01-26-2020, 07:42 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-26-2020, 07:59 PM by Mattias Westlund.)
PART TWO
OK, I now have everything I need plus a free evening to work on it, so let's get this little project finished.
Here are the insides of the Spider. Not much going on in there (unsurprisingly, as it's a modeling amp) which is lucky for me as I don't have to worry about the output jack getting in the way of anything.
Plenty of real estate in the back so I'm going to put it right here:
Hole drilled! I had to go over it with a round file since the jack is slightly thicker than my largest drill bit, but thankfully the casing is aluminum so it was just a couple of minutes' work.
The speaker wires coming from the PCB can easily be disconnected, which makes wiring everything together a breeze. I'm just going to snip off the terminals, strip the wires and solder them to the proper pins on the jack.
Like so:
Now I need to make a new pair of wires that go from the jack down to the Spider's internal speaker. I'm using a length of leftover speaker wire here, the rest of which will be used for the cable between amp and cab. For a high-wattage amp and big cab I would use heavier gauge wire but for this little thing, it's fine.
Terminals attached and wires soldered to the jack.
Here's the jack fitted...
...and here's the amp put back together, new speaker wires connected to the speaker.
Final step! I guess I could put a jack on the cab as well, allowing me to use whatever speaker cable I like between amp and cabinet. But I can't think of any good way of mounting a jack to the Crate (it's open-backed) and I'm not crazy about the idea of having a jack dangling from the back of the speaker. So went ahead and made a speaker cable with a 1/4" TS plug on one end and terminals on the other.
And here are the combo and cabinet hooked up and ready to rock!
Everything works perfectly as far as I can tell. When the external cab is plugged in, the internal speaker is switched off. Sound-wise, I'm noticing a distinct lack of low end in the Crate cab, which likely has something to do with its back being wide open. I might have to do something about that eventually, but right now I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Overall, the cab definitely sounds nicer than the Spider's built-in speaker, and projects sound much better.
So... success, I guess?
OK, I now have everything I need plus a free evening to work on it, so let's get this little project finished.
Here are the insides of the Spider. Not much going on in there (unsurprisingly, as it's a modeling amp) which is lucky for me as I don't have to worry about the output jack getting in the way of anything.
Plenty of real estate in the back so I'm going to put it right here:
Hole drilled! I had to go over it with a round file since the jack is slightly thicker than my largest drill bit, but thankfully the casing is aluminum so it was just a couple of minutes' work.
The speaker wires coming from the PCB can easily be disconnected, which makes wiring everything together a breeze. I'm just going to snip off the terminals, strip the wires and solder them to the proper pins on the jack.
Like so:
Now I need to make a new pair of wires that go from the jack down to the Spider's internal speaker. I'm using a length of leftover speaker wire here, the rest of which will be used for the cable between amp and cab. For a high-wattage amp and big cab I would use heavier gauge wire but for this little thing, it's fine.
Terminals attached and wires soldered to the jack.
Here's the jack fitted...
...and here's the amp put back together, new speaker wires connected to the speaker.
Final step! I guess I could put a jack on the cab as well, allowing me to use whatever speaker cable I like between amp and cabinet. But I can't think of any good way of mounting a jack to the Crate (it's open-backed) and I'm not crazy about the idea of having a jack dangling from the back of the speaker. So went ahead and made a speaker cable with a 1/4" TS plug on one end and terminals on the other.
And here are the combo and cabinet hooked up and ready to rock!
Everything works perfectly as far as I can tell. When the external cab is plugged in, the internal speaker is switched off. Sound-wise, I'm noticing a distinct lack of low end in the Crate cab, which likely has something to do with its back being wide open. I might have to do something about that eventually, but right now I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. Overall, the cab definitely sounds nicer than the Spider's built-in speaker, and projects sound much better.
So... success, I guess?