The Steel Guitar Forum

Years ago I used to play a silver faced Twin with 12" JBLs. In the mid 90s I switched to a Session 400 Limited (with a BW), which I still have and use on stage (except for one venue with an extremely small stage (at which I used a NV 112).

I'm thinking about switching back to a Twin (a silver face one), but I don't want to do anything until I give it a try.

Here's what I'd like to try: I borrowed a Twin reissue from a friend (I know this isn't the same as a silver face, but it's the only one I can borrow right now). What I want to do is connected the Twin to the BW to see how it sounds with that Speaker. The 12" speakers in the Twin together have a load of 4 ohms and so does the single BW, so the resistance would not change. BUT

And now I say what everyone is thinking: The reissue puts out 85 watts of power, but the BW is rated at 210 watts. My question is whether the using the Twin with the BW will result in a underpowered speaker, or any other potential problems. Remember this is just a test. If it works out I would end up using a silver face Twin that puts out 100 watts of power (more than the reissue but still less than the rating of the BW).

Any thoughts anyone?

Potential problems? None. The result of 'underpowering' a speaker is described on the Weber site as 'warmer' which means....I'm not sure. I've done it often.
There are no technical issues with doing what you propose.

Yup, Jon is correct. Having a speaker that is mildly over-rated for an amp is no problem - in fact, for clean pedal steel, it's probably a good idea. The converse - having speaker(s) that are under-rated for the amp - can be a problem if you push it too hard. I don't think there is any remote problem running a BW on 85 Watts - those are tube Watts anyway, and one can often push a tube amp over the rating without it sounding like fingernails on a chalkboard.

There can be performance issues from running a high-power but low-efficiency speaker with a very underpowered amp. But I believe BW's are pretty efficient. I sometimes run my 6-watt Fender Vibro-Champ into either a Thiele-Small cab with a 12" EVM-12L speaker, or a Peavey 115E cab with a 15", 4-ohm BW - sounds great for a small folkie gig. Or even better - try this with an old Princeton.

Now some people (especially guitar players) like the speaker pushed hard enough that the cone goes into higher-order or nonlinear vibrational modes. That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid with clean pedal steel.

I have such a beast--a 79 SF twin (135 watt) with a single BW1502-4DT speaker (I think I got that speaker nomenclature right). I put it straight into the shop to have it gone through. Haven't seen it since (about 2 month), otherwise I'd tell you how I like it.

Got it from Bobbe Seymour--It's the one he used on some of his YouTube videos.

This reminds me to light a fire under the amp tech's $$$--Almost forgot I owned the thing.

I have a Twin Re-issue custom 15, (same electronics, different cabinet). I currently have the stock Emminence Speaker stored and have a 1501-4 shallow basket Black Widow installed in it. I personally like the sound. It is warmer that the stock speaker.