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Hello,

I'm considering building your 18 Watt sIII amp kit and have a few questions.

1. I was thinking of using the Celestion G12M-20 which is the 20 watt version of the greenback (http://celestion.com/product/24/Heritage_Series_G12M/). My only concern is that it has an impedance of 15 ohms as apposed to the normal 16 ohms on most speakers. Will this speaker work with this amp? I like that is has a sensitivity of 96 dB so that the volume is tamed somewhat. I do have a 25 watt G12M from the 70's that I could use instead if the 20 watt version wasn't an option.

2. With the master volume maxed out is the tone the same as having the master volume bypassed?

Thank you for your time!
Mike

We are told from day 1 that impedance matching is so crucially important that the world will implode if you don't, don't take this as me saying it's perfectly fine but there are plenty of opinions out there that amps can handle up to as much as a 2x mismatch (16 ohm on an 8 ohm amp and vice versa.) I believe Hughes and Kettner even have a blog post about mismatching and what it can do for your sound. I've run an old hunk o junk crate amp on 8 ohms with a 16 ohm speaker with no ill results and I'm sure you'll be just fine with only a single ohm difference in impedance. Perhaps someone else can elaborate as well on if they feel it's bad and you can make a choice for yourself. I'd just use the 25 watt speaker if you really want to match it up.

Impedance is important but not critical. Matchless, for example, mismatches in their Lightning by 2:1
You don't get the max out of your tubes but it will still work.

_________________
Stephen
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