Orange Bass Terror 500 & Ashdown MAG 210 or MAG 115

[iamdavekennedy]

Hey folks,

I'm new here so don't be too hard on me, I had a look through the forum and seen the Orange/Trace post but didn't clarify much for me.

Basically, I've just bought an Orange Bass Terror 500 head to use for practices/home use etc, but while I have an 8x10 thats perfect for it,
from time to time it's a pain in the behind to move unless we're off out on tour etc. So I'm planning on using either an Ashdown MAG 115 or
210 cabinet, the issue being, these are rated at 250w @ 8ohms, whilst the head is 500w at either 8 or 4ohms...

Will I actually be okay to use the head with these in the meantime? I'll get myself a little Orange isobaric cab at some point, but the money
could be better spent on other things at the moment so may aswell use what I have, if I can...

What do you reckon?

I'll cross my fingers now and look forward to a reply!

Cheers, and nice to meet you all,

Dave Kennedy

Edited September 5, 2010 by iamdavekennedy

[GarethFlatlands]

Welcome Dave!

As I understand it, if you run your amp at 4 ohms into an 8 ohm cab it will drop the power output to around 300 watts. If you're careful on the volume knob you shouldn't blow anything up.

The better option would be to get a higher rated cab as you should ideally match head and cab ohmages. My working knowledge of cabs is pretty poor, I'm sure someone on here will give you some good recommendations.

[yorick]

If you're running both 8 ohm cabs, you load will be 4 ohms, so with the OTB head set to 4 ohms, you'll be ok. Unless you turn everything up on the head(which you will NEVER need to do) , you're cabs will be safe. Trust me...........

Nige

[iamdavekennedy]

Cheers for getting back to me guys, The amp is apparently outputting 500w regardless of whether you're running it at 8ohms or 4ohms, which baffles me a little I must say! but according to Orange, thats the way the Terror works! I know I could run both, but if I'm carting both the 115 and the 210 around, i might aswell just be bringing the 810, so the downsizing isn't really being met! To be fair, considering I'll only be using the orange for home use, and the bigger 810 rig I have for gigs, I'll never need to crank it anyway, so it should be fine, it would just be nice to have the headroom, perhaps I'll look into another, higher rated 210 for now

[Musky]

As I understand it, he wants to use just the one cab for the sake of portability. So he's looking at an 8 ohm cab with a power rating of 250w. And if I remember correctly the Bass Terror has a switch to set the output impedance, much like a valve power amp. So I can understand the quandry.

Some good advice from the wiki: You can use any power ouput amp with any power handling cab. If any of these combinations makes bad sounds then turn down and/or stop cranking the bass EQ excessively or damage may occur.

Edit: I type waaaay too slowly!

Edited September 5, 2010 by Musky

[iamdavekennedy]

Haha quite alright, cheers for the feedback, I guess I'll just keep it down, the neighbours will appreciate it anyways and if I do need to crank it, I'll just drop it onto the 810 in the practice room and have a dolphin of a time! Er.. whale

[Prime_BASS]

Do not use the bass terror in 8ohm mode with either cab. You will most likely damage them.

500w into 250w doesn't fit so well.
Running it in 4ohm mode into a 8ohm cab will decrease power to around 300+ which is a much safer option.