Ampeg cab with ohm switch help

I have the same cabinet, same switch, same doubts.

I looked inside at the switch, it's really a simple little switch, I don't understand what it does, or how it could change the impedance from 4 to 16. The cabinet is normally rated 4ohms, which means the speakers should be 8ohms each, how does a little switch turn that into 16ohms?

Someone help!

 

Probably switches between series and parallel. Two 8 ohm speakers in parallel will give you 4 ohms, and the same two 8 ohm speakers in series will give you 16 ohms.

Best was to test would be to get a multimeter, plug a 1/4" cable into the cab and put one end of the meter on the tip, one on the sleeve of the exposed end of the cable. Should read slightly below the rated impedance.

 

Like this...



(http://colomar.com/Shavano/spkr_switch.html)

 

Ahhh, why didn't I think of series/parallel...

that makes perfect sense. thanks coretfyfe

So what kind of difference would the speakers being series or parallel make? Either way the speakers don't change, it seems the route to and from the speakers changes, does it just make one louder than the other?

http://www.termpro.com/articles/spkrz.html

nevermind, i seem to have found an article that explains all this.

 

It's probably simpler than that. The output tap of the B25b is rated for 16 ohms, but you may want to use the speaker cab with a different head (say a V4 or SVT) which don't do 16 ohms, but can do 4 ohms. So, wire in a switch, and bingo, bango, you have an quick way to increase sales potential.

 

I don't have the original Ampeg head that was paired with this cab.

If I could find another one of these cabinets I could run them both at 8ohms or 2ohms. Pretty cool.