Ohms vs tone

[EVOL!]

My amp head's speaker out and it's 2x12 cabinet are wired for 4 ohms. Would there be any change in the sound if I had the cabinet rewired for 8 ohms? I want to have the flexibility of using the 2x12 as an extra cabinet for my Fender combo whose speaker outs are 8 ohms. And running an 8 ohm cab with my 4 ohm head should not put any unadvised stress on the head, correct?

[DiamondJig]

is this a tube or solid state amp ?

 

Tube no change, if it solid state the output power would be cut in half.

 

I don't think you'll be able to rewire the cabinet with both speakes active for 8ohms, 2 x 8 ohm speakers wired in parralle will be 4 ohms total, wire in series they will be 16 ohms, run a single speaker then it's 8 ohms.

[Riffster]

What Diamond said.

 

Tube amps, you can only go higher on the impedance of the speaker, go lower and the amp suffers to the point of burning the output transformer.

 

Going with a higer impedance say an 8 ohms speaker connected to a 4 ohm output on the head will thin down your sound, at least that is my experience.

[RichCI]

What StiffHand said. Putting a higher load (speakers) on the amp will cut down on volume a little bit and give grainier sound if you're cranking it up a bit. My main amp has 4 ohm and 8 ohm speaker outputs and I've experimented a bit with it and found I like the 8 ohm output (which matches the 8 ohm cabinet I use) better than using the 4 ohm out. You might like the grainier sound better depending on what you're after.

[EVOL!]

Thanks.

 

I knew about going up (I used to run the 4ohm out of my head into a single 8ohm speaker) and the dangers of going down.

 

My amp is tube. It's a Silvertone 1484. I'll just leave everything as is. Have not looked to see what the resistance of the speakers are.