Premier Rock Forum

I've run 300W amps into 100W cabinets without issue. It really depends on how hard you're pushing it to get enough volume in the room for the situation. Efficient speakers don't need nearly as much power to get "loud," so it's less likely that you'll overheat the voice coils and cause damage. Similarly, you're more likely to damage a speaker in a ported or open-backed cabinet than you are in a sealed cabinet, simply because of overexcursion of the cone. The cone isn't damped as much by air pressure.

Where I've personally run into problems is amps and cabs that are similarly rated and used at their extremes. A 100W bass amp into an inefficient 100W cab trying to keep up with a couple guitars and drums at a punk show is a recipe for amp hard-clipping and speaker damage.

Garth wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 11:37 am you want more power on tap than the speakers are rated for to avoid the square wave clipping.

That's what I've always heard. The square wave clipping is the killer.

that very obviously does NOT mean that you need to GIVE those speakers the whole 100% of power.

Exactly.

FWIW my power amps for the mastering rig are class d, rated at 400w each, the speakers are ~100w (I think), they handle it just fine, zero distortion.

I certainly concede that FM Dr. Balls knows way more about amps and speakers than I do though.

Nate Dort wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 11:48 am I've run 300W amps into 100W cabinets without issue. It really depends on how hard you're pushing it to get enough volume in the room for the situation. Efficient speakers don't need nearly as much power to get "loud," so it's less likely that you'll overheat the voice coils and cause damage. Similarly, you're more likely to damage a speaker in a ported or open-backed cabinet than you are in a sealed cabinet, simply because of overexcursion of the cone. The cone isn't damped as much by air pressure.

Where I've personally run into problems is amps and cabs that are similarly rated and used at their extremes. A 100W bass amp into an inefficient 100W cab trying to keep up with a couple guitars and drums at a punk show is a recipe for amp hard-clipping and speaker damage.

My guitar cab is closed back with efficient speakers (I Believe?) - the top is an Eminence Guv'ner and the bottom is a Eminence Wizard.

Bass cab I'm really not concerned about, obviously it can handle the power amp fine.

I'm not talking about square wave clipping or using amps/speakers at their extremes. The OP was asking about power. Using a 300W amp with a 100W cab. I'm just saying that speaker ratings mean something. A cab rated at 100W is rated that way for a reason. Yes, you can be safe about using a cab that cant handle as much as your amp can dish out, but just be wary that limits are limits.

Suggesting that the opposite is true (i.e. an amp underpowerd for the cab) is, imo, wildly misleading without a whole lot of context about square waves, etc. Without that it looks like if you try to power a full stack with a Princeton youll just blow speakers, and thats crazy.

Nate Dort wrote: Mon Jan 29, 2024 9:40 am Some people just don't like the sound of transformer balanced signals. Transformers will impart some sort of distortion to the signal. Whether that's audible or not depends on a lot of factors.

For an active balanced signal, there is also going to be some distortion or phase shift added. It's just the nature of adding another active element in the signal path. Again, depends on a lot of factors.

Therefore, I do agree with the notion that simpler is generally better. There's almost no reason to add extra balancing and debalancing stages to gear if the runs are short, i.e. in the typical studio environment.

I was going to pretty much say this exactly. However, I will add one thing for clarity. Almost all "balanced" gear is unbalanced on the inside. This is what Nate means by debalancing and balancing above. When a signal goes into something like a balanced compressor, the first thing that happens is that the signal goes through some kind of circuitry to un-balance the signal; transformer, op amps, transistors, etc. This is the process that causes cancellation of any line noise. Then, all of the signal processing is done on the unbalanced signal in the box. Then, just before the output, the signal goes through another bit of circuitry, similar to the input, to split the signal and flip the polarity of one side, and generate the balanced signal.

With this balanced gear, the balancing circuitry is almost never bypassed if an unbalanced signal is used. What happens is that the polarity flipped portion of the balanced input and output is grounded, but the traditional hot part of the signal still goes through the balancing circuitry.

In most cases this is pretty invisible, and in the digital world we work today, this might only be happening at the signal input to the audio interface. However, in a more analog style of recording, this could be happening a number of times. For instance, imagine this scenario: Mic to analog preamp to compressor to interface. Then, add analog processing on mixing of interface to compressor to EQ back to interface. If I'm counting correctly, that's 11 stages of unbalancing and re-balancing. Now, you can't eliminate the original mic balancing to unbalancing, but that still leave 10 stages of signal buffering on that track before it's mixed. I can see how that might add some unpleasant sound qualities, distortions, phase shifts, etc. However, some of the "sound" of a piece of analog gear might come from how it manipulates the signal, especially with input and output transformers. So the coloring might be desired.

In closing, I've never worried about it in the low impedance world of recording, but that's not really where I obsess about sound. In the high impedance world of guitar signals, I ALWAYS obsess with how many (unbalanced) buffers the guitar signal is passing through. String together five bypassed Boss pedals (10 buffers) vs. a straight cable for a great example.

Cheers, y'all!

only speaker I've blown recently was when rehabbing a Crown DC-300 and I put 150 watts of DC (those amps can do that) into a little bookshelf speaker. Don't do that, folks.

There’s a loaded 8-hole strat pickguard with the aftermarket pickups I want for sale used at a decent price.

However, I’m pretty sure my early 90s MIA Strat has an 11-hole guard.

Is it worth saving a few bucks to buy a mismatched guard? Just wondering if anyone has directly compared the two styles.

This Strat I have has been passed around my family and currently has a big ugly humbucker at the bridge that wasn’t there in the 90s, so if all I have to worry about is a couple mismatched screw holes, the guitar will be fine.

I'm pretty sure the 8 and 11 hole pickguards are interchangeable, the holes should line up. Even if they don't and you need to drill a couple new ones, no big deal.

Speaking of pickguards, I need to replace the one on my 2009 Les Paul Studio. I'm seeing conflicting information online about which ones fit correctly. Does anyone here have experience with this issue? I was looking at different ones on Amazon that weren't as expensive as Gibson, seems like the knockoffs are sometimes the wrong size?

I've also been looking for a chrome one, not mirror. Not sure if they even exist. I'd probably just do black if this is impossible.

There's always spray paint!