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Replacement speakers
Mon, 06/21/2010 - 7:06pm
I have a Sonic 6x10 cab that has finally given up the ghost at the amount of power I need to push. I'm going to go through and replace the speakers, but I know nothing about speakers. The cabinet runs at 4ohms. I've emailed back and forth with Eminence speakers on a replacement and they spec'd out a speaker that matched the closest, and it's nominal impedance is 8ohms. Can someone explain to me the ohmage thing? I'm guessing the way they are wired is what determines the impedance. What should I look for in terms of sensitivity, range, etc? Are there any good sites with a lot of info on this tupe of thing?
Thu, 06/24/2010 - 1:40pm
#2
Bet if you measure it you'd
Bet if you measure it you'd get 5.3 ohm, comes marked as 8 since thats what you treat it as (my 6x12 is marked 6), there is a fair bit of leeway in that. That is for valve amps, where if you have to mismatch slightly, set the amp to higher than the cab (but really, just match it). For Solid state, treat as 4 ohms, but it really doesn't matter unless you go below minimum. If you mix multiple cabs, do all the maths from scratch to decide, rather than treating it as 4 or 8.
Go for the 8 ohm speakers in three series pairs, connected in paralell.
* and 16 ohm speakers don't sound different, all else being the same, its just that the 8 ohm ones will be getting twice the power of the 16 ohm ones, and be toast whilst the others are cruising.
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Connection types:
Paralell = + lead connected to + leads of the speakers, and - leads connected to - speakers connections.
Series = + lead connected to one speaker +, then that speaker - connected to next speaker +, then that speaker - connected to main -.
Resistance:
For speakers in Paralell, you divide the resistance = Two 8ohm speakers in Paralell: 8 / 2 = 4ohms.
For speakers in series, you add the resistance = Two 8ohm speakers in series: 8 + 8 = 16ohms.
In your case, 6 speakers makes it different. To have the power run evenly, you could run 3 speakers in paralell, and then run the two gorups of 3 in series.
At 8 ohms a speaker
A group of 3 in Paralell = 2.6ohms
Two groups of 2.6ohms in series = 5.4 ohms...you could pretty much call it 4ohms though.
The only way to get it closer to 4 ohms would be to use 4 of the same resistance and two of a different resistance. But then you will have different sounding speakers because an 8ohm speaker sounds different than a 16ohm speaker.