"Hot-swap" with a 5150

[tgs]

Just a quick question. I'm in the middle of a production and I'm asking about this because it would save me some minutes of time:

We're switching back and forth between a 1960B and a Mesa cab. The 1960 is 16 ohms and the Mesa is 8. I was wondering if it's enough to just put the 5150 in standby for this (to change the ohm and move the cable between the cabs), or do I have to power it down? I'm doing the latter, but it's getting pretty tedious since we're basically taking one riff at a time.

 

[Kazrog]

Don't bother hot swapping, it's dangerous and there's no reason to do it. Instead, track your guitars with a DI and reamp them.

 

[hoehlentroll]

hmm. I wouldn't recommend it, but dumb as I am I played the amp several times with no cab attached (no more than 20 sec though) and nothing happened.

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, if you were going between two cabs of the same impedance, then putting it in standby and just swapping the cables would be fine - but since you have to switch the impedance, I'd be a lot more wary. Just get a Little Labs Redeye and reamp it, or ditch the Marshall altogether

 

[JeffTD]

Standby without a cabinet is chill.

 

[tgs]

Yeah, if you were going between two cabs of the same impedance, then putting it in standby and just swapping the cables would be fine - but since you have to switch the impedance, I'd be a lot more wary. Just get a Little Labs Redeye and reamp it, or ditch the Marshall altogether

Haha, funny you should say so because we've actually had the 1960 just standing here collecting dust for some years now I guess, and I just decided to hook it up to see if I could get a good tone out of it. And man oh man, why didn't I do that earlier!? I'm combining it with the Mesa and it just sounds exactly like we wanted for this production. It doesn't have the same clarity as the Mesa, but it's not really what we were going for either. Haven't even touched the EQ yet for any of the guitars and it's just perfect.

Well, apart from that, I actually do have a Radial X-amp, and I'm recording a DI of the guitar as well, but I really prefer to get the tracking done with the right sound at once. I also worried a bit about switching the impedance, so well, I guess I'll just have to keep powering it on and off all the time. Zzzz...

 

[VH100R]

depois quero ouvir isso!

 

[AdamWathan]

Set the amp to 8ohms and don't worry about switching it when you switch cabs. It will be a little quieter through the Marshall cab then it is set at 16 ohms but barely noticeably, and it won't hurt anything at all. As long as the impedence on the head is the same or lower than that on the cab, you won't damage the output transformer.

 

[jangoux]

Dont ever leave your tube amp with no speaker load or you may risk damaging your Output transformer! If you need to do so often, there are some cab switchers available...