The Steel Guitar Forum

I have an original D130 16 ohm speaker. It is not an “F” model. Was salvaged from an old vintage Hifi cabinet (incidentally it had the JBL 075 tweeter and 2500 crossover). Anyway I was hoping for some low powered tube amp recommendations to go with this speaker. I’m happy to make a cabinet if needed. fender vibrolux reverb would be really cool but the output transformer seems wrong.

Thanks!

Build whatever you like, and put an OT with 16, (or 4-8-16) ohm impedance. I put one in my DR, but only have it wired 4-8.

16 ohms is a difficult match for the small tube amps that would make the most of that speaker, and while not technically a problem with solid state circuits most of those are too powerful to use dependably.

Best to limit it to about 30 watts at 16 ohms, so unless you can find a 30 watt tube amp with a 16 ohm tap on the OT, a SOLID STATE amp rated at no more than 50-60 watts into 8 ohms or 100 watts into 4 ohms is your target spec. Remember also that the more distortion you feed the speaker the lower its power handling due to heat generated by the clipped signal.

For the best of both worlds look into a hybrid amp such as Quilter and others now offer, with a tube front end driving a transformerless solid state power amp. Again, such an amp with a rated 50 watts or less into 8 ohms will deliver no more than 30 watts into 16 ohms, a perfect match.

Good luck and keep us posted on your solution.

Thanks for the ideas! Anyone else have wisdom to share?

Nice old speaker! Personally, I would go with an amp with less than 20 watts as that speaker is old and fragile . Jerry

Peavey Delta Blues amps are 30w 16ohm..

Be sure and check the dc resistance with a multimeter, most of the ones labeled as 16 ohms actually check out to be 8 ohm nominal impedance speakers. I have two in a cab that the last owner labeled as an 8 ohm cabinet, turns out the two speakers together are 4 ohm.

Maybe this is only true with the "F" labeled ones? Not sure, but I was surprised to find that out after years of using the cabinet.
Also, another quirk is the black and red poles are reversed for + and -. Red is ground and black is positive.