Bass head cabs

Jetfire

So my bassist has bought second handa  tc electronic head (bh500) and has two tc cabs  (8 ohm, 400 watt). He has an ashdown 1 x 15 250 watt 8 ohm cab. Could he run one of the tc cabs and the ashdown with the head and be ok?

slacker

I've looked at manual and it's a little confusing it doesnt give a min load and it lists different loads for TC and non TC cabs. I'm not sure what's going on there. If someone doesnt give a good explanation I would contact TC.

Jetfire

The website says you can have up to three cabs running so god knows... need a proper look 

ICBM

Jetfire said:

So my bassist has bought second handa  tc electronic head (bh500) and has two tc cabs  (8 ohm, 400 watt). He has an ashdown 1 x 15 250 watt 8 ohm cab. Could he run one of the tc cabs and the ashdown with the head and be ok?

Yes, just. Two 8-ohm cabs makes a 4-ohm load which is OK for the amp, and each cab will get 250W.

The biggest risk is in blowing the Ashdown speaker which will be running right at its power limit - especially if it's one of their blue cone things, quite a high risk.

Not sure why he would want to do that rather than running the two TC cabs either… which will be safer and probably sound better.

Jetfire

Tbh we tried a few different speaker set uos and the 2 x 12 and 1 x 15 had great bottom end... i think its a pretty standard thing having a 2 x something  and a 1 x something.. hes sold the 1 x 15 anyway but tc do a 1 x 12. Maybe worth trying both the 2 x 12s again and crank the bass..

ICBM

Jetfire said:

Tbh we tried a few different speaker set uos and the 2 x 12 and 1 x 15 had great bottom end... i think its a pretty standard thing having a 2 x something  and a 1 x something..

Not really. It just depends on what speakers you want to use, and the cabinet design. 1x15" + 4x10" is quite common, but the most classic bass rig of all time uses eight identical 10s and has huge bottom end.

Selling the Ashdown before it blew was a good move .

fretmeister

Jetfire said:

Tbh we tried a few different speaker set uos and the 2 x 12 and 1 x 15 had great bottom end... i think its a pretty standard thing having a 2 x something  and a 1 x something.. hes sold the 1 x 15 anyway but tc do a 1 x 12. Maybe worth trying both the 2 x 12s again and crank the bass..

This is no longer true. Speaker size now has absolutely nothing to do with low end. Small speakers can now give more low end.

The old big cone = big air movement is also bollocks as such a generalisation ignores cone excursion. Air movement is cone size x excursion. So a 15 that only moves a few mil will shift less air than a 10 than has 1cm excursion.

Also, the 3 cab use as the manual states is only "allowed" when using just TC cabs. No doubt because TC know the impedance curve of their cabs but not others.

Jetfire

Tbf, he sold it when he picked up this new rig to help pay for it. But the tc stuff does sound good. I just wanted to try it for the shits and giggles and it was mega bass.. 

"Is it ok to do this?"

"....yeah course its totally safe..... esp as it not my gear..."

"What?!"

"Nothing.. here we go!"

ICBM

fretmeister said:

Also, the 3 cab use as the manual states is only "allowed" when using just TC cabs. No doubt because TC know the impedance curve of their cabs but not others.

Yes, and some cabs - especially ported ones, and/or with larger-diameter drivers, can have very odd impedance curves at around the resonant frequency of the driver, giving much lower than the rated impedance. JBLs used to be particularly notorious for this if I remember rightly.