So I just dug an old tube amp out of my dad's basement, where it's been dozing away for twenty years or so. Pics are over in "non-Boss Gear".
The big questions on my mind are how to incorporate this into a guitar setup. I've got a 1969-era Kustom cabinet loaded with three fifteen inch Jensen speakers, and various pedals to mimic the preamp section of an actual guitar amp.
What impedance issues to I have to be concerned about when plugging this mammoth cabinet into a home-audio amp? Should I check the Kustom cabinet with an Ohmmeter to determine the resistance?
Do I really need a genuine preamp section from an actual guitar amp or can I just set up some array of pedals into the audio input of this tube amp?
Any advice is appreciate before I start another electrical fire or fry some vintage component.
Does the amp have an impedance rating somewhere on it?
Can you take the back off the cab and check the speaker labels and wiring? I'm going to guess 3x16 Ohm in parallel to give 5 Ohm load.
As for the preamp, if it was mine I'd use whatever works. Any guitar pedal you have is unlikely to damage the amp input. I'd use something like an SD-1 (with tone and volume) and see how that goes.
so I poked around with a multimeter inside the Kustom Kabinet with the three Jensen 15" speakers. With the three wired together it reads eight Ohms at the jack or at any individual speaker.
Disconnecting the leads to the top speaker in the cabinet, it read 13.9 Ohms.
I have not yet measured the resistance on the middle and bottom speakers with the leads disconnected, but the cabinet as a whole is an 8 Ohm load.
Home Audio mono Amp for guitar?
Posted - 03/25/2010 : 04:24:41
