I need some Guitar GuRu help tonight!

[Rick Lee]

Ok, if you put the head on 4 ohms, you run it into the "stereo R" side on the cab. I don't understand that 16 ohms jack on the head. If you run a cable out of each of those jacks, does the 16 ohm one then drop to 4 ohms? There are jacks like that. All the heads I've had had dials on the back for 4, 8 and 16 ohms with one or two output jacks.

At home I run a Soldano SLO 100 into a Soldano 4x12 that only has one jack and is rated for 16 ohms. So I put the dial on the head at 16 ohms and run one cable out of one of the output jacks (on the head) into the only cab input.

At one band practice space I have a Mesa Stiletto 4x12 (also with V-30s) and it has three jacks - one for 8 ohm mono and two for 4 ohm stereo. So I run cables out of each of my head's output jacks into the 4 ohm jacks in the cab and put the dial on the head at 4 ohms.

At my other band's practice space I have a Seismic 2x12 with Celestion G12T-75s rated at 16 ohms, but wired in parallel. So that's 8 ohms and I turn the dial on my head to 8 ohms.

Anyway, I asked Michael Soldano about this and he said his amps are tough enough to withstand mismatched impedances. I don't know for how long, but I did forget to change the dial once when I got home and played for a week on the wrong setting and it was fine.

Post this on the Marshall Amp Forum and you'll get a good explanation.

[stuartj]

Rick- it just means the amp can handle any load 4-16ohm, and has no manual selector. In a standard Marshall config (mono) one cab at 8, plug in another 8ohm cab from the head, in parallel, the amp is happy at 16ohm. Likewise it can drive the two sides of the stereo cab at 4ohm. But its not a stereo amp, so there seems little point in doing that.