Madness to pair an Orange Bass Terror head with a 300 wt T.Elliot cab?

[unclebeesly]

HI, I know the probable short answer to this is 'no', but I REALLY need to buy a compact bass amphead. In the long term I'm looking at pairing an Orange Terror head with an orange 2x12 but in the short term I was wondering if temporarily gigging with a Trace Elliot 3oo watt cab would be possible. It's an 8 ohm cab & I don't need serious amounts of volume on stage.
Is this just asking for trouble? I can afford to buy a compact head now but will be stuck for the moment with either my Ampeg 4x10 or my compact 1x15 T.Elliot cabs and space-wise it really has to be the latter. Thanks.

[JMT3781]

What does the bass terror pump out at 8ohm? surely not the full 500 watts



[quote name='unclebeesly' post='843200' date='May 20 2010, 03:21 PM']HI, I know the probable short answer to this is 'no', but I REALLY need to buy a compact bass amphead. In the long term I'm looking at pairing an Orange Terror head with an orange 2x12 but in the short term I was wondering if temporarily gigging with a Trace Elliot 3oo watt cab would be possible. It's an 8 ohm cab & I don't need serious amounts of volume on stage.
Is this just asking for trouble? I can afford to buy a compact head now but will be stuck for the moment with either my Ampeg 4x10 or my compact 1x15 T.Elliot cabs and space-wise it really has to be the latter. Thanks.[/quote]

[yorick]

You can run the OTB at 4 or 8 ohms, so unless you turn it right up you'll have no probs.....

[JMT3781]

just looked on the website, doesn't have a power rating at 8ohms.. im confused now..

even so, i've used powerful heads on lesser cabs, and never blown a speaker.. its all a case of listening before turning up, most of the time (imho) you can hear when a speaker is gonna struggle past a certain level, so you just have to fight the temptation.

However, when you find that correct combination of big head and smaller cab, sounds incredible purely because the head has plenty of headroom

all of course in my oppinion

[4 Strings]

Can't see what the problem is. Even without the output transformer adjustment all that would happen is that the output would vary with the load. Very low impedances of 2 Ohms (usually caused by running two 4 Ohm cabs in parallel) can cause problems to some amps, yours included. 8 Ohms will be an ideal load.

If its power you're worried about, you'll hear the speaker complaining before you blow it up. I regularly use a 200W cab with a 350W head, my basic set up, no problems, just don't run it flat out. Won't hurt the amp though, just avoid open circuits.

[Stylon Pilson]

Some wise dude once said that you can use any wattage head with any wattage cab, as long as you turn down if you hear ugly noises coming from the speakers.

You shouldn't have an impedance problem with that pairing either.

S.P.

[dannybuoy]

This head does indeed pump out the full 500w at 8ohms, I believe that's what the 4/8 switch is for on the back. I wanted to pair one with a Trace 1153 before I ended up with the Orange SP210, so I wouldn't say you're mad!

[unclebeesly]

Excellent, good to know that some people have paired lesser cabs with hi-powered amps ok. Part of the problem I guess IS the fact that it provides switchable 4/8 ohm and 500 watts output at either rating although strictly speaking it's usually a good thing! I think I'll just chance it in the short term & not push the speaker too hard. Thanks!

[Ghost_Bass]

[quote name='dannybuoy' post='843473' date='May 20 2010, 07:53 PM'](...)I believe that's what the 4/8 switch is for on the back. (...)[/quote]

If that's the case i would say to turn the switch to 4ohm for more safety to the cab, assuming that with a 8ohm load the amp (at 4ohms) will put out something like 275W at máx... If the full 500W are driven in a 8ohm load cab capable of handling only 300W the cab could get hurt if the volume is set too high...

In any case is possible to play with this setup but some atencion is required

[unclebeesly]

Ah, that was just exactly what I was wondering about! (switching between different impedance rating, I mean). Would it not simply offer 500 watts regardless of the cab's rating?

[Sibob]

It would seem unlikely to me that you would get close to using the full 500w of volume, are you playing huge stadium stages? lol

Yeah you'll be fine, usual advice, if something sounds manky....turn it down and look for a solution then!

Si

[unclebeesly]

Am I playing huge stadium gigs? Well, occasionally I have to play to thousands * at outdoor festivals, so yes but of course you just get plugged into some standard Ampeg SVT rig which aren't really my cup of tea.

* - I'm not too keen on these massive gigs, truth be told.

[Prime_BASS]

The trace 300w cab will be fine with the orange TB.

The orange has an ohm impendance switch. Which means it's 500w at either 4 ohm or 8 ohm.

You can run the cab with the orange selected at 8 ohm. I would be careful turning up to high though you may damage then speakers if they begin to distort. This way you CAN'T add a second cab.

You can also run the cab with the orange selected at 4ohm, this would b quoted and safer for the trace cab, although I did this once with my barefaced compact and OMG is it still loud!!!! This was you can add a second 8 ohm cab. This way the orange is only ouputting about half it's 500w, although no where details exactly what wattage it does output when at 4 ohm I to an 8 ohm cab. My guess is closer to 300 rather than 250.

In short the trace cab will be fine with what the orange will put out.


I would advise against the orange SP 2x12. It's not as loud as many other 2x12s it just has a similar bass response. You'll do far better with the OBC 1x15, or saving a further 50-100 punds and ordering a barefaced bass cab.

The compact will blow you away.
The midget will cut you in half, and still be louder than ornages 2 smaller bass cabs.
And the SuperTwelve will cut you in half while blowing you away.

With any three of those barefaced cabs you'll get a lot more out of the OTB than anything that Orange can offer you.

[unclebeesly]

Brilliant! Some good detailed advice there for me to work with. Thanks all.