Jump to content

Impedance juggling


slej

Recommended Posts

  • Members

Can a 16 ohm resistor be paralleled with a 16 ohm speaker to result in an 8 ohm load "seen" by the amp? Will there be any harmful effects? What other values need to be known about the resistor?

IS this a valid manipulation?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Originally posted by slej

Can a 16 ohm resistor be paralleled with a 16 ohm speaker to result in an 8 ohm load "seen" by the amp? Will there be any harmful effects? What other values need to be known about the resistor?

IS this a valid manipulation?

Yes,I believe EVH Sound did it all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Originally posted by slej

Can a 16 ohm resistor be paralleled with a 16 ohm speaker to result in an 8 ohm load "seen" by the amp? Will there be any harmful effects? What other values need to be known about the resistor?

IS this a valid manipulation?

Yes,I believe EVH Sound did it all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Originally posted by slej

Can a 16 ohm resistor be paralleled with a 16 ohm speaker to result in an 8 ohm load "seen" by the amp? Will there be any harmful effects? What other values need to be known about the resistor?

IS this a valid manipulation?

Yes,I believe EVH Sound did it all the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members

This is sort of how an attenuator works, although they use a series/parallel system. I've built some pass-through units similar to what you describe, and they DO work, but there are some issues.....

Here's the rub: if you're running a 100W amp, you'll need that resistor to be at least 50W, and you'll need a pretty decent-sized heat sink on it.

You see, a resistor absorbing 50W is, by definition, a 50W heater.

If you can't find a resistor rated for 50W (heh, heh, heh), you'd need to series/parallel a group of resistors to get your total load handling up to 50W.

This can be done, but you're probably better off just buying an attenuator, or buying the right impedance speaker or cabinet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Members
Originally posted by tommythelurker

Yes, in theory you can do that. You'd need a pretty honking big resistor as it needs to dissipate half of the power from the amp. In practice I don't think it would sound very good.

Exactly. I didn't believe 100% of what EVH Sound said.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...