I have a new GK MB500 head, purchased early this June, that I adore (see my many paragraphs of review and anecdotes
here). I've been using it with the used, 8 ohm Aguilar S410 cab that I purchased the same day.
Last weekend, though, I dug my moldering old SWR Workingman's 410T cabinet (of questionable working condition) out of the garage, and lugged it to the Saturday night gig for ignominious use as a riser for the good Aguilar cab. This was just to raise the Aggie a few feet closer to my ears, as I never get to hear it at near-ear-level.
With the Aggie up high, I could hear my mids & treble more clearly, but seemingly lost some bottom end. I guess that when I use the Aggie on its own, on the floor, it couples with the hollow (?) wooden/carpeted stage, giving a beefy sound in that familiar room.
So, it wasn't worth the extra effort loading & carrying my old cab just to serve as a platform. It again occurred to me to test my old SWR cabinet, in the hopes of running both cabs with the MB500.
I've looked this cabinet up on the Web and, as near as I can tell, it is an 8 ohm cabinet as well. I happen to know that I purchased it on 12/15/98 (for some reason, I wrote this down!), if that helps give an idea of its vintage.
Here's a photo of the old SWR cab, if that helps... I tried comparing the photo with that in the old SWR manual I found, to make sure I was reading the specs of the same version I have.
So, assuming this is really an 8 ohm cab, I should be able to use both of the MB500's outputs at once, thus jumping from its already-adequate 350 watts to the full 500.
You're probably saying, "so just test the old cab already!" but my current speaker cable is Speakon-to-Speakon.
So, what if I located my old 1/4" to 1/4" speaker cable, and used this to test the SWR alone with the GK head... should I be worried about powering up the head if there's anything wrong with the cab? Last time I played the old cab (circa 2004) it was fine, but it was stored in a friend's garage, and I have no idea if it still works.
Assuming I can get sound to come out of the SWR cab, without tearing or crackling or voice coils griding, I'd still need to purchase a speaker cable of proper length, long enough to reach down past the Aguilar to the SWR, which I would put on the bottom of my stack.
I wonder: would my GK head "mind" if I used a Speakon-to-1/4" cable for the SWR, in conjunction with the Speakon-to-Speakon cable that I already use for the Aguilar?
Or, would it be better if I just purchased a long enough 1/4"-to-1/4" speaker cable? The GK MB500 has those outputs that can use either 1/4" or Speakon, but I don't believe the manual mentioned whether it was OK to mix and match when using two cabinets.
I'm probably worrying about nothing; for all I know, Speakon and 1/4" are just different roads to the same destination, but the last thing I want to do is hurt the new head just to integrate this moldy old cabinet on a couple of gigs.
Speaking of which, what kind of sound could I expect from running these two different 4x10 cabs at once? (I'd probably disable the SWR's tweeter.) Could differences in the cabs' tone somehow compromise the overall sound, making it worse than just running the Aguilar by itself?
