohm your video advises I can run anything from 4 to 8 to 16 into a 16 ohm cab without any issues. Can you give me any suggestions on the following. 1 x 12 vs 2 x 12 Cheap cab vs expensive cab both fitted with quality speakers Open Back vs Closed (I watched you video on that and would be going open back). Power capacity (does a 4w amp into a 75w speaker impact sound?) Any other factors to consider, is it possible to get a cab that will work well with any amp? Also how does the number of speakers effect volume (real or perceived), does an extension cab improve gigability of the little Vox's, they struggle to keep up with a drummer and bass player in combo form, would a cab help? Sorry, this has become a pandoras box since I began writing, perhaps its a whole new video for you to do! Hope you can help and please keep up the great work helping us all Know our gear!!!
This is a good explanation of Ohms for your amp and cab. This is why you probably want to run your amp at 16 Ohms at home if you want to tame the volume a tiny bit. Marshall recommends running their tube heads with 16 and 4 Ohm outputs at 16 Ohms. A 50+ watt tube amp will still be loud as funk regardless though. That's why I run my JCM 2000 100 watt head with a Weber attenuator. Blackstar says that with their ID TVP amps that you get full power output at 4 Ohms, 2/3rds power at 8 Ohms, and half power at 16 Ohms. I'm not sure if most other 4 Ohm amps behave this way?
I also have the JCM2000 (actually not mine by ownership), running them into a cab with 4x12 @ 16ohm Patriot Swamp Thangs. Should I run 8(head) into 16 (cab), or 16(head) into 16 (cab)? I can't decide.
I really admire your channel. It’s very educational and I feel that I am not wasting my time watching your videos. I always had a combo amp and it was my first time buying a head and a cab a week ago. The amp head (marshall dsl20hr) had 3 different output (1x 8ohms, 1x16 ohms, and 2x16ohms) and I wasn’t sure which one I should use for 2 x8 ohms speaker cab (marshall mx212ar) After watching this video, I tried both and I can hear the difference. The 16ohms output had less distorted sound than the 8ohms when set at all same settings. Thank you, Phil! And more power to your channel.
But what if one of the sumo wrestlers fell on your car. Do you hook the rest of them up to your and and your buddies amps up the them and blast them off your car?
Awesome video, very easy to understand. Never understood the manuals. I just bought a head 2 days ago, it says at 100 watts, 8ohms, or in parallel 4 ohms, and at 30 watts, 4 ohms and in parallel 2 ohms. I was scratching my head thinking there is basically no cabinet available if I want to use the 30 watts. Then I saw your video and it just save my life. Thanks!
Yo, my guy. Im five years late here, but i need you to understand that i have been struggling tough af to wrap my head around these concepts, but some thing about this video really helped make it click. Thank you very much.
Just found this channel and it is awesome! I'm binge watching every video right now. One of the few guitar gear videos done the way they should be done or even more than I imagined. It would be cool if you did a "is your amp (small or big) too loud?" since I've been getting a little frustrated with mine which I use at home exclusively.
I have watched so many vids making sure I understood this ohm thing right, and this one with the sumo wrestlers has to be the best one I have seen. Ha. Brilliant, ha
This was great! I just put a 66 bassman(4 ohm) to a Marshall jcm800 (16 ohm) and was alerted by a friend of possible damage- I researched and stumbled on your explanation! Thanks!
Is still really like the Hydraulic analogy for understanding/teaching basic electronics. It works really well for simple dc circuits. It doesn't work so well for AC phenomena like impedance. In case you haven't seen it there is a quite good Wikipedia article on it.
I came here looking to find out of I can use 2 of my 4 WGS Retro 30 speakers in my Marshall MG250DFX amp because the amp and speakers are just collecting dist and it might sound decent together compared to the stock speakers. I already have a Randall 4x12 loaded with Vintage 30s so the WGS are boxed up. Gives me a chance to tinker with my old practice amp. Your explanation is dirt simple and genius. Thank you!
A great simple way to look at ohms thank you ! I use to run a boogie at 4 ohms into 2 separate 16 ohm speaker cabs I thought i had it backwards but according to this explanation i was ok . Peace
Thanks bud for that video! Very informative! I've had tube amps for years, but I've always had combo-tube amps. I'm getting a vintage Fender 70's bassman 100 tube amp, and I'm hooking it up to a vintage 80's Marshall 1965a 4x10" cab, the amp is rated for 4ohms, the cab is rated 8ohms. I'm trying to get the same tone as "Social D" Mike Ness uses that same rig, but I still wanted to check on the ohms. I wasn't clear enough on it. Now it's cristal! Thanks! Keep on rocki'n dude!👌👍🤘✌⚡🔥🤘☠
You can always buy a very cheap multimeter (under $20 in Amazon) and measure the cabinet. You just need to plug the cable into the cabinet and measure the other tip, put the red probe in the top of the tip and the black in the body. Select "ohms" in the multimeter and done. You will rear a "pop" from the cabinet but nothing will blow up.
You won't read the correct value. An 8 ohm speaker will have a DC resistance (that you measure with your meter) of around 6 ohms. The 8 ohms refers to its impedance, i.e. how it reacts to the output from your amp.
ok mate, ill try to help... so... some amps have 2 inputs for cabinets so that's the easy way... if it has only one speaker input... then all i can think of is to do some DIY wiring on speakers... make a parallel connection inside each speaker and connect em to a new input, so that your cabs have 2 inputs... and then connect one cab into the amp, and other cab into the 1st cab :D pls someone correct me if im wrong but i think that would work :) sorry that the answer is coming a year later :D
Nice analogy, ... going with more Sumos is safer.... although you will change the bias point on the tubes because the impedance of the output transformer will change ... better to only invite the right number of Sumo's to the party
One thing I've always heard is that if an amp is rated at 2 Ohms (typically older cabs), you should never trust that and use higher resistance (4 being fine). If it's rated at 4 Ohms or more, that rating is trustworthy. Odd, but I've seen it in more than one source.
Phil. I have a 4x12 cab from fender. It’s a 4 ohm cab. I have a 16 and 8 ohm out on my tube head. My speakers in the cab are 16 ohms. I unplugged the bottom two. So that will give me a 8 ohm cab right?
Hey dude I like your videos, very informative, I have a question though, how do I hook up two 8 ohm speaker cabinets to one amp,I'm referring to a bugera v55,which has two outputs, and I wanted to connect two 8 ohm 160 watt speaker cabinets,how can I do that safely? Can you help
hey Phillip! how are you? thought it might be an interesting video, if you go into how you started your music store, and a bit about it? hope ur well :) nick
so a Princeton Reverb RI says 8 ohm minimum total. If I have an Alessandro GA64 10" 16W in the combo, can I use a cab with a 12" Celestion G12 NXT 16W at same time as the internal speaker without worries of burning out transformer or tubes? i dont know why this seems so confusing!
