How To Add An External Speaker Jack To a Combo Amp
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- In this video, I show my method of adding an external speaker jack to a Behringer GM108 combo amp. It's not always as easy as just wiring in a jack in parallel to the speaker, and with this modification, it will work with both a solid state amp, as well as a tube amp without there being any danger of burning up your tubes or output transformer.
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This is just what I've been looking for for my mini amps!
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This was great - thanks for sharing. I wanna try this with some old Marshall combos I have laying about..
This was very helpful. Thank you!
Good idea. Got some 15W amps, that are pretty different. My Samick has reverb. My Behringer has those setting switches. My RockTile has a speaker that loves distorting. And my large Solton speaker is a nice 1980 speaker. Making combinations is fun. Simple connectors can do the job, but adding audio connectors (and audio cable plugs) enables you to plug in the speaker you want.
How do you know what size resistor to use? Good video btw.
Dave, thank you.
This is exactly what I want to do with my VOX AD30 VT. Question: This is a guitar amp but I want to try using it with my bass guitar. I wish to build a cab for a 15 inch woofer and use my Vox to drive it. Since I can’t play both guitars at the same time I thought why have two amps? So is this a good idea or bad? Will my vox happily act as a guitar and a bass amp as long as I use appropriate speakers or do I need a bass amp designed to drive a woofer?
Again, thanks for your videos, I am learning lots. 👍
Cool video, I'm gonna try this with a Fender champion into an old fender bandmaster cab front he 60s in a few months.
Nice. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome Video, quick question can I utilise both my Combos original speaker and plug it in to a 2x12 so in effect having a 3x12?
I have a 50watt amp where the built in speaker is 16omh and my 2x12 cab is 8omh
My Catalyst 60w have a 4 ohm speaker. Will a 10 Ohm resistor be good for this? I'm gonna make a head out of my combo amp so I will connect it to a cabinet. 200 ohm resistor seems a lot compared to the speaker that is 4 ohm that will be removed..
I'm not familiar with the Catalyst amp line beyond it being solid state, so the impedance shouldn't matter that much. The biggest reason I suggest using a resistor is if someone uses this mod on an amp with power tubes. And in that case, a 200 to 300ohm resistor is what you would want. The output transformer is reflective, meaning whatever the impedance is on the speaker side gets stepped up by the same ratio on the tube side.
For example, if the ratio on an output transformer is 5K ohms to 8 ohms, that means if you plug an 8-ohm speaker into it, the reflected impedance for the tubes is 5k ohms. But if you dropped the speaker down to a 4ohm speaker, the reflected impedance on the tubes would only be 2.5k ohms, which would cause them to dissipate far too much wattage and could greatly reduce the life of the tubes or even burn out your output transformer. So, in this example, if you have a 200ohm resistor in place of an 8-ohm speaker, the reflected impedance on tubes is going to be 125k ohms, meaning the tubes will be dissipating almost no wattage.
All that said, the resistor is just an extra measure of protection in case no speaker is plugged in, and the amp is turned on and used. But I think you could leave it off in your case and it wouldn't matter.
Hi Dave, Awesome Video and delivery. Hey, can you let me know are the added Part#'s to help me modify one of my small practice amps? It would actually by nice to have the Amp Speaker be Live, along with the External Spkr so that I can begin using the external one as a Monitoring speaker during my live performances! Thanks Again!
LOVE IT , but i'm interested in adding speakers to a a 2 x 12 like to add 2 more in a 2nd cab to make a total of 4 speakers, would that work?
CalitranoN it will work only if your output is set up to take more speakers. Whenever you add speakers, you’re changing the impedance. If you have two speakers now and they equal 8 ohms, and you add two more speakers that are 8 ohms, you’re lowering the overall impedance to 4 ohms of the speakers are in parallel. That’s not a good thing, especially if your amp is a tube amp. I would advise against doing the mod in that fashion if you’re not sure how your amp is set up.
What kind of amp do you have?
Nice job Dave, I have the same Behringer amp coming with the same buzz and hum noise . Any idea to stop the buzz and hum noise?
Robbert Johan Smidt without having it on the bench, I would only suggest trying to change out the filter caps. That’s was the problem I had on another Behringer amp I had. Good luck!
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 This helps Dave now I know where to look for, tanks a lot.
Dave, is the resistor connected in parallel and always in the circuit when the external cable is plugged in regardless of whether or not a speaker is at the end of the cable? Meaning the resistor will alway be in the circuit when the external cable is plugged in - with or without speaker on other end. Which lowers the impedance and diverts amperage from the speaker?
Yes, the resistor is in parallel with whatever speaker is hooked up. But the resistor’s effect on the impedance is nominal. A 220 ohm resistor in parallel with an 8 ohm speaker only lowers the overall impedance to around 7.72 ohms. It won’t have a negative effect on the OT or power tubes if that’s what you’re running.
Great video man! Thanks!
I have a question can you use PA speakers, external cab for electric guitar or acoustic?
You can use pretty much any modern style speakers provided they have an impedance that matches the output of your amp.
But I can’t comment on the tone of those speaker as they weren’t made for guitar.
PA speakers may be decent for acoustic though, since that’s voiced differently than an electric.
Good luck!
question! if you add the speaker input on the amp does the sound only play on the cab or both ?
can i do this ?but instead of speaker out, i want it to connect to the mixer. i always want to have a port/jack to connect from my guitar amplifier to my main mixer of my sound system.
Dude- no idea you had a channel. Dan, Sid Vegas. Turning a fend champ 30dsp combo into a head, saw guys do it on here, it will run a 4x12..insane, i already tried it. B lookin forward to ur vids
Not sure why but when I did this mod I had to add 2 plastic washer to either side of the switch because if the switch touched the chasse it buzzed. Any ideas why? Thanks
Can I use this method if I intend to grab a small amp and an old home theater speaker, some wood boxes and make it all into one bigger guitar amp with 2 speakers?
As long as the impedance of the speakers matches the output of the amp, it should work fine. Good luck!
This method looks like it would work to mod my solid state fender amp with an output jack for recording into a daw. (Am I correct or just for adding an external speaker)?
The speaker load is 8 ohms.
This is exactly perfect for DAWs.
Think less "EXTERNAL SPEAKER JACK" and more "AMP SILENCER/ LINE-OUT TO NEW SOURCE" jack.
...Or as just a "BYPASS/OUT" jack.
It kills the combo's speaker while automatically redirecting into a hookup signal source link (LINE-OUT) when plugged in so you're getting only what you want through and bypassing what you don't while redirecting as a hookup for live cabs or software recording using headphones or monitors or ran into a combo... which you can then mic if ya want.
@@brodie65708 wait isn't that a headphone output, basically?
@@brodie65708 Would be interesting to add a 'line in' too back to the original.
Thinking about options for running line out to a PA whilst using the Combo speaker (to save micing up live). The JDX48 works between a Amp head and Speaker, so guess something could be put together like this using your speaker jack idea.
Hey Dave. Nice job there. Is it possible to use my Fender mustang's GT100 celestion speaker (4ohm) as cabinet and connect it with a tube head?
As long as the impedance for the head is 4 ohms, that's fine. In fact, people do that kind of thing all the time. But if the impedance for the head is higher, don't do it. You could blow your OT, or your tubes, diodes, etc...
Pretty confident on soldering those speaker wires without protection of the cone....lol. I would have dripped solder through the cone...
Can I plug headphones into that jack? My amp already has a line out but it doesn't have a headphones out. If so, I would re wire it this way so that it mutes the amp speaker, since currently, they stay on when using the line out. Thanks!
No, this won’t work for headphones. The wiring would need to be different since the power could easily blow your headphones, and the impedance of your headphones may not be right to keep from damaging the amp.
I would not suggest using headphones with this mod. Sorry.
Good job sir Dave 🙂 can i do this in my marshall mg10cd? Same on your wiring and resistor? Do you think Can work this on my 2x12 speaker on my fender copy
Yes, it should work fine as long the speaker impedance matches the amp.
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 thank you very much for the response 🙂
I'm dubious about the no load protector resistor ? I had a Traynor BaseMaster 50 watt tube head, I used for many years in a band as a lead guitar amp. We constantly would leave equipment on and unplugged from home made speaker cabs, of which we knew nothing about various ohms, and go for beers ( we didn't know any better) but... it work flawlessly for 30+ years. Never had an issues or changed any tubes, ever. Hmmm...
That’s a great point. I have aTraynor Bassmaster 50 myself (to be featured in an upcoming video), and those are in push pull configuration. Theoretically, you can leave those on with no load and nothing will happen as long as no signal is being passed. The same can’t be said for a single ended amps though.
I’ll be sure to go into that a bit more in the upcoming video.
ok so when you have an external cab plugged in it will use the external cab, but if you unplugged the cable at the CAB side. because you have resistor in place it will not burn out the amp the 220 ohm load will keep everything good to go. so you can change CAB's or input channels on the line out?
Yes, the resister will help to protect the OT. But the since the resistor is only 2 or 3 watts, it’s not going to protect it indefinitely, especially if the volume is up and a signal is being passed. The resistor will burn up eventually if that happens.
Hm when I connect the cables like you do it works as long as I have the jack outside the chassi. As soon as I put the jack inside the chassi it shorts..
I think you may have the wire leads from the board reversed. If you have the positive hooked up to the sleeve of the jack and you install the jack in a grounded chassis, it will ground out the signal. Try switching them and see if that helps.
I've tried to reverse them but that does the same thing.. The only thing that works is by connecting the black wire from the amp to the Shunt and the red to the tip. Then there is no sound when the jack is outside the chassi and the sound comes on when I put the jack in the chassi. But now I have a quite small background hiss that I'm not sure I've had before that's always on so maybe it's still not right?
can you use that same jack for headphones ? please let me know if possible.
Feasibly, you could, but I wouldn’t advise it. If you did, you would have to monitor the volume to keep it very low. Or you could install a resister in series with the jack to lower the signal to a lower level. Otherwise you’re more likely to blow out your headphones or your eardrums or both.
Awesome video man. Very helpful.
I have a Peavey Envoy 110 that I would like to add an extension speaker jack so that I can plug into the Power in on my Nashville 400, so that I have the modern features of the Peavey Envoy with TransTube, but the power and volume of the Nashville 400. Would that be safe?
Both are solid state
ian Randant hi. I’m not thinking that this type of mod would work for that.
Normally, a power in jack on an amp is allowing another pre-amp signal to be directly connect to the power amp of the amplifier. But the signal coming out of a jack with this type of mod is a fully amplified signal, not a pre-amp signal. It would completely overload your Nashville, not to mention possibly screw up your Envoy due to the impedance mismatch.
Sorry, but I wouldn’t suggest doing it. Thanks for watching though!
Dave Tries To Fix Stuff
So I should look into having a preamp out installed?
ian Randant which year/model is your Envoy? Doesn’t it have a headphone out or a direct out already?
Dave Tries To Fix Stuff It’s the newer model. It does have headphone out and simulated speaker direct output.
Does it works with vox pathfinder 10 sir?may I know also what's the capacitor needed..tnx..
It should work fine with the Pathfinder. As mentioned in the video, just make sure the impedance of the external speaker is the same as the one in the amp cabinet.
It’s not a capacitor that’s put across the tabs, it’s a 3 watt resistor with around a 200-300 ohm value.
Good luck!
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 thnx sir for the information... more and GOd bless!!!
can you help me source a Jack or item # to get one
I'm trying to locate that style 1/4" input jack. Is there a specific name for that type? I like this jack vs having to add a switch and a standard 1/4" input jack.
the lazy way
www.amazon.com/dp/B07R9N1NL6/?coliid=I2NC2YUAVAXSG&colid=JYPAFN8MP6JH&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
and for the speakers...
www.amazon.com/dp/B07HY7562T/?coliid=I1C95QCIVMILJB&colid=JYPAFN8MP6JH&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
"mono normally-closed jack" should get some search results.
my fender practice amp is 4 ohm my cab is 16 ohm is that ok to do?
As long as the speaker impedance is higher than the output impedance, you’ll be fine. So yes, it will be okay to hook your cabinet up to the amp, it just won’t be as loud as with a 4ohm cabinet.
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 ok thanks
what cables did you use?
For the instrument, I used a generic tweed cable. For the speaker cable, I used one that I made from and old extension cord and some after market plugs.
do you need a resistor for this mod?
It’s not necessary, but it’s a good safety feature to have.
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 what's the worst case scenario if i didn't use one?
@@splegle if you do the mod on a tube amp and you plug in a speaker cable with no speaker at the other end, you could damage your tubes, or rectifier, or output transformer, or any combination of those. The resistor is meant to provide a load against the OT to help prevent damage.
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 oh ok i'm wanting to do this mod on a solid state combo amp. is it only a problem if tubes are involved?
@@davetriestofixstuff4744 update: just modded it and it works perfectly :)
I have just seen this video but why not just use an ordinary switched jack socket.
@@paulyates5092 That would have worked too. But this was meant to be a simple install that most people would have little trouble with, and since the signal is cut when you plug in the external speaker, it makes a switch redundant.
Thanks for watching!
I have a little piece of sh...t Fender Frontman 15G practice amp, 15W RMS 8 Ohm 6" speaker,
I was wondering if I can do this mod to connect to a 1x12 Mesa Boogie EVM 12L 200W speaker, it's like connecting a mouse to a Lamborghini LOL
yoheff988 yes, this mod will work provided the impedance of the Mesa is at least 8ohms.
NO! I want to KEEP my combo amp speaker and add an extended 1x12 cab. I don't want to cancel out my combo speaker.- play either/or, I want to play them both at the same time.
I wouldn't suggest doing that without knowing what kind of amp you have.
long way headphone jack to attenuation or pad then into bigger amp effects loop power amp in
sorry no attenuation required the phones works as a line out with a mono plug