potentially stupid question

Novawind

Hey guys, so I'm gonna hook up my new Marshall head to the 1960 cab here and just a quick question about how to hook it up. There are two outputs on the back of the head and a switch that says 8 ohm or 16 ohm.

The back of the cab looks like this:

http://images.craigslist.org/011501010402010302200807204b95346289d3d31a4f008dda.jpg

It has two inputs and a switch also. The cab options are mono (left) and stereo (right) . On top it says 4 ohms on the left and 16 ohms on the right. On the bottom part it says 8 ohms on the left and 8 ohms on the right.

My question is: what is the best way to hook it up? Are the two amp inputs for hooking up 2 different cabinets ie a full stack? Or do I switch it to 8 ohms and hook up both outputs to each input on the cab? If I'm only hooking up in mono do I switch the head to 16 ohm, the cab to mono and plug into the right input? I just wanna make sure I don't damage anything on my new toy.

Note: above MONO I think it says "Use left input only"

lucylespian

OK, my dog of a computer would not load the image but.

The two cab inputs are for connecting two separate amps. If you do that, you flick the switch to stereo, which usually gives you 8 ohms each, so you run from the 8 ohm output on the back of the amps. I have 2 amps set up on my quad all the time, cos it saves me stuffing around at the back changing leads etc. Sometimes I run them together, using an A/B box.
If you are connecting one amp, you can either, leave it in stereo mode and run from the 8 ohm, but you will be only using 2 speakers.

If you flick the switch to mono, then it looks like you have either a 4 ohm option, or a 16 ohm option, on the left or right respectively. So run from 4 ohm output on the amp to 4 ohm input on the cab, or 16 to 16.

So, your amp gives you an option of 8 or 16 ohms out, so either run it through half of the cab on stereo 8, or the whole cab on mono 16, , right input to the cab.

You can have an impedance mismatch, and the rule is that the load should be greater than putput, and preferably no more than double, ie, you can run from 4 to 8, or from 8 to 16, but you will probably want to stick to a matched connection.

Novawind

Ok thanks, that helps. In that case I will run one of the 16 ohm outputs from my head to the 16 ohm input while switched to mono.