Help needed with new head/cab combination!

[Sven-Arne Skarvik]

Hi forum, asking on behalf of my bassist who just bought a budget Class D head and 4x10" cab online!

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Problem is, they don't seem to play nice together! At any kind of real volume, the amp's digital "protection mode" engages and the sound is cut!

We have tried using the head with a Barefaced 4 ohm cab without issue and we've also switched out the head for a Tecamp Puma 900, again with no problem.

I've never seen this kind of issue with any head/cab combination, but I have little experience with modern Class D amps. What kind of compatibility issue could be causing this problem?

Help very much appreciated!

- Sven

(EDIT: The cab first arrived with visible damage, so we assumed there might be a short circuit internally. The cab was returned and replaced, but the behavior is the same.)

 

[Aloe]

could you measure the actual cab's impedance? there're chances that the cab is slightly below 4ohms and the head doesn't like it.

I'm afraid, changing cab or head is the thing you'll end up.

 

[MrKpawz]

Are there any pictures of the amp settings when these events occur? Does your bassist use an active or passive bass? Perhaps the gain was set too high on amp, or a possible scenario of bass EQ boosted at both bass and amp. Are you able to confirm ohm resistance of the cab? (did the speakers get rewired to something different from factory)

 

[scottfeldstein]

Things that jump to my mind... Are you setting the active/passive switch correctly? Are you setting the Gain correctly? (Turn it up until the Peak light comes on and then back it off until it stops.)

Assuming all that is good... my guess is that you're just plain pushing it too hard. How can that be? Well, I imagine there was an argument at TC Electronic between the marketers and the engineers and the marketing team won. That I why the amp says "500 watts." It's not 500 watts. It's 350 watts at 4 ohms and 175 at 8 ohms. (They use some weird compression to get it to be louder than those numbers would indicate, but it's not 500 watts.)

So you've got a 350 watt amp and you're trying to get your money's worth out of a quality 410 cab. Maybe it's just not enough watts to drive that cab as hard as you want.