Bill Fitzmaurice

Where driving is concerned the Quebecois are only slightly better in following the rules of the road than the Italians. But in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts one has to fail an IQ test to get a drivers license. 🤪

I've done that since my first desk with that capability, a Yamaha 01v, in 1998.

Old Peaveys had no trouble with 2 ohms. Back in the days of discreet transistor output stages it was easy to go to 2 ohms, you just used more transistors to increase the current capacity. It's not quite that simple with Class D modules. Sure, they can do it, but it's going to up the cost. However, note that the minimum impedance load tends to be rated at full power. You can run at 2 ohms at 1/4 power and keep the current demand within spec. But who's going to advertise a 2 ohm capable amp at 250 watts compared to 4 ohm capable at 1,000 watts? 😲

Not all all. The limit on the Interstate north of Concord is 70/112, so they don't bat an eye if you're doing 80/129. If you want to see nuts try the New Jersey Turnpike. 90/145 is common, and most of the cars you see doing that are junkers that probably aren't safe at half that speed. And if you've ever driven in Quebec you know that the speed limits there are just suggestions that are usually ignored.

My speedometer goes to 260 KPH, and as it's a BMW it can reach that. That doesn't mean I have to drive that fast. 130 KPH is quite sufficient. Just because you have a 500w amp doesn't mean you'll ever use that much power. If you were to measure it you'd find that you seldom go over 50w. That's a good thing, as the majority of speakers will only handle at best half their thermal rating before exceeding their mechanical limit. As for peak ratings those are marketing piffle only worthy of being ignored.

That brings up a good story. There's no bigger lie in audio than that about high end cables making any difference. That doesn't stop audiophools from believing anything and everything. Going back a while Peter Walker was introducing his latest Quad speaker model at a show for the audio press at a hotel in London. When he got ready to set it up he realized that he'd forgotten to bring speaker cables. The drive back to Huntingdon would have taken too long, so he found a local hardware store and bought what he needed. The speakers got rave reviews, of course, but more than a few of the reporters noticed that the cables were orange, and assumed there must have been something special about them. At the press conference after the demonstration one reporter asked Peter what the brand of these cables was that surely had an influence on the purity of the sound. To which Peter replied "Why, Black and Decker!"

I'd only take a second cab to put it on the ground aimed toward the drummer so he can hear the mids and highs, with the other atop it for myself and the audience.

They use 6 ohm drivers in the 6x cab, a pair of them in series would explain the 12 ohm option. But you can't wire them to get 4 ohms from a 2x, only from the 6x.

The shipping should be moot as I'd want to make sure the buggering wasn't just cosmetic.

Give them a low ball offer then redo the Tolex yourself. I try before buying.

That's where the voltage and amperage ratings come in. Most wire is rated at 600V. A 1kV amp into a 4 ohm load is 63v. 14 gauge wire is rated at 15A. Said 1kV into 4 ohms is 16A. However, those ratings are for constant full voltage and current. Amps never run at constant full voltage and current. Even 50% duty cycle would be unusual.

There's only one case where that makes sense, that's when you have a 2x that's 8 ohms and a 4x that's 4 ohms, with all six drivers being identical, and the amp is rated for 2 ohm operation. Otherwise go with the one cab that gives the better results.

Kid stuff. When in college my bassplayer (I was lead guitarist, sorry...) asked me to design him a no holds barred cab to house three fifteens. I modified the Jensen Imperial folded horn to fit them. It stood some 6 feet tall, 3 feet wide, 2 feet deep. He made it from 1 inch MDF. We never knew how much it weighed but it took all five of us to lift it in and out of his van. We named it 'The Hulk'. 🫢 Entwistle would have been envious.

Exactly that. All else being equal, although it never is, four tens have 6dB higher sensitivity than two tens. That's equivalent to a four fold power increase. It's more complicated when the drivers and enclosure tunings aren't identical, and they're not all parallel wired, but for the most part adding drivers alone without adding power will still go louder.

Perhaps. Since the lows from your own speaker radiate omnidirectionally they should not be in the monitors. The mids and highs are directional, so they should be in the monitors. For that reason the bass feed to monitors should be high passed at the transition frequency to directional, around 250 Hz.