speaker distortion as a desired effect (thread for more guitar humbo jumbo)

any guitar dudes messed with this? like say i have a big 100w head, what do i do? maybe hook it up to a 4x10 that's not meant to handle something like that? or just find speakers with particularly thin cones? i think i'm lousy at google, all i come up with is how-to-avoid-this nonsense.

not for most ppl but i think this is where it's at. link wray and hound dog taylor and that sort of vibe. it's the only way i can make the dinky crate amp in my bedroom sound any good. or at least cool; turn it all the way up until the speaker prolapses out the cabinet. play easy and it's big and a little compressed (?) cleans, go at it harder and get a heavy battered sound. but it seems different than what, say, the kinks or hound dog taylor were doing, like using damaged speakers vs. overextending them? anyway.

i think i'm just tired of sifting through OD pedals.

resistance overload e.g. run a 4 ohm head into an 8 ohm cabinet

as you can imagine you will blow the speakers eventually doing this

that's also very hard on the head, though, right?

have a feeling i'll reserve this for cheapie practice amps in recording environments and work out altogether different sounds for loud + live

i think you mean run a 4 ohm cab on an 8 ohm minimum head tho right.

also its a bad idea.

hound dog taylor used to slash his speakers w/a knife, btw, according to the stories my dad has about working with him. the look on the fender reps face as the new twins he had just delivered got razored was apparently quite a treat

my understanding of head/cab mismatches is along these lines, correct me if I'm wrong tho

8ohm head -> 4ohm cab = smoked transformer, fried head
4ohm head -> 8ohm cab = overloaded cab, blown speaker

arby's you should read some articles on what neil young has his techs go through to keep his rig at the proper level of distortion

i've read about the robot that turns his amp knobs for him and how he keeps his reverb tank underneath the stage and stuff like that. crazy old bat.

I think with your 50/100 watt tube amps usually you see cabs mostly that have speakers like Celestion Vintage 30s (which can handle 70-90 watts depending on exact type) or GT-75s or those Electro Voice ones that can handle huge amounts of watts. Idea being that most of your modern amps with gain get a big part of their sound from the preamp and not from pushing the power tubes so you want a speaker that is more neutral to the amp (or just adds a bit of eq with it's natural sound like a V30). Now older style say Marshall Plexi or Bassman type amps, people will try to push the power tube distortion, but criminy it is LOUD, like LOUDER than LOUD.

The other school is going with a lower wattage amp like say a Fender Deluxe (ala Neil Young and bunches more) or a Vox AC15 or AC30. Thing is that if you have speakers that can't hang with a ton of output, even when using clean it might not sound clean. Some lower wattage speakers would be stuff like Celestion Alnico Blues (often used in higher in Vox tube amps) or something like a Celestion Greenback (30 watt speaker). These are often warmer speakers and can be pushed. Thing is that a 30 watt tube amp pushing something hard is still LOUD.