I recently bought the Monoprice 15-watt tube amp and it came with a hot 100 speaker instead of the usual 70/80. Is this normal? Also, I’m wondering what’s the best speaker wattage for a 15-watt amp that sometimes runs on the 1-watt setting? A 100-watt speaker seems like it couldn’t be driven to its best with such a low wattage amp, but I’m not an expert on speakers. Any feedback would be appreciated (from you all, not the amp, lol).
All this means is that you won’t get speaker breakup. But the 70/80 is an 80-watt speaker, so you weren’t going to get breakup with that one either. I’d just play it as is and see how it sounds. If you’re curious, you could take it to a music shop and try it with a few different cabs to see if there’s a speaker you like more.
Personally, I wanted a bit more of a Fender surf sound, so I swapped it out for a Jensen C12Q. I like it a lot.
It depends on what you want from it. A general rule is that the speaker’s power handling should be at least twice the amp’s wattage, so you’d want a 30-watt speaker. You could use a 15-watt speaker, but that risks blowing it (the Vox AC15, for example, uses a 15-watt Celestion Alnico Blue and works fine). The main benefit of a lower-wattage speaker is easier breakup, but if you’re playing at moderate volumes at home, a 15-watt speaker should work fine. If you crank it up, though, you might run into problems. Weber has some nice smooth-cone speakers if you’re looking for easy breakup at lower volumes, but you do lose a bit of detail.
You can and should use a speaker with a higher power rating than your amp. For example, I swapped my 16-ohm Seventy 80 with an 8-ohm Vintage 30 and I didn’t notice any difference in sound, though I didn’t do a side-by-side comparison.
One tip: keep it on the 15W setting and the volume around 1, and it’ll be quiet enough for bedroom playing.
@Jordy
You shouldn’t swap speakers with different ohms though. That can damage your amp.