Amp Gurus: Let's see if we can get this working

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:23 pm

I'm movnig house, so I've taken a heap load of gear from my place in Belfast, to my parent's house in Derry.

I have:

1 x Epiphone Valve Junior Head
1 x Fender Frontman 25R, that doesn't work, although I'm fairly certain the speaker works.
1 x speaker lead
1 x power lead

I would like:

1 x working amp set-up, with the Valve Junior going through the speaker of the Fender.

The Fender is open backed, so I can get at the speaker leads easily enough. I think the first thing I'll need to do is to gut the amp for an input type jack thingy.

Any help would be useful, I'm crap at this sort of stuff. If it can't be fixed with a hammer, knife, or duct tape, then I know I'm out of my depth.

Pens · Post by **Pens** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:09 pm

What is the impedance of the speaker, and what does the head require.

What you're gonna do in the end is take one lead from the speaker and run that to the tip connector of a jack, the other run to the sleeve of the jack. Done.

First you have to match the impedances, though.

Post by **Mike** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:11 pm

I think all you need to do is take one of the jacks from the speaker cable or the guitar lead and wire it up to the speaker leads (if they're long enough etc), that's what I did for my TT.

Your Valve Junior Head should have speaker outputs so you shouldn't need to fuck with that at all. What's the ohmage of the speaker? Does this match up with one of the inputs?

Basically either directly or through splicing the speaker leads to the speaker cable (cut off one of the jacks and strip the cable back to reveal the two wires, strip them and solder/twist to the speaker leads and then insulation tape them up) or just connect the speaker leads to the jack. + goes to the jack tip, - to teh sleeve.

When you're testing it be very quick, if you know the amp is turned up enough for there to be sound and there is none turn off straightaway, I tap a guitar lead to check connection. Obviously if you have a multimeter you can check your work as you go.

See the speaker leads with the jack on the end? Do that.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:19 pm

It's an 8ohm speaker, so that shouldn't be a problem. It hadn't occured to me to just stick the leads from the speaker onto a jack. Seems kinda obvious.

Cheers, fellas.

Rikki · Post by **Rikki** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:08 am

Mike wrote:I think all you need to do is take one of the jacks from the speaker cable or the guitar lead and wire it up to the speaker leads (if they're long enough etc), that's what I did for my TT.

Your Valve Junior Head should have speaker outputs so you shouldn't need to fuck with that at all. What's the ohmage of the speaker? Does this match up with one of the inputs?

Basically either directly or through splicing the speaker leads to the speaker cable (cut off one of the jacks and strip the cable back to reveal the two wires, strip them and solder/twist to the speaker leads and then insulation tape them up) or just connect the speaker leads to the jack. + goes to the jack tip, - to teh sleeve.

When you're testing it be very quick, if you know the amp is turned up enough for there to be sound and there is none turn off straightaway, I tap a guitar lead to check connection. Obviously if you have a multimeter you can check your work as you go.

See the speaker leads with the jack on the end? Do that.

do you use your tt live?

Post by **Mike** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:48 am

It's my live backup, I take it to all gigs in case of amp/tube failure. I've played it with the band at rehearsal and it was great fun, just set up a loud clean with a slight edge and used my Boss OD-3 for the rockier parts. Also setting a purely dirty sound from the TT loud was beautiful.

Next time we play a small gig I'm just taking the TT, no pedals.

Bacchus · Post by **Bacchus** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:08 pm

Mike wrote:Next time we play a small gig I'm just taking the TT, no pedals.

I really enjoy playing wiht a good amp and no pedals.

I've left my soldering iron in Belfast, so I think it would be wise to leave doing this until net week. It would be foolish to risk the transformer by not being sure that the connections are sound.

Rikki · Post by **Rikki** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:20 pm

yeah even when I play clean I don't tend to be totally clean so I have mine with minimal dirt and use a compressor to push it that bit extra, then a hotcake for a bit more

but I have a ts9 arriving in a couple of days so that should be fun