argh! 8 ohm sub? why?

[astron]

Okay, so, well, i just bought an 8 ohm ppi flat piston speaker from a friend, 12 inch. He used to run it, along with another one like it in his car. Today I built it a box (1.25 cubic feet) and fired it up. Sounds fine, no problems, sounds slightly better than my old jl 10w0. I'm running them on a fairly small sony amp ( i think it's rated at 300 watts max). What's getting me is that the amp is rated at 4 ohms, while the sub's 8. What damage will this cause, or will it? I mean, the thing sounds fine and all. I'm also thinking about a new amp to go with the bigger sub, any suggetsions? (oh yeah, right now i've got the amp set to 2-4 ohm mode, with the speaker wired from...how do i say it...well, from the positive of one speaker's side to the negative of the others...on the amp...get it? like bridged, i think..yes, i'm audionewbieness...thanks for any helpast

[Rex]

As long as the amp was designed to support a bridged mode you shouldn't be doing any harm. As for the 8 ohm speaker, in essence you're under-working your amp. My guess is he either had it wired in parallel (2 - 8 ohm speakers wired in parallel = 4 ohm load) or didn't have an amp that would support a 2 ohm load.

If you're just using it to add some low end to your system, the amp bridged on an 8 ohm load (this seeing 4 ohms) should be no issue.

I wouldn't spend money on another amp, unless you just "want to" or the amp is opn its last leg.