300w Ashdown Head Supporting Cabs

[ironderby]

Could an ashdown 300w head [url="http://www.antonesguitars.com/ashdown-mag-300h-evo-ii-300w-head-716-p.asp"]http://www.antonesguitars.com/ashdown-mag-...-head-716-p.asp[/url]
support a 4x10 cabinet (ashdown) seeing as the 4x10 is probably alot more wattage than 300w, i don't know much about amps. Does this 300w mean thats the limit you can plug in?

[argm]

I'd direct you to this thread [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=135"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=135[/url]
for information about how watts/impedance affects what you can plug into what.

Generally, watts you can ignore, as long as the cab is the same or higher rated in watts. Infact its generally good to have a cab that has a higher watt rating, so you can have more 'headroom' when you turn up the gain on your amp, without doing any damage to the cab speaker(s).

Its the impedance you need to look out for. This head can support a minimum of 4 ohms, so you can either plug in an cab at 4 ohms or above, or plug in two 8 ohm cabs.

Generally Ohms is a quarter of what you put in when you have 2 cabs (must always 2 cabs of the same Ohm rating!)
e.g. 8 + 8 = 4


any of the ashdown 4x10 cabs would be fine for your amp.

[Mr. Foxen]

Wattages are pretty much meaningless. You can have them different on the head and cab either way. There is a limit to how much power a cab can take, but it isn't related to the wattage rating on them. There is also a limiter on the amp of how much wattage it puts out, called the volume knob, and that is where you match it to the cab.

[Musky]

[quote name='ironderby' post='1339625' date='Aug 14 2011, 02:12 PM']Could an ashdown 300w head [url="http://www.antonesguitars.com/ashdown-mag-300h-evo-ii-300w-head-716-p.asp"]http://www.antonesguitars.com/ashdown-mag-...-head-716-p.asp[/url]
support a 4x10 cabinet (ashdown) seeing as the 4x10 is probably alot more wattage than 300w, i don't know much about amps. Does this 300w mean thats the limit you can plug in?[/quote]
The simple answer to the first question is 'yes'.

In answer to your second question, you've got things about face. 300w is the maximum the amp will put out, regardless of the wattage the speakers are rated at. The current MAG 410's are rated at 450w, so that's the maximum wattage they'll take for an extended period without melting the voice coil. Plugging 450w speakers into a 300w amp won't make the amp produce 450w. In fact since the MAG 410 is an [i]8 ohm[/i] cab, and the amp will be rated at 300w into a [i]4 ohm[/i] load, the amp will actually be putting out about 200w into the cab.

So you'll be safe using the MAG 300 and 410 together.

Might be worth taking a look at the wiki as well. [url="http://wiki.basschat.co.uk/info:amps:impedance_and_wattage"]http://wiki.basschat.co.uk/info:amps:impedance_and_wattage[/url]

[EdwardHimself]

[quote name='argm' post='1339635' date='Aug 14 2011, 02:23 PM']Generally Ohms is a quarter of what you put in when you have 2 cabs (must always 2 cabs of the same Ohm rating!)
e.g. 8 + 8 = 4[/quote]

No. The impedance of cabs in total is the reciporical of the sum of the reciporicals of the impedances of the original cabs. Sounds complicated but really it's simple. For example an 8 ohm and a 4 ohm cab will give you 1/8+1/4= 3/8. Then you reciporicate that answer to give you 8/3=2.6666.... ohms. The amp head unit should say what the minimum impedance rating is, as long as you don't go under that then the head will be fine.