8 ohm and 16 ohm speaker wired together.

[chordmaster88]

I want to wire an 8 ohm speaker and a 16 ohm speaker together. I do not, however, want the resulting load to be 5.3 ohms. I want to final impedance to be either 8 ohms or 16 ohms. Is there a way to do this. I'm assuming I will need to lower the 16 ohm rating somehow via resistor or something? Please let me know if you have some suggestions. Thanks a lot.

[celeste]

If you add an 8 ohm resistor in series with the 8 ohm driver and wire that assembly in parallel with the 16 ohm driver, the amp will see an 8 ohm load. 1/4 of the power will be disapated as heat in the resistor, so the 8 ohm driver will get 1/2 the power of the 16 ohm driver. If it is 3db more effiecent then the 16 ohm driver, they will have close to equal acoustic outputs.

If you wire a 16 ohm resistor in parallel with the 16 ohm driver and wire that assembly in series with the 8 ohm driver, the amp will see a 16 ohm load. This time the 16 ohm driver will need to be the more effiecent one for equal acoustic output.

EDIT: corrected really bad typing and spelling

[Tim Armstrong]

Yeah, any way you do it, you'll need a beefy resistor, and said resistor will be heating up and absorbing a significant amount of the output signal.

Is there any good reason you can't just get either another 8 ohm or 16 ohm speaker?

Tim

[chordmaster88]

Yeah that is what I thought. I just really didn't want to buy a new speaker, SO I need an excuse to get some guitar gear anyways though right? haha, thanks for the input