Can I use an 8 ohm PA horn on a 4 ohm Marine radio?

[SDNomad]

Would it be ok to use an 8 ohm PA horn on a marine radio that calls
for a 4 ohm PA horn? Will it cause any harm to the radio or the horn?
Someone told me that all it would do is give you less sound but it
wouldn't harm anything, just as long as I didn't install a PA horn
with lower ohms than the 4 ohm it called for. Is that true? All I can
find locally are 8 ohm PA horns.

[Eric K. Weber]

Yes it will work, buy a pair and put them in parallel for 4 ohms if you need
a little more volume.

Rgds:
Eric

"SDNomad" > wrote in message
om...
> Would it be ok to use an 8 ohm PA horn on a marine radio that calls
> for a 4 ohm PA horn? Will it cause any harm to the radio or the horn?
> Someone told me that all it would do is give you less sound but it
> wouldn't harm anything, just as long as I didn't install a PA horn
> with lower ohms than the 4 ohm it called for. Is that true? All I can
> find locally are 8 ohm PA horns.

[Scott Dorsey]

SDNomad > wrote:
>Would it be ok to use an 8 ohm PA horn on a marine radio that calls
>for a 4 ohm PA horn? Will it cause any harm to the radio or the horn?

No, but the output will be lower than normal. If the radio says it can
drive a 4 ohm load and it has a solid state (not transformer) output,
that is a minimum value. It'll be fine with an 8 ohm or 16 ohm load as
well.

>Someone told me that all it would do is give you less sound but it
>wouldn't harm anything, just as long as I didn't install a PA horn
>with lower ohms than the 4 ohm it called for. Is that true? All I can
>find locally are 8 ohm PA horns.

Yes, but how loud does it need to be? And how good is the intelligbility
on ANY of those horns? I would expect the intelligibility of a marine
VHF signal would be poor enough without ramming it through a paging horn.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Steve King]

"SDNomad" > wrote in message
om...
> Would it be ok to use an 8 ohm PA horn on a marine radio that calls
> for a 4 ohm PA horn? Will it cause any harm to the radio or the horn?
> Someone told me that all it would do is give you less sound but it
> wouldn't harm anything, just as long as I didn't install a PA horn
> with lower ohms than the 4 ohm it called for. Is that true? All I can
> find locally are 8 ohm PA horns.

It should work just as 'someone' told you. And, you should still have
plenty of volume, unless you are putting this on a maxi-yacht.

Steve King