matching speakers w/ cabinet

[Antti Heikkinen]

Yes and no. For one, you lose cone breakup if you aren't pushing the speakers at least a bit. That doesn't mean putting 100 watts into a 20 watt speaker, but it also means you often lose something putting 20 watts into a 100 watt speaker. Now, if you don't want the speaker to break up because you're going for clean tones, then sure, use speakers rated much higher than your amp, and also look at the xmax to ensure that you aren't pushing the cones too far at a given wattage.

There has to be quite a mismatch of output and cab power IMO...I mean, yeah I always liked my 50w cab with my 100w amp great but it was just as loud and thumping with a 36W amp as well. Going down to 18w the loudness basically didn't change at all or maybe one dB or whatever, but what happened is the low end went away. Top end didn't change really. Just no more boom.

I'm not too sure if I've ever gone into speaker cone distorting however. Yeah I've played them loud so that I've been worried the speakers literally come off from the rim but still the distortion seems power amp not the speaker. Because I've done that also with a 400W PA amp into a 140w Marshall cab and the bugger didn't overdrive even at volume where the cones jumped an inch up from their plane.