Can I use my head without cabinet or dummyload?

fistula

Producer/Mixing Engineer
Jul 18, 2006
516
1
18
just want to know - can i use it? some guy said that its really bad - so I never tryed...
 
Yes, but you need to be extremely careful.

1) Only turn the head on, but leave it on standby (ie. no sound if you had a cabinet attached)
2) NEVER EVER turn standby off!
3) Take the FX loop send signal from the head into your line in
4) Record it and apply an impulse to it

If you want to monitor it while playing, add an impulse VST with zero delay (KeFIR, for example) and load a sample into it.
 
Yes, but you need to be extremely careful.

1) Only turn the head on, but leave it on standby (ie. no sound if you had a cabinet attached)
2) NEVER EVER turn standby off!
3) Take the FX loop send signal from the head into your line in
4) Record it and apply an impulse to it

If you want to monitor it while playing, add an impulse VST with zero delay (KeFIR, for example) and load a sample into it.

This works on some heads, but not others. It doesn't work on my JSX... You will just have to try it.
 
the standby cut the high voltage, so if what you said really work, the standby don't do his job haha, you need high voltage on preamp tube
 
Works OK with Marshall JVM and some ENGL amplifiers I believe. My JCM DSL doesn't do it though, I have to have that switched fully ON. Which means i have to have a cab connected.
 
Yeah, it doesn't work in my Marshall JCM900 SL-X 2500 either. I believe it only works on pretty new design amps (~2000 or newer ones?). Afaik 5150/6505 doesn't have the mode either?

But it functions very weirdly on my JCM900. You have to have the amp fully on, but when you have a cable connected to the FX loop send, the actual amp sounds like the gain is cut off in half :zombie: So you really can't monitor your playing through the amp. Ah well, that's what the direct monitoring mode is in DAWs ;)
 
the standby cut the high voltage, so if what you said really work, the standby don't do his job haha, you need high voltage on preamp tube

True with the traditional designs which drop the HT on the triode plates by putting them after the Power tubes in the power train.
If the preamp tubes are run on a separate supply train however, that would be different wouldn't it?
 
The standby method won't work on his amp, if you look in his sig, he has a 5150, which I believe will not output anything in standby. Plus, you should still have a cab connected using the standby method just to make sure. It doesn't matter, as you won't be hearing anything from the cab anyway.

But yeah Fistula, if you try it, you will end up frying some pretty expensive parts of your precious 5150.
 
It's a good way to smoke your output transformer.

Why not just leave it connected to a cab and turn the master down all the way?
 
Thanks guys! Im just movin to another place, so dont have posibility to use my cabs. I think i'll wait till i can. At my new jcm900 it wouldn't work as well? (waiting it from ebay)