What effect does impedance have on tone?

[kiehano]

I've been curious about this for a while now.  I'm a bit of a speaker junkie and I wanna know.  All I seem to be able to find is people yammering on about tube amps and worrying about frying their gear.  I already know what happens with various impedance mismatch scenarios so that's not what I'm looking for.  Here's an example...

Ampeg VH head...runs as low as 4ohm (if it goes lower please tell me!!)

Cab A - 4 speakers set up to run at 16ohm

Cab B - the SAME 4 speakers wired for 4ohm

What effect would each of these cabs have on the sound of the head?

I've heard that a a 16ohm version of a speaker will sound a bit brighter due to increased windings in the coil, and I know there's a bit less power being delivered to it.  This would be a good thing for a tube amp because you have to crank it a bit more.  Is that going to be the only difference with a solid state amp as well?  Reduced power?  If that's the case I'm going to have to rewire some things!  I don't dig the cranked up sound of a solid state amp.  Everything turns to mush...no more than 4 on the volume for me!

THANK YOU!!!!

Damn it's early...

[Jack1962]

Well assuming that your speaker outputs are paralled your at 3.2 ohms with that combo of speakers. If it was a old Solid State Peavey that would be fine, I never use any less than 8 ohms on anything (tube or solid state) . Just for simplicity , the reason for the difference in tone and volume is loading on the output rather it be on the transistor or a output transformer.

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