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Playing 45 watt Quilter amp through a 20 watt cab?


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Will I blow it up?  Calling you electronics experts!

In a moment of uncontrollable GAS, when Musicians Friend had one of their Stupid Deal of the Day, I clicked on a Quilter 45 Microblock Amp.  Which was a perfect example of just that, GAS, since I didn't have a cab at the time to play it through!😬           Since then I have made a cab with a 12" Celestion Rocket 50 and it sounds great.  It turns out my clicking without thinking has been fun.

But!  The 12" cabinet is still too large and heavy to take to my weekly jam.  I'm thinking about an Orange PPC 108 8" cabinet.  It's really tiny and my local store has one so I could grab it before my jam Wednesday.   It's 8 ohms but only 20 watt rating.  (I can not find any smaller speakers that can handle more than 20 watts.)

If I play at the low volumes typical of our jams will I blow out the speaker or, worse yet, blow up the amp?  I'm willing to risk trying it if my only risk is the speaker. But I don't want to risk the amp.  The impedance match so I don't think I should melt the amp.  But I want to check with some of you that know more about this than I do.

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If you had a 20w speaker and a higher rated amp, you'd have to just keep the volume down so it won't over drive the spesker(s).

But crank that amp and ping goes the voice coil.

BUT

Well a Celeston Rocket 50 is a 50w speaker not 20.

https://celestion.com/product/20/rocket_50/

Semi good news is the Quilter is a solid state amp, pretty hard to blow the transistors without almost a dead short (an open won't kill a solid state amp that's why SS amps have headphones out).

And it shouldn't really put out more than 45w.

So it's a close match 

If it was tube, I like to see double the speaker power rating

Try look at WGS speakers.

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No, Doug.  Thanks for the response but I didn't explain well.  I confused things talking about it.  I know the Celestion is a 50 watt speaker.  It's good with the Quilter. 

My concern is running the Quilter 45 into the little 20 Watt Orange 8" cab. 

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Yup 8" with more than 20w impossible to find.

You won't be able to turn up the amp with the little cab

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I think it will blow the 20w speaker. It could be a short gig.  

Speaker Geeks

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@Randy120, thanks for that link.  You even provided a link that addressed my very scenario!! 😁😎  (In my case, a 45 watt amp.  Close enough!)

"In practical terms, this means if you connect a 50-watt amp to a speaker rated at 50 watts (or more), then you’re good to go. However, connect a 20-watt speaker to the same 50-watt amp and you run an increased risk of the speaker failing at some point down the line ... probably in the middle of your showpiece solo."

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