Scott Henderson Discussion

[Snake Man]

Hi Scott .I am thinking in order to work my amp at 8ohms but with a 16ohm 1960tv marshall cab can i run at the second speaker output of the amp a dummy load 16ohm ?so in parallel will be 8 ohm total.Because i dont have a second 16ohm cab to carry around.
This trick will improve the tone in my 16ohm cab?

All the best

[Scott Henderson]

Yes, it'll definitely improve the tone. I have a cabinet with vintage Greenbacks - those are 16 ohm speakers, so the cabinet is 16 ohms. I run it with a Suhr 16 ohm load box and run the amp at 8 ohms - it's a huge difference, much bigger and fuller sounding than running the cabinet by itself at 16 ohms.

Some people still argue that running a cab at 16 ohms sounds good - maybe for metal, but all the vintage tones we love were recorded at 8 ohms. Both cabs were plugged in (straight and slant), but the mic was usually on the straight cab.

[Snake Man]

Scott Thanks so much for your help!
So the reason for the thin sound at 16 ohms is mostly from the output transformer of the amp and not from the speakers.
Any suggestions for a 16 ohm load box?

[Scott Henderson]

Yes, it's because of the output transformer, which sounds better running at 8 ohms. My load box is a Suhr 8 ohm Reactive Load which they modified to 16 ohms for me. I don't know if that's something they would do for their customers, but I Googled 16 ohm load box and got a bunch of results. Some of them also have speaker simulation but those are more expensive.

[Snake Man]

Ok Scott
Ill try a THD Hotplate 16 ohm

All the best!!!

[countandduke]

I'm a little confused but I think I get the gist of it. Running an amp at 8ohms gives the best tone so if the cabinet is a 16 ohm cabinet, there needs to be a way to get it to run at 8 ohms... most amps have the option to change/select different ohm values. I guess I'm still not sure how you get an 8 ohm amp to run into a 16 ohm cabinet although I've heard it's fine to do that but not the other way around...

Best,
Chris

[countandduke]

I'm a little confused but I think I get the gist of it. Running an amp at 8ohms gives the best tone so if the cabinet is a 16 ohm cabinet, there needs to be a way to get it to run at 8 ohms... most amps have the option to change/select different ohm values. I guess I'm still not sure how you get an 8 ohm amp to run into a 16 ohm cabinet although I've heard it's fine to do that but not the other way around...

Best,
Chris

[Scott Henderson]

It's not a good idea to mis-match ohms either way, and it won't sound good. If you have a 16 ohm cabinet and want to run the amp at 8 ohms, you have to run the amp with a 2nd 16 ohm cabinet or a 16 ohm load box.