The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm pretty open to brands.

Like to spend as little as possible.

Needs to be rated at east 80 watts at 8olms

Going to use this mainly for my guitar but maybe I'll take it to rehearsal and use it with my steel also.

Anybody have too many and don't mind parting with one?

Email me here if you do.

Thanks
David

David, I've got a Peavey 112SX with a Sheffield that I think is rated for 80 watts. I'll take $125 plus shipping from 88061.

Sorry Bill i just need a replacement speaker

PM’d you David...

Private messages not working. Email me.

Hey David
I may have the speaker you need.
I will check after work today.

David, I have a 12", 8ohm that came from a Fender Twin. I'm not using it. If you don't make a deal, let me know. I'm think around $35.00.

Hey David my 12 inch is not 8ohms .Sorry

The only way to really see what impedance a speaker is, is to measure it with an ohm meter, check it out you may be surprised.

The definition of an "8" ohm speaker speaker a moving target, with DC resistance (DCR)of the voice coil up to interpretation, fudging, to out right lying.

A true 8 ohm speaker has a voice coil DCR of 6.5 ohms. Acceptable Manufacturing tolerance is about +-.3 ohms, resulting in 6.2-6.8 ohms.

In the 60's Musical instrument speakers established a target of 5.5 ohm DCR, (fudging) why?, because the lower resistance voice coil draws more power and sounds louder. Some manufacturer lowered the resistance even farther.

However in the early transistor amplifier days these amps were quite load sensitive and would fail (blow up) when loaded too heavy. ALTEC was the main manufacturer to recognize this and standardized all their professional and HI FI speakers to proper spec. However, even they, considering the competition, left their 8 ohm MI cone speakers at 5.5 ohm DCR, 16 ohms at 11 ohms DCR, 4 ohm at 2.75 ohm DCR.

Some of you might just be old enough to remember how those early transistor amps blew up like popcorn, Vox's, Kustom's, Acoustic's etc, this just might be one of the reasons, you think! Conversely the old tube Fender, Ampeg, Traynor,etc, tube amps just kept working, although the tube life of an overloaded one went down dramatically.

I have seen labeled 8 ohm speakers at as low as 3.9 ohms DCR (a lie). to as high as 7.2 ohms DCR. Higher resistance loading will not harm the amp, it just won't be as loud. In fact many amps, like tube Fenders, will put out some more voltage, into a lighter load, so often times a lighter loaded amp will sound very little quieter than a fully loaded one. If you have enough loudness, don't worry about the less load, like a 16 ohm speaker, it won't hurt anything.

The fact is that current solid state amps have plenty of reserve and can handle quite a bit of overload. Many over 200 watt RMS amps will load down to 2 ohms without damage. If it says 4 ohms maximum, I would not go under 2.7 ohms DCR total speaker load which translates into about 3.5 ohms real load, or two MI cone speakers, modern solid state amps ought to do that just fine. Tube amps will handle the overload better, just might go into distortion earlier, and have less output tube life.

Like all those string tunings, standards vary.