Line 6 Spider IV 15- ok to use 8 ohm spkr instead of 4 ohm?

[Steve A.]

When I think steel guitar, my thoughts turn to a nice big smooth 15 and a solid state amp.

That's what I heard so I got a 15 watt solid state amp.
I agree with you about 15" speakers (although I know a lot of people are playing the Peavey Nashville 112 with- wait for it- one 12" speaker.)

You are thinking of pedal steel guitar- I guess I should have specified "non-pedal steel guitar." At this time I am playing lap steel (like David Lindley but without the talent) and console steel (think Hank Williams but without the cowboy hat.) I do have a Sho Bud S-10 which I will start learning as soon as I can carve out enough space for it (I have been getting my left and right hand techniques up to snuff.) On a hot tip from a member of the Steel Guitar Forum I picked up a Behringer Blue Devil GX112 for $99 from a Sam Ash location in Virginia. Forget all of the digital FX- the amp is up there with the Peavey Nashville 112 (which sells for $400- 600.)

You really want a 15" speaker if you are using C6 tuning which in open position has a low C (like a baritone guitar), and pedals and/or levers can bring it down even lower.

The Line 6 is just for a practice amp, although I can bring it around to jams and casual gigs at small bars when I don't want to haul out the heavy artillery.

Steve

P.S. I just read a post by you on another forum that said the Behringer amp schematics are not available. Is there a block diagram? I am just interested in which parts are analog and which parts are digital. My guess is that the preamp and power amp are analog but the FX are digital. Am I close?

[Steve A.]

BTW I just plugged in my PRS SE Custom and love how the amp sounds with the Beta 8A speaker. The Spider IV 15 and Eminence Beta 8A are like a match made in heaven. Well, maybe not heaven but someplace better than LA... In most small amps there is not enough treble to make the 8A work for guitar, or if you crank the treble all the way up hold your ears if you switch to the gain channel. When you save a preset (clean, crunch...) it stores the settings of 7 of the 8 knobs on the front panel (all of them except the Master volume): Drive, Bass, Mid, Treble, Chan Vol, plus the two FX knobs.

Steve

[Steve Conner]

A case of great minds think alike, or fools seldom differ?
It sounded better than the original speaker, and I didn't notice any great loss of volume.

As an engineer, it bothered me that I now had a high-powered speaker with only 3 watts to drive it, so later on I added a power booster along the lines of JM's "fire breathing LM3886" and that really made the amp more versatile. I challenge your ZT Lunchbox to a duel

PS: Has anyone tried the Delta Pro 8? The frequency response chart from Eminence shows a lot of peaks and dips in the midrange that might make for a more interesting guitar tone than the Beta. There's also an Alpha 8 that they recommend for "guitar combos".

[Steve A.]

PS: Has anyone tried the Delta Pro 8? The frequency response chart from Eminence shows a lot of peaks and dips in the midrange that might make for a more interesting guitar tone than the Beta. There's also an Alpha 8 that they recommend for "guitar combos".

I was looking at all of the 8" speakers at the Eminence site but MF sells only the Beta 8A and the Alpha 8MRA. The sites that sell the other 8" speakers probably charge shipping and handling so I like to get speakers from MF. They do sell a Beta 10A for $75. I also noticed that Eminence is now selling sets of different speakers for cabs with 2 or 4 speakers. Rather than mixing and matching on your own.

Steve