Hi
I recently entered the Mesa family by purchasing a Transatlantic 30 Head and I'm very delighted with my new acquisition. So far this amp does everything I ask it to do and in a brilliant way. Beautiful cleans with a tad of reverb and delay to play slow finger picking melodies, no problem; crunchy and fat cords changes, it excels here too; vocal like saturated single notes for soloing, they are beautiful too. You can see how happy I'm. Too bad they took it out of the line. Currently I'm running it into a pair of 1X12 Hughes&Kettner TM12 with V30 speakers, they are 16 ohm each which means that when ran in parallel they turn into an 8 ohm total impedance, which is what this amp like to see. So far so good, a good match hey? I'll experiment with other cabinets in the future when I have a little more money, but for now this is good and I like what I'm hearing. My former amp was a H&K TM18 that I still have. It is a good amp with a lot of features. It sounds is very different to the TA-30, more focus in the mid range frequencies laking that fat bottom end that the Mesas do so well. Another kind of animal I guess. Anyways one thing that I do a lot is recording guitar compositions in my computer using the integrated Redbox DI feature of the H&K direct into my interface and then to a DAW software, also I do a lot of practicing using headphones and Main Stage. I do this at night when everybody else is sleeping in the house, you get the picture. So in that same note I thought that a Cab Clone combine with the TA-30 will be a good choice so I can do with my new amp what I've been doing with the H&K. I stopped in my local store which carries that CC and talk to a friend that works in the store and he mentioned that a friend of him had one for sale for half the price. He said that he thought it was the 8 ohm version. I contacted his friend and agreed to meet later that day after I get off work. Hi said that the unit was almost new and the reason why he was selling it was because it didn't attenuated the signal and that a device like a Hot Plate was more of what he was after. I met him and checked the unit and it looked and worked great, I paid the guy and when home to try it on my own rig. That's when I discovered (which I should have noticed before but in the middle of my excitement I didn't) that the CC that I bought was the 16 ohm version. I read the instructions carefully before trying it, I didn't want to ruin my new beloved amp, and it says that while it is better to use the matching impedance it is acceptable to use a 16 ohm CC with a 8 ohm speaker output host amp. This is when used for silent recording or speaker off practice, the 16 ohm is the internal load of the CC so the amp can the be use without speaker cabinet. When a cab is connected to the thru speaker jack of the CC this defies the internal load of the CC and then the cabinet impedance is one that matters. I connected the CC and everything seen to be working ok in any combination I have tried. I'm still not convinced of the headphone feature of the CC but the Amp sounds fantastic when I monitored it on my computer. Anyways the question after my long story is, does anybody had any experience with using a 16 ohm CC combined with an 8 ohm amp or a 16 ohm speaker cab with an 8 ohm amp, I know in paper they say it is a safe miss match, but is it really safe? Am I putting my amp in risk by doing this? Thanks in advance.
I recently entered the Mesa family by purchasing a Transatlantic 30 Head and I'm very delighted with my new acquisition. So far this amp does everything I ask it to do and in a brilliant way. Beautiful cleans with a tad of reverb and delay to play slow finger picking melodies, no problem; crunchy and fat cords changes, it excels here too; vocal like saturated single notes for soloing, they are beautiful too. You can see how happy I'm. Too bad they took it out of the line. Currently I'm running it into a pair of 1X12 Hughes&Kettner TM12 with V30 speakers, they are 16 ohm each which means that when ran in parallel they turn into an 8 ohm total impedance, which is what this amp like to see. So far so good, a good match hey? I'll experiment with other cabinets in the future when I have a little more money, but for now this is good and I like what I'm hearing. My former amp was a H&K TM18 that I still have. It is a good amp with a lot of features. It sounds is very different to the TA-30, more focus in the mid range frequencies laking that fat bottom end that the Mesas do so well. Another kind of animal I guess. Anyways one thing that I do a lot is recording guitar compositions in my computer using the integrated Redbox DI feature of the H&K direct into my interface and then to a DAW software, also I do a lot of practicing using headphones and Main Stage. I do this at night when everybody else is sleeping in the house, you get the picture. So in that same note I thought that a Cab Clone combine with the TA-30 will be a good choice so I can do with my new amp what I've been doing with the H&K. I stopped in my local store which carries that CC and talk to a friend that works in the store and he mentioned that a friend of him had one for sale for half the price. He said that he thought it was the 8 ohm version. I contacted his friend and agreed to meet later that day after I get off work. Hi said that the unit was almost new and the reason why he was selling it was because it didn't attenuated the signal and that a device like a Hot Plate was more of what he was after. I met him and checked the unit and it looked and worked great, I paid the guy and when home to try it on my own rig. That's when I discovered (which I should have noticed before but in the middle of my excitement I didn't) that the CC that I bought was the 16 ohm version. I read the instructions carefully before trying it, I didn't want to ruin my new beloved amp, and it says that while it is better to use the matching impedance it is acceptable to use a 16 ohm CC with a 8 ohm speaker output host amp. This is when used for silent recording or speaker off practice, the 16 ohm is the internal load of the CC so the amp can the be use without speaker cabinet. When a cab is connected to the thru speaker jack of the CC this defies the internal load of the CC and then the cabinet impedance is one that matters. I connected the CC and everything seen to be working ok in any combination I have tried. I'm still not convinced of the headphone feature of the CC but the Amp sounds fantastic when I monitored it on my computer. Anyways the question after my long story is, does anybody had any experience with using a 16 ohm CC combined with an 8 ohm amp or a 16 ohm speaker cab with an 8 ohm amp, I know in paper they say it is a safe miss match, but is it really safe? Am I putting my amp in risk by doing this? Thanks in advance.
