Bass Cab wiring.

[Snoo]

Hello, I'm new here and after some help if you could..

I've just obtained an old bass cab with 2 x 15" HH Acoustics B15L drivers inside. This drivers are quoted as 100W 16 Ohm.

They were wired badly before with each one connected to a seperate jack at the back. i.e, they both had to be plugged in separately.

I want to wire them to a single jack to use with a solid state amp and 16 or even 32 ohms seems high. I would expect 8 or 4 so was confused when i read the back of the drivers.

Can anyone advise on wiring? I'm guessing if I wire them both in parallel then the total will be 8 ohm and more sensible? Correct?

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks,
Snoo.

[pinkmouse]

Originally posted by Snoo
Can anyone advise on wiring? I'm guessing if I wire them both in parallel then the total will be 8 ohm and more sensible? Correct?

Hi Snoo, and welcome to diyAudio.

Parallel will work fine, and was probably the way they were set up initially.

[quasi]

Yes, if you wire them in parallel you will get an 8 ohm impedance and a total power handling of 200 watts ie; 100 watts per speaker.

Cheers

.....and it seems I am way too slow.....

[pinkmouse]

I had an advantage- as Snoo is a new member I had to read and approve his post before it was shown here.

[Snoo]

Thanks guys.

Much appreciated.

[Snoo]

Incidently, how accurate would you expect the quoted impedence on a set of drivers to be?

They say 16 but both read 12.7 on a meter!

Not worried, just curious.

[pinkmouse]

Sounds about right. Impedance is related to AC, so DC measurements are only useful for a rough guide.

[Nigel Goodwin]

Originally posted by pinkmouse
Sounds about right. Impedance is related to AC, so DC measurements are only useful for a rough guide.

Yes, DC measurements read lower than the impedance, generally an 8 ohm speaker reads about 6 ohms, a 4 ohm about 3 ohms, so a 16 ohm would read about 12 ohms (which is what you got). You don't need to get technical about it, just pick the standard value that's next highest above your DC reading - although you do get occasional 'special' values, like 6 ohm impedance!.