300 watt head w/ a 100w cabinet? will it work? help!!!

[napoli187]

i know this may sound like a dumb question, but can i use a head with a higher wattage than the cabinet can handle? meaning, if my cab is 100 w, will the head only pump out as much as the cab can handle, or will a 300 w head blow out the cabs speakers? how does this work? i'm still learning how to use this stuff so thanks for being patient!

 

[M.Brane]

What kind of amp? What kind of cabinet?

With tube amps, you want the cab to able to handle at least the rated RMS of the amp if your gonna crank it up. 300 watts of tubes is gonna be way louder than any guitarist needs. That's not an unreasonable amount of power for bass though. If it's a bass rig your probabaly gonna cook some speakers that way.

If it's a solid state rig, you want your amp to have more output than what the speakers are rated at because you don't want the amp to go into clipping before the speakers. SS amps tend to produce square waves when they clip, and speakers don't like that very much. Your more likely to blow speakers with an underpowered SS rig.

 

[djc]

Now for the short answer.

Yes, it will work. But you run the risk of blowing the speakers if you turn it up too loud.

 

[Dom Franco]

Just don't turn it up past "3"

....I hope the volume pot is linear!....

100W/300W=.333333.......

Dom

 

[Richard Monroe]

You also haven't checked for impedence matching. Cabs can be 8 ohms, 16 ohms, or even 4 ohms (usually an acoustic guitar cab) A 300 watt 8 ohm amp into a 100 watt 16 ohm cab actually would be pretty good.-Richie