2 ohm or 4 ohm

C

Chris Simpson

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I don't know much about this, so some preferences would be great.

I have a Tube Path 10.1
I have two Eden 4x10 cabs
I am trading in the Eden cabs for two Warwick WCA 411 Pro Series cabs

I don't know if I should get the 4 ohm or 8 ohm cabs.

If I get the 4 ohm cabs, is it going to push my head too hard?

Should I get the 8 ohm cabs to be safe?

I need volume, a lot of it.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks
 
Hey Chris.
The Tubepath is 1000 watts at 4 ohms minimum. Running it at 2 ohms will do damage.
Get two 8 ohm (411 pro) cabs for a combined impedance of 4 ohms, & you'll have more power than Godzilla.
The 4 ohm 411 pro cab is designed to be run on it's own.
 
The Tubepath is not designed to go below 4 ohm.
Get the 8 ohm 411 if you want to run two of them with the Tubepath.

You can run two 4 ohm 411 with a mono block amp that goes to 2 ohm
or duel mono amp (sometimes called stereo amp because they have two independent power sections) that goes 4 ohms per side.

Either way, two 410 will give you all the volume you will ever need, IMO.

I am curious as to why you want to get rid of the Eden's.
 
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i wonder why a lot of new stuff doesn't run at 2ohms my old peavey head does.but the newer stuff i have and traded/sold was all 4 ohm min.
 
I am no expert in building amps but I think most amps are stated to be able to handle 4ohm minimum is

because 2 ohm reliable solid state is a myth:-) The amp simply has to handle to much power

If you have constant voltage and the resistance goes down current must go up.

To handle this properly you have to use high dimensioned parts which are expensive and heavy

In case the peavy was not very expensive - the peavy is either heavy as hell or simply produces no clean signal when used with 2 Ohm load
 
4 ohms is the standard now... Most of the standalone cabs are 4 ohms....
 
There are still a lot of 2 ohm stable bass amps out there nowadays. And 90% of PA amps are 2 ohm stable, I am pretty sure they are mostly SS too.

But why aren't there more? Because we are in an age where we have a lot of choice in bass gear; a highly competitive market that drives the price and thus the profit margin down; where components are engineered to just do the job barely, thus do not carry extra capacity. It's just cheaper to make the equipment to operate in a narrower window.

That said, pretty much all of the 2 ohm amps I have used are stable with good tone. Yes, some of them are bigger and heavier, sometimes more expensive; but some of them are not. If there are experience of dis-satisfaction with multiple 2 ohm rated SS amps, I would like to learn more about it, so we can stay away from them. OTOH, if anyone is interested, I can provide a list of 2 ohm stable bass amps I have experienced.

If you want to operate a modular rig, 2 ohm give you a lot of flexibility. One example is when you have three 112 cabs, and each is 8 ohm. What will you do with a 4 ohm amp? If the amp is a micro amp like the LM2/3, then it make very good sense to just take two of those head to your gig. But when the amp is 2U or bigger, I want it to be able to do the job by itself.

Of course, an alternative is to get a 4 ohm 412, and keep one or two 112 for smaller gigs. But it's easy to do the math to see which takes more storage space and money.

The mandatory disclaimer – IMO, IME ...
 
the peavey i have is sort of heavy but i have other amps that weigh more for the size.i don't know how clean the sound is but it sounds good for a old amp and has lived through many hours of use and abuse.the reason i bought one was the price and i used to go to some studios and that was the amp,they used and they were on all day and night.another thing people don't think about with speaker cabs is if a speaker blows it can make the cab have some weird ohm's.and you might not notice it right away.
 
schlobodan said:
I am no expert in building amps but I think most amps are stated to be able to handle 4ohm minimum is

because 2 ohm reliable solid state is a myth:-) The amp simply has to handle to much power

If you have constant voltage and the resistance goes down current must go up.

To handle this properly you have to use high dimensioned parts which are expensive and heavy

In case the peavy was not very expensive - the peavy is either heavy as hell or simply produces no clean signal when used with 2 Ohm load
Click to expand...

remember, resistance and impedance are similar but not 100% the same:
 
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