Posted by kittykat [ 74.110.181.248 ] on February 21, 2007 at 10:34:41:
Hi friends,
I know impedance questions are soooo common, but I have one that I haven't really been able to find an answer to.
First, some context. I'm looking at buying a Marshall DSL 100 because the tone makes me drool (it works for my purposes) and it can be real loud when it needs to be.
This will be my first all tube amp, so I'm still getting my head around the specifics of tube sound/power, etc.
But my question is about volume and impedance. I noticed that, like some other amps that I've tried, the beautiful tone that I love only really kicks in once you push the amp past a certain level of volume. That's gonna be fine for certain applications, but for practices I might need to be quieter. I would like be able to maintain that tone in those situations but have my head/cab be a bit quieter. Setting the volume at, say, 1 or 2 does not sound good on the head.
Now, I know some amps have a 1/4 switch on the back that cuts the volume down somehow, but the DSL100 doesn't. What it does have, however, is an impedance selector that allows you to tell the amp whether its being hooked up to a 4, 8, or 16 ohm cab.
The manual says that if you're running a single 4 ohm cab or two 8 ohm cabs, then you should set the switch to 4 ohms; and if you are running a single 8 ohhm cab or two 16 ohm cabs, you should set it to 8 ohms. Fine. I get the logic of matching things up like that.
What I'm wondering is if I can achieve a similar "quietening" effect to a 1/4 switch (or 1/2 switch or whatever) by purposefully running an 8 ohm cab from head set to 4 ohms. Would this cut the loudness of the setup in, approximately, half? Would it be noticeably quieter but with a similar tone? Would I simply need to drive the head a bit more to get a similar volume as I would if I were using a 4 ohm cab?
And would it affect the tone at all?
And would it be "bad" for the head at all?
I can clarify if need be -- I only have a basic understanding of this stuff at best.
FYI, I don't have the option of buying an additional practice amp. And I know the DSL 50 exists.
best,
dave
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