Wiring a 2x12 for mono & stereo

OmegaZero

Inspired
I have a mono 2x12 cab with v30s (16 ohm). I want to wire it mono/stereo like this:


Image linked from colomar.com

I'm expecting to have 16 ohms in stereo and 8 ohms mono, which is perfect. As I understand it, this should give me less volume when running one cab (at home) with little effect on the tone. When I set up with both 2x12 cabs for rehearsal and gigs they'll run 8 ohm and give me the extra power. I know that ideally I want a switching stereo jack so that both the hot and ground parallel connections are broken when running in stereo. I'm also looking at jacks that don't have sleeve to chassis grounding, and have verified that the mounting plate is plastic with no foil or other conductive elements that I can see.

That said, I don't entirely understand how this works :oops: . I want to do this top-notch, so I'm trying to find high quality parts; Neutrik jacks would be a good bet right?. It looks like the switching jacks I'm seeing on their site disconnect when unplugged, which is the opposite of what I thought I needed. Can anyone give me a run down on how this should work?
 
OmegaZero said:
I have a mono 2x12 cab with v30s (16 ohm). I want to wire it mono/stereo like this:


Image linked from colomar.com

I'm expecting to have 16 ohms in stereo and 8 ohms mono, which is perfect. As I understand it, this should give me less volume when running one cab (at home) with little effect on the tone. When I set up with both 2x12 cabs for rehearsal and gigs they'll run 8 ohm and give me the extra power. I know that ideally I want a switching stereo jack so that both the hot and ground parallel connections are broken when running in stereo. I'm also looking at jacks that don't have sleeve to chassis grounding, and have verified that the mounting plate is plastic with no foil or other conductive elements that I can see.

That said, I don't entirely understand how this works :oops: . I want to do this top-notch, so I'm trying to find high quality parts; Neutrik jacks would be a good bet right?. It looks like the switching jacks I'm seeing on their site disconnect when unplugged, which is the opposite of what I thought I needed. Can anyone give me a run down on how this should work?


You could just use one of these... http://www.tubesandmore.com/scripts/fox ... tem=S-H800

I tried this with an Avatar 212 cab and didn't like the results. The speakers are to close together to really get a good stereo image. I opted to go with a pair of Recto style 112's loaded with 8 Ohm speakers and the results were much better. The 212 actually sounded very small in compression to the 112's even when adding more volume to compensate for the higher resistance. Yes it's one more pice of gear to carry but they don't take up that much more room that a standard 212 cab and you can sperad things out if you want to, a very nice option to have when running in stereo.
 
Thank you for the suggestion on the 112s Six, but I really want to use the two 2x12s as my main rig. The goal of this modification was to be able to use one cab by itself at home (low volume) without changing the way I run my full setup. I think all I need is a $2 jack, and someone to explain how it works. ;)
 
OmegaZero said:
Thank you for the suggestion on the 112s Six, but I really want to use the two 2x12s as my main rig. The goal of this modification was to be able to use one cab by itself at home (low volume) without changing the way I run my full setup. I think all I need is a $2 jack, and someone to explain how it works. ;)

No problem... The switch your looking at is very simple to wire up.

Looking at the diagram you will see that the left jack has four solder points and two contact points (the little black arrows).

You would solder a pair of wires, one pair from the left speaker and another pair acting as the + - jumpers from the right speaker.

The right jack has a pair of wires comming from the right spaeker and the pair acting as the jumer to the left jack (you can hook these up at the speaker lug location as most speakers have two pairs of lugs at that point at the rear of the speaker).

Once your done soldering wires or using lugs (I prefer soldering) when you plug into the right jack (mono) you will power up both speakers at the same time hence giving the amp an 8 ohm load asuming your using a pair of 16 ohm speakers. And when you plug into the Left and Right speaker jack the left speaker jack will break the contacts in the left input sending power to only one speaker so your not bucking power to both sides of your amp and you get a stereo 16 ohm load. ;)
 
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