Conrad Johnson Owners.com

I may have a dilemma to work through. I picked up a Premier 11 just over a week ago and have been getting used to it. I have a complete new set of tubes coming from Upscale Audio, as the tubes are of unknown age (I am the third owner--the second owner bought it from a friend but had no idea about the age of the tubes).

I realized I have two impedance questions going through my mind. First, I could assume that this Premier 11 came from the factory in its default 4-ohm impedance setting. But, there is no way of knowing without looking inside and checking the wiring.

I am temporarily driving some Vandersteen 2CEs. The specs on the current model 2CE Signature IIs indicate a 7 ohm nominal impedance, with a 4 ohm minimum. I asked the company what impedance the 2CE had, and I got a reply back from "the man" himself, saying to try these on either an 8- or 4-ohm tap on the power amp to see what sounds best. (Unfortunately, changing the impedance is not so simple!)

Am I worrying too much about this?

My end game is to get either my own refurbished Martin Logan speakers into the system, or buy a newer used pair, and these are known to dip into lower impedances. So ideally I would keep the amp at a 4-ohm output. (But of course, that also means I probably should check the amp anyway to see what it is currently wired for, in case the owner ordered it as an 8-ohm output.)

Congrats on Premier 11. As I understand it, there is no problem using an 4 ohm amp with an 8 ohm speaker, but not the other way around, so you probably would want to know the impedance setting of the amp before connecting it to a less than 8 ohm speaker. However, this does not seem to be a problem with your Vandersteen's if they are rated down to 4 ohm. We have the Premier 11 wiring diagrams in out schematic database so I would take a look at those. You can directly measure the impedance of the amp, but I do believe that requires a little bit of a testing setup, including the need for an oscilloscope. I think checking the wiring would be easier.

Forgot to say "Thanks" on your post! I agree--opening it up to check the wiring is the best way to check impedance. I think I downloaded that wiring schematic a year or two before getting my Premier 11, in fact.