Four 4x12's on One Head? Did it Today Finally!

[Brandon Breeze]

Anyone ever done this?

While looking at the back of my JVM410H I noticed it has a spot for two 8 ohm cabs which would run at 4 ohms. Could I plug in two 16 ohm cabs for each? Seems like it would be fine, and likely have an absolutely massive sound


Picked up my fourth 16 ohm cab today and got to try this with all the cabs on the ground. Ran my 5150II head at 4 ohms and plugged in all four 16 ohm cabinets. This is a really good way to compare your cabs. Without having to unplug or move anything around I was able to side by side compare all four cabinets.

 

[mjtripper]

Yup, it's HUGE sounding

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Yup, it's HUGE sounding

I figured as much,must gotta get one more 16 ohm cabinet lol, I have four 4x12's already but the MF400 is 8 ohm so that messes up the mix

 

[Hung Huy Tran]

I did this with a Peavey Butcher and VTM 60.

 

[bubbastain]

Yes. Did it with my VTM and it's awesome.

 

[Fuego]

I believe you can rewire that cab in series to change the resistance to a higher number. Not sure.

 

[Brandon Breeze]

Yup sure enought this works, and sounds absolutely massive! Turned up my 5150II to 3 and couldn't even hear the huge thunder storm going on outside. Didn't even notice it until lighting was lighting up the sky lol

 

[bumrush101]

I am trying to string up several cabs of 112s, 212s, 412s in different orders. I would have to have an even number of cabs right? Or would 2 16 ohm cabs run at 8 ohm, then attached to another 8 ohm, to make 16 or 4, work? This is the most I've ever seen someone set up multiple cabs into a single head.

 

[BAALINCINERATOR]

why do that when you can get a signal splitter and play that 5150II and that uberschall at the same time

 

[Brandon Breeze]

why do that when you can get a signal splitter and play that 5150II and that uberschall at the same time

I have a signal splitter. I could then run 8 cabs! If I had that many lol

4 16ohm cabs = 4 ohm which is the lowest I see guitar amps go down to. You need an even number of cabs to do this. Some people say you can run odd numbers of cabs as long as the resistance is less than the setting on your amp, but Ill play it safe and stick with even numbers/resistance

 

[Tuckerbomb]

That is super cool. The other guitarist in my old band did that for some tracks on our album. He ran 4 4x12's in a square, so they were all point in at a mic. I dubbed it "The Fortress of Amplitude"!! But, the phasing was off, so it ended up sounding terrible. Looked cool as hell though.

 

[thegame]

4 16ohm cabs = 4 ohm which is the lowest I see guitar amps go down to. You need an even number of cabs to do this. Some people say you can run odd numbers of cabs as long as the resistance is less than the setting on your amp, but Ill play it safe and stick with even numbers/resistance

3 cabs can easily work like this :

one 8 ohm cab to amp
one 16 ohm cab to a parallel (not series !) speaker level splitter box which goes into another 16 ohm cab to amp
= total overall load is 4 ohms so set the amp to that.

The only downside is the 8 ohm cab will receive 50 % of the power, and each 16 ohm cab gets 25 %, so the 8 ohm cab will definitely be the loudest one. You can still work around that by using less efficient 8 ohm speakers (Greenbacks, G12T75s), and more efficient 16 ohm speakers (V30s) to roughly balance everything out.

And the resistance of the cabs should be equal to or HIGHER than the setting on your amp, not LOWER like your post says. Try not to mismatch by more than a factor of 1.