Hartke Hydrive 410

[paul_5]

Hi All, I've just swapped my LH1000 for an Ampeg B2RE and I love it. Thing is, instead of the LH1000 delivering 700 odd watts at 8 ohms, I've got the Ampeg putting out just above 200 Watts at 8 ohms.

My Cabinet has 4 x 250 Watt drivers (8 ohms I think) and I want to know if there's a way to fool the amp into thinking that it's powering 2 x 500W cabinets at 8ohms, and thereby getting the full 450W out of the Ampeg?

Any ideas / warnings / suggestions / cake?

[Lozz196]

As far as I know, the only way will be to change the speaker cones to make the cab a 4 ohm cab, or add another 8 ohm cab. Changing the cones would be fairly expensive though.

However, from having been in roughly the same situation myself, the advice I was given on here was that to the ear, obtaining the full power from an amp into a 4 ohm cab, compared to the reduced power into an 8 ohm cab is not very much at all.

So I tried it, and having done so, when I had two 8 ohm Ampeg cabs, first using both, then just the one at at a band practice, the only real reduction I noticed was in the "size" of the sound, not so much the actual volume. My cabs were a 4x10 and a 2x10, and when I used only one cab it was the 4x10.

Maybe a higher sensitivity cab would be the way forward?

[paul_5]

Cheers Lozz, I'll look at alternative cabinets.

[Lozz196]

The Eden Nemesis that I bought, after getting rid of my Ampegs due to the weight of them, has quite good specs, 600 watt handling, 48hz - 18khz, 104 db sensitivity, compared to the Hartkes 500 watts, 55hz - 17khz, 98 db sensitivity. If the sensitivity is accurate, this would be the thing that would make the main difference.

I`ve not used it in a band situation yet, but at home volume levels, it is very comparable to my Ampegs.