NAD - Blackheart little giant

[progrmr]

Got a decent deal on a Blackheart little giant but don't have a cab for it yet!

Arrrgh...the pain :)

Don't know much about extension cabs - I assume low impedance and as many speakers as will fit in the car??

http://tapatalk.com/mu/6b0a8dab-a2cb-e59e.jpg

[Spudman]

Congrats for sure! I have one and absolutely love it. I got rid of my Valve Jr. right away because the Little Giant sounded so much better. I run mine into a Drive ported 1x12 cabinet with a 100 watt Eminence speaker and it sounds great.

[progrmr]

Whats the impedance on your cab? I have a local shop with a Lopo 2x12 but it's 16 ohms...I'm worried that'll cut my output.

It definitely sounded better than the Valve Jr - 3-band EQ makes all the difference. Like the penthode/triode switch too.

[Spudman]

I have 2 8 ohm cabs. One coincidentally is a Lopoline with a 25 watt Celestion, but I prefer the Eminence. I've only run 1 cab at a time so far so I can't say what any impedance besides 8 ohm would sound like.

[sunvalleylaw]

I really like spuds too. I played through it a bunch last time I was over there. Really nice amph to have at home, or for smaller spaces or through a PA!

[Ch0jin]

Hey Progrmr, I just had a peek at the Blackheart site and the the BH5H has 4,8 and 16 Ohm out's and the cab designed for it has a 16 Ohm speaker in her.

That being the case, you can basically go nuts and get whatever speakers you like and just make sure when wired up they equal 4, 8, or 16 Ohms. Then plug into the corresponding output on the amp.

A little theory lesson too. You said "I assume low impedance and as many speakers as will fit in the car??"

Matching impedance is FAR more important than the actual impedance.

Looking for the lowest impedance speakers possible is an activity reserved for solid state amplifiers that can conceivably deliver more power into a lower impedance speaker. Think car audio amps and sub woofers. That kind of thinking shouldn't be applied to tube amps. Mismatching impedance in tube amps will always cause a drop in perceived power and a change of frequency response. (Note: A couple of weeks ago I was jamming with mates and was complaining about my lack of grunt and muffled tone all night. It wasn't until I got home that I discovered I forgot to switch my amp from 8 to 16 Ohms to match the 4x12 I was using that night. To Peavey's credit, I ran my 60W tube head dimed for 3 hours like this and it didn't bother it at all, but it did prove to me that my theory was correct by sounding like I had a massive blanket over the whole thing)

The part about as many speaker as as you can fit is spot on though. More speakers=more surface area=more SPL generally speaking. One of the guys I stalk on Youtube has a video of the Marshall factory where he plugs a Class 5 combo into a full stack and it sounds EPIC.

[Duffy]

I have two different 16 ohm cabs, both Epi's; the single 12" and the 4 X 12", and they both sound great and Loud with the Blackheart Little Giant head. Normally I use the 4 12".

[progrmr]

OK I see - since they built the head with outputs for multiple impedance ratings I don't lose wattage with different impedance amps. Now THAT is awesome. And match the impedance for the speakers.

Have a line on some cabs and am not coming home tonight until I have one - nothing like sitting there looking at a great amp not being able to play through it! :thwap

[tunghaichuan]

The Little Giant has a dedicated 16 ohm jack. It has two 8 ohm jacks and two 4 ohm jacks. This is kind of confusing at first. The are parallel jacks so like Ch0jin, you need to match the total impedance. So you can run one 8 ohm cabinet into one of the 8 ohm jacks. If you had two 8 ohm cabinets, you'd plug them into the 4 ohm jacks as two 8 ohm cabinets in parallel = 4 ohms. Likewise, you'd plug two 16 ohm cabinets into the 8 ohm jacks.