Tube warm up

Brett - K A L I S I A

Dreaded Moderator
Feb 26, 2004
4,906
1
38
49
France
www.towerstudio.net
Hey guys,

Say you're gonna reamp guitar tracks with two amps and one cab. You're reamping through amp A first. Can you, in the meantime, have amp B turned on but on "bypass" so that the tubes can warm up without it being connected to a cab and, that's the important part, without damaging it? :)

Thanks
 
I can't think of any reason that you'd need to turn bypass off before the cab is plugged in, but I've also been told that you can have bypass off as long as the volume levels on the amp are all the way down. Of course this isn't practical, especially if you need to keep all the amp settings, but can anyone confirm this?
 
Honestly, the amp will be fine if it's on for a bit without a cabinet plugged in.

The damn things were designed and tested to be able to withstand the rigors of touring... they're not going to take a shit on you because you had them on for a few seconds without a cabinet, you know?

The first thing that would go would be the output tranny, and it'll take a lot of neglect to screw that thing up. I've heard of guys running their amps as preamps and using the fx out (AKA no load on the poweramp, what we're trying to avoid here) for a month or so before the output tranny finally died.
 
There's a guitarist I know using a instrument cable to connect his amp to the
cabinet :hypno:
when I asked him :
"hey are you using an instrument cable to connect your amp to the cab?"
Him:"Of course yes"
I: "Sure? you know that it can damage your amp?"
Him: "I always did it" :zombie:
He never broke his amp though, anyway he's a dumbass.
Back to the topic, no you won't break the amp as long as it is in stand by.
If you don't trust this situation buy a Ohm load (I don't if they're called that way in english), few bucks you have it.
 
Guitar cables just don't have enough girth to carry the signal - they're not a big enough guage of wire.


For my longass speaker cable separating my head from my cab when recording, I actually took an extension cord (yeah, big orange :lol:) and soldered 1/4" plugs to each end.
 
Guitar cables just don't have enough girth to carry the signal - they're not a big enough guage of wire.


For my longass speaker cable separating my head from my cab when recording, I actually took an extension cord (yeah, big orange :lol:) and soldered 1/4" plugs to each end.


To expand on this...speaker cables are 2 (identical) conductor while guitar cables are a single conductor and a ground shield.
So if you use a guitar cable in a speaker application the + and - sides of the cable will have radically different capacitances, resistances and conductivity. It's the electronic equivalent of drinking a gallon of water and pissing in a shot glass. Not the best analogy, but you get the idea.
 
(Another dumb ass here)
Wow. I had no idea. I've always used intstument cables. Never had any problems. Maybe I did but didn't know it? I assumed speaker cables, instrument cables and guitar cables all were the same thing. As long as it had a 1/4" tip on the ends.

So I guess this is what we're talking about here:

http://www.zzounds.com/item--MONS100S

I'll have to get one. Anyone have any specific brand/model preferences?

Once again I'm blown away by a basic piece of info on this forum. :kickass:
 
I bought my first 5150 back in 1994 and I used to play through it for scratch tracks on recordings (direct) with no cabinet plugged into it. This was way before I knew anything about tube amps....it was my first tube amp after all. Nothing bad ever happened however, and I used it for several more years and eventually sold it on Ebay. I had no idea if it was damaged because of what I did but it never died and always sounded good.
 
The main problem I see with using an Instrument Cable instead of a Speaker Cable is that the Instrument Cable's smaller guage wire would have a higher Voltage-drop per metre than the larger Speaker Cable and therefore you would be losing some of the signal (through voltage drop and heat) before it reaches the Cab. Instrument Cable would still (and does) work but might not deliver the same signal. This would be far more important with long cables between the Head and Cab, shorter runs, not so much. Maybe. :goggly: :zombie: