Ohms what?

Just as I was writing yesterday about getting this Y cable so that I can actually make full use of the 2 of my Marshall mini stack cabinets, like most average bedroom player, I have no idea what this resistance thing is all about. I always thought that I could just plug in cables that fit and the head and cabs will automatically works. I found out that I was wrong. Very very wrong.

Anyway, I ain't going to go through the details on how to calculate the resistance. Or rather, I have no idea how to do that. I shall tell my readers the answer on how to use a Y cable for an amp head with only one input for 4, 8 and 16 ohms. So the problem is I have one of each and I want to connect to 2 different cabinets measured at 16 ohms each. I have a parallel Y cable. Which one do I plug it out from? The answer is 8 ohms.

Take note that running your speakers at a lower resistance or lower ohm than your head will spoil your head and speakers. This is true to even audio grade amplifier. No matter what, you will need to run your head with speakers with greater resistance. Having a pair of speakers with greater resistance will only cause the sound to be lack of power. In layman terms, softer audio with less punch and power. However that won't kill it.

Now, you might ask me why do I pluck it into the 8ohms to 2 speaker out instead of 16 ohms to 2 16 ohms speakers? Apparently, when wired parallel, the resistance is doubled from the head. Hence, 8 x 2 = 16 ohms. Meaning if I have two of 8 ohms speakers, I will have to plug it out from the 4 ohms slot. Just always remember when using a parallel Y cable that your resistance will be 2 times of it's original value and make sure that either cabinet's resistance will not be lower than that value.