Postby ClubAndCountry » 03 Nov 2009, 09:15
First: Bose used unusual impedance drivers in some of their earlier 4"-speaker cabs. The 8x4" 802s originally came with *1-ohm* drivers all wired in series to make an 8-ohm cab. Later ones came with 4-ohm drivers wired in parallel pairs (giving 2 ohms per pair), with four pairs in series also making an 8-ohm cab. So you need to know what the drivers are that you can find to fit - they are likely to be an odd three-screw frame - before you can work out how to connect them. I'm not sure about cabs with an extra driver, I've never seen those.
Second: they will most likely sound terrible for bass. 802s *were* intended to be able to cope with a full-range signal, but only in a system without much bass - eg PA for vocals and light acoustic instruments only - they were really meant to be used as the mid/treble half of a bi-amped, two-way system using the 302 bass bins. Either way, they require the proper Bose active crossover/EQ unit to make them sound correct - the natural frequency response of the cabs is so far off flat that they don't sound at all right without it, even with no bass going through them. Even with different drivers, they are unlikely to sound good without drastic EQ.
If you have nine drivers, you can easily connect them to give the same impedance as one single driver though - just wire them in parallel in threes, and then the parallel sets in series... or vice versa, three series sets connected in parallel. Either way you're multiplying by three and then dividing by three, giving the same result as each individual driver.