Inline cable ohm resistor

[EMoneySC2]

Sure, you just need to find a 4 ohm 500w resistor.

Screw this beast onto the back of your amp, solder up the connections, and we're in business!

 

[dincz]

The simple solution is to wire an electric kettle in series with your cab. That way you can make tea as well.

 

[Nev375]

Yes. Buy another speaker cab like the one you have and wire them in series with a special cable.

 

[BassmanPaul]

600w at 4 ohms.. It's really a Sunn 1200s that puts out 1200w at 2 ohms... So it's not so little. And I'm really just guessing on wattage because the 8 ohm Sunn 410H cab that its paired with is a 300w cab.

My purpose in asking all of this is that my main rig is a Carvin BX1500 with 2 Acme Low b210 4 ohm cabs and I'm evaluating whether the Sunn 1200s can be a back up using the low b2 cabs if the Carvin goes down at a gig.

Your Carvin/B2 rig is identical to my #2 amplifier. My main rig is a pre/power set up of a tube pre-amp and a Carvin HD2000 power amp. This provides about 500W per channel into two of my B2 cabinets. I would be concerned at 600W per cabinet but if you use your ears and your common sense you should be fine. If it starts to sound bad turn down.

 

[DavC]

I believe the magic item would be the " Master Volume " .... but really , speakers are probably safer having to much power with less distortion present .... than way to little power and lots of distortion ... !!

 

[ArtechnikA]

...way to little power and lots of distortion ... !!

 

[Bass_Pounder]

I believe the magic item would be the " Master Volume " .... but really , speakers are probably safer having to much power with less distortion present .... than way to little power and lots of distortion ... !!

Care to elaborate ?

 

[Steve Dallman]

That resistor would have to be able to take the full power of the amp (for safety purposes) and will generate immense heat. Where will you find a 600 watt 4 ohm resistor and how will you house it so it doesn't burn anything. We're talking huge heatsink, possibly a fan.

All in all, not a good idea.

 

[BurningSkies]

That resistor would have to be able to take the full power of the amp (for safety purposes) and will generate immense heat. Where will you find a 600 watt 4 ohm resistor and how will you house it so it doesn't burn anything. We're talking huge heatsink, possibly a fan.

All in all, not a good idea.

Of course. That's why my post included Malicious Advice Mallard.

Invalid Link Removed

 

[seamonkey]

Eminence D-fend essentially works like a power resistor in series. But it's a switching resistor. So it doesn't need to dissipate a lot of heat.
It raises the impedance the amp sees and thus less power goes to the speaker.

You can add a power resistor in series and it will absorb some of the power.
It is actually a transfer function that Carver did way back when, look up "Carver Challenge"
You'll end up changing the tone of the amp.

Read enough ohms law and search for ohms law calculator. You can figure out the ohms, watts. Still doesn't mean you won't blow a speaker. Remember your raising the impedance the amp sees so it will generate less watts, and so you'll need to absorb less power on the resistor.

Or, buy a limiter. Or put some clamping diodes on the input to limit input to the amp. (this too changes tone, it adds soft clipping before you hit the limit) Wire them on a cable an put in the effects loop.

 

[agedhorse]

Putting a resistor like that in series with the speaker load will drop the damping factor to an unacceptably low value causing a sloppy sound. Whilst low-ish damping factors can be desirable, this low is not great.

Part of what makes low damping factor interesting sounding is when the damping factor is not a single number, but varies with frequency as it interacts with the also varying speaker's reactive load. There is a lot of "secret sauce" associated with this concept.

 

[ThisBass]

TL;DR

For the record,
probably it's best practice on TB to wait until some rank and file make some posts to encourage the OP to provide further sufficiant information what he really likes to do. It's not an easy job to read in a crystal ball but (likely) it's more easy to comment at a point when further informations are disclosed.

When I did the first post I did not had all this information. Clearly my fault because I did not wait until the OP mentioned the Acme cabs etc.

To be honest, I feel somewhat strange at this point.