Rockerverb 50 12 ohm load
Posted: Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:28 am
Hello,
Curious if anyone can confirm whether or not a RV50 MKIII is capable of operating under a 12 ohm load.
I know the manual says to use nothing other than 16 or 8 ohm total load (and am fully prepared for a snarky poster to tell me that I've already got my answer then) but I also know that countless players (myself among them) run odd and/or mismatched impedance cabs with other make/model amps for years with no problems. The consensus for every other amp I've used or read up on is that yes, mismatched impedance will effect the lifespan of your output tubes, it may have an unpredictable effect on tone, and is potentially harmful to the output transformer, but most are overbuilt well enough to handle a mismatch as severe as a full power of two off from the rating on the tap (e.g. 4 ohm load on 8 ohm tap) without any practical impact on performance or life expectancy.
Which is why I was surprised to see such unequivocal language in the manual - is the RV50's OT really so much more fragile than the ones found in every other big iron amp?
I'm willing to roll the dice on tone and tubes, but don't want to risk irreparable damage. Note that I'm not asking about running this setup as a one off (I'm sure nothing would blow up running 12 ohms for a few hours) but more or less permanently mating this head to two cabs, one 8 ohm and one 4 ohm. Has anyone else used a setup like this consistently for some number of years and able to confirm it works?
Curious if anyone can confirm whether or not a RV50 MKIII is capable of operating under a 12 ohm load.
I know the manual says to use nothing other than 16 or 8 ohm total load (and am fully prepared for a snarky poster to tell me that I've already got my answer then) but I also know that countless players (myself among them) run odd and/or mismatched impedance cabs with other make/model amps for years with no problems. The consensus for every other amp I've used or read up on is that yes, mismatched impedance will effect the lifespan of your output tubes, it may have an unpredictable effect on tone, and is potentially harmful to the output transformer, but most are overbuilt well enough to handle a mismatch as severe as a full power of two off from the rating on the tap (e.g. 4 ohm load on 8 ohm tap) without any practical impact on performance or life expectancy.
Which is why I was surprised to see such unequivocal language in the manual - is the RV50's OT really so much more fragile than the ones found in every other big iron amp?
I'm willing to roll the dice on tone and tubes, but don't want to risk irreparable damage. Note that I'm not asking about running this setup as a one off (I'm sure nothing would blow up running 12 ohms for a few hours) but more or less permanently mating this head to two cabs, one 8 ohm and one 4 ohm. Has anyone else used a setup like this consistently for some number of years and able to confirm it works?