Two 8 Ohm Speaker Cabinets

One 8ω cabinet plugged into another 8ω cabinet then into the amp 16ω.

Two 8 ohm speaker cabinets.

If your amp says it can put out a certain number of watts at 4 ohms you can only. To simplify parallel wiring pretend your speaker system has a total of 2 speakers with 16 ohms each. Remember we said if your amp can t handle a 2 ohm load it could go up in flames. The most basic cabinet configuration is a single speaker.

To wire a 4x12 cabinet in series parallel where four 8 ohm speakers are wired in series parallel equaling a total load of 8 ohms as in the illustration below. For instance two 8 ohm cabinets wired in parallel will have a total impedance of 4 ohms. To push more air several speakers always of equal impedance can be wired together in a cabinet. It s best to match like cabinets.

When playing through multiple speaker cabinets one must remember that this will change the impedance that your amp must compensate for. The 4x12 cabinet is sometimes referred to as a half stack and players routinely connect two of them to a single amp to create a full stack. Most amplifiers on the planet can run an 8 ohm load so this is desirable. Running cabinets in this fashion from one power amp will give you a 2.

Connect negative side of speaker a to positive side of speaker b. A parallel wiring turns those 2 8 ohm speakers into a system of 4 ohms total. Connect positive side of speaker a to positive side of speaker c. The cabinet impedance depends on how the speakers are wired and may differ from the impedance of the speakers.

Wiring configuration for 4 speakers in parallel. Two 4 ohm speakers 8 ohm load two 8 ohm speakers 16 ohm load. To give you an example of how confusing this is imagine 2 8 ohm speakers. Two 4 ohm cabinets would have an impedance of 2 ohms.

Wiring configuration for 4 speakers in series parallel. Two 8ω cabinets both plugged into an amp 4ω load. A 4x12 cab is typically 16 ohms so when you connect two of them together in parallel the total load becomes 8 ohms. In parallel you simply divide the total ohm rating by the number of speakers or speaker boxes.

1 x 8 ohm speaker 8 ohm load 1x16 ohm speaker 16 ohm load two speakers remember. That s why this is so important. So if you had 2 16ω boxes then you would have a total of 8ω. Or two 8.

Four 8 ohm speakers 2 ohm load four 16 ohm speakers 4 ohm load four 32 ohm speakers 8 ohm load.