HELP - need advice/info on safely hooking up amps to cabs - my bass rig

[citynorth]

Hey guys, so i currently just purchased an ampeg svt 7 pro, it will be here in a little less than a week.
The svt7 pro is 1000 watts at 4 ohms, 600 at 8 ohms.
I currently have a mesa powerhouse 410 that is 600 watts at 8 ohms.
As well i have an ampeg svt 15e that is 200 watts at 8 ohms.
Hooking them up would get 400 at watts at 4 ohms, correct?

To my main queston, after looking it up at first I was pretty sure that a 600 watt head into a 600 watt cab would be just fine, now i've been reading people saying that you want much more wattage from your amp than you do your cab. To me this seemed like that would blow out the speakers, but if this is right, then to have more watts in my amp than in my cab, i could hook up the ampeg svt 15e to the mesa power house and get the speakers down to 400 watts at 4 ohms, which would allow the amp to run the full 1000 watts at 4 ohms.
So which set up is safer? The svt 7 pro with just the mesa, or the svt7 pro with the mesa and the svt 15e?

Also on a sidenote if anyone can answer this for me... when hooking up amps in "series" as opposed to parallel, is there a difference in the change of impedance or wattage as to when hooking it up to parallel? I haven't been able figure out the right answer to this.

Thank you so much for anyone who can help me out.

[Cirk]

If you hook up both 8 ohm cabinets, your amp will see a 4 ohm load. This will put 500 watts into each cabinet. Your 4x10 will be fine, but your 15 will probably blow out if you push it too hard. One option there is to switch it out for another 15 that can handle the power. Make sure you use a driver that's appropriate for the cabinet for best results.
Another option is to use the 410 by itself. With the 8 ohm load it provides, the amp will put out 600 watts, and they will both work well.
Hooking up the cabs in series will give the amp a 16 ohm load. It would work, but the output would be drastically reduced. I would not recommend this at all.
Above all else, read the owner's manual for your amp, and fill out the warranty card. Not saying that you'll do anything wrong, but it's good just to be on the safe side. You've got a lot of money wrapped up in you rig, and knowing as much as you can can save you a lot of hassle and money.
Enjoy the new amp!

[citynorth]

okay great, yea i've been looking into 600 watt 1x15 or 2x15 to hook up instead and selling the ampeg. As well i was thinking about replacing the mesa with an ampeg 600 watt cab at 4 ohms. Would that cab by itself work with the svt 7 pro?
also, just so i understand, hypothetically if i hooked up the cabs in series, would they be 800 watts at 16 ohms or 400 watts at 16 ohms? I'm just not sure if the wattage is effected.
Really appreciate the help. And yea i'm not going to be doing any experimenting with anything until i am 100% on how this works. I thought I was pretty sure but realized i have talked to morons that worked at music stores that have given me terribly wrong advice after reading up on it more. its amazing how some of these guys get hired...

[ninepoundjammer]

You're not quite getting it. The AMP FAQ sticky is a good place to start. A power rating is a general notion of how much power a cab can handle before something bad happens. Adding/removing cabs doesn't somehow change this number. The ohm rating is the only thing that matters to the amp, and determines how much power it can output. Since you have two 8ohm cabs they'lll get equal power from the amp and the power handling of the 15 will be exceeded long before the 4x10 breaks a sweat. That's why you are probably better off just running the 4x10 on it's own, that way you can get somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 watts out of the rig (it's complicated), otherwise the 1x15 will limit you to around 2x200=400 watts total.

[ninepoundjammer]

And if you go series, you'll just reduce the power the amp can put out to even less than 600 watts. The power handling of the cabs doesn't change, but you probably wouldn't be able to put enough power in them to risk damage. Not going to help in any way.

[citynorth]

sounds good, thanks.

[mikezimmerman]

You also generally won't be able to hook two cabs up in series without having special cables made. The jacks on most cabs are wired in parallel, so if you "daisy chain" from the amp to one cab to a second cab, the cabs are still connected in parallel...