8-ohm out in to 32-ohm load; am I screwed?

[hotcoffeenochill]

Hi everyone, could use some input/advice here.

I got a 2x10 from Weber a little over a month ago. Came with 16-ohm speakers in it. The jack plate has 3 inputs: 8-ohm mono (also one half of 16-ohm stereo), the other 16-ohm stereo, and 32-ohm mono.

At some point during my shuffling around of my guitar corner probably 2 weeks ago now I accidentally plugged in to the 32-ohm input. I've run both my Mesa California Tweed (8-ohm) and my 70s Deluxe Reverb (8-ohm) pretty much daily since then through this cab plugged in to the 32-ohm input before I realized my mistake today.

The mistake was noticed because I got a new fuzz today, the JAM Eureka silicon fuzz, and I noticed that I was getting some horrible clipping anytime I tried to sustain a note at any setting on the fuzz. Figured it was likely just the new pedal, so I tried another fuzz that I've had for a while and noticed it was happening with that one too. Here's where things get a little unclear; I cannot remember or possibly didn't notice this issue with the fuzz that I've had for some time before today, but can't guarantee that it wasn't there. Anyway, I thought, "maybe it's one of the speakers crapping out on me" so I turned everything around to get a look at it and realized I was in the 32-ohm input.

So I suppose my question is, did I do some irreversible damage to the OTs of both of my prize amps by running a 32-ohm load in to 8-ohms? Or do I just not like this new pedal and in my panic that I have damaged my amps I tricked my mind in to deciding my other fuzz has an issue too?

 

[VintageSG]

If it sounds just fine when run into the correct load, loud and clean, no harm, no foul.

Fuzz may possibly be an issue, as can distortion, as square waves do all manner of nasty things with regard to back EMF. Perhaps the borked sound was sufficient to alert you, and the amp wasn't cranked.

If it still works, you've got away with it.

Some gaffer tape over the 32 Ohm socket may not go amiss, or buy another cab and parallel daisy-chain them

See?, even a mistake can have benefits.

 

[hotcoffeenochill]

Yeah they sound fine clean and with a low-gain OD. Definitely going to tape that 32-ohm socket though.

 

[2L man]

I think it is bigger risk for tubes to fail when loadspeaker load is insufficient and energy turns high voltage spikes on OT primary circuit. Obviously it can cause very high frequency, out of hearing, oscillation as well.

 

[tubedude]

Better a tough high impedance load than a short, but a 100% mismatch is usually safe. An 8R source driving a 32R load is not good at all, but it's far better than driving into a short, and world's better than a no load condition.

 

[NTC]

Instead of a dead short like a Fender amp, some old Traynor amplifiers put a relatively high value resistor (180 ohms, 30W (edited)) on the output when no plug was inserted into the speaker output.

 

[metalicaster]

If you didn’t let the smoke out, you probably got away with it.