Hoffman Amplifiers Tube Amplifier Forum
Amp Stuff => Tube Amp Building - Tweaks - Repairs => Topic started by: leevc5 on November 11, 2017, 04:51:01 pm
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The output transformer has a 16 Ohm tap. I have never heard of a 16 Ohm output 5F1 but since I have this nice 16 Ohm speaker I would like to wire up mine this way.
The question is will it work without damaging anything and will it have any effect on volume and or tone?
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Do you have an original 5F1 Fender amp or did you wire it yourself?
The output transformer "needs" to have a 16 ohm tap-- at least for it to work as originally designed. I think original Fenders had a 4 ohm (sometimes 3.2 ohm) tap only, which is too far off for this to be a good idea.
Many modern kits have 8 ohm taps on their transformers, if you have one and use it, that would be safe. Power will be reduced, and tone will be different-- not necessarily worse, just different.
Few modern kits have 16 ohm taps but if you assembled your own with something like a Hammond 125 series transformer, they can be configured for 16 ohm output. It can be a bit tricky but Hammond has diagrams describing it.
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I have a classic tone opt with gray wire identified as 16 Ohm tap. So I am set as far as the output transformer goes. It's just that I have never heard of 16 Ohm tap being used on a 5F1 so am wondering if there is some problem with using the16 Ohm tap.
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Nope, no problem. You just don't see it a lot because these amps used 4 ohms originally and 8 ohms seems most common now, so the designs assume you'll use one of those.