Can someone help me? (clueless girl)

[catwarrior]

I am trying to connect a sub cone to an Peavy amp, with crocodile clips.
The max watts is 70 for the cone and watts for amp is 40 is this ok to do?

[NickC]

Crocodile clips? Those light gauge wires with spring loaded clips on each end? Do you plan to actually use the amp that way (not just testing something for a few seconds)? If so, no. Wire no heavy enough. Use speaker wire.

If the speaker is rated to handle 70 watts of power, and you only feed it 40 (clean) watts, you're okay. But use proper speaker wire and good connectors for the interconnect. Crocodile (alligator) clips are not okay, especially while running the amp at volume. If a connection fails, and the amp is a tube amp, you'll have no load on the output stage and something is going to eventually burn. It might take a fraction of a second, or fraction of a minute ...... but the output tubes and/or output transformer (expensive) is going to die.

[xtian]

NickC, don't you know the difference? Jeez! Ampbuilding 101. See attached.

[NickC]

NickC, don't you know the difference? Jeez! Ampbuilding 101. See attached.

I understand that lots of folks prefer the more rounded tone of the crocodile clips ...... the highs are not quite as piercing, with a little more low-end roll-off.

[catwarrior]

Thanks NickC

Ha, I guess there difference is that I'm from the UK. You call them alligator clips in US?

Ok so, what I really need to know here is will the amp blow if I connect these correctly. Its a Pro Sound 35 Watt Bass speaker and a Peavey Blazer 158 if thats any help (apart from wattage)

Cheers

[catwarrior]

In more detail this is what I'm trying to do.

@ 4:05

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaYvYysQvBU

[xtian]

Peavey Blazer 158

In that case, go for it!

Joking aside, if you have decent croc-o-gator connectors, you'll be fine. Start at low volume and test to make sure you're getting audio from the speaker. If all is good, go ahead and crank it up.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Up to a point, everything will be OK. That point being heavily overdriven. Even a 70W rated speaker can be wrecked by being driven with square waves from a small amp deep in clipping, especially a solid state amp. Tube amps are more forgiving in this aspect. And yes a good piece of speaker wire, say with conductors 1.5mm diameter or more, and firmly soldered on, would make a proper connexion. Crocogators sometimes slip off just when you don't want 'em to.

I think the guys weren't quite hearing you right, what with the British accent. I'm used to it, in fact them, all of 'em. Feel right at home in old Blighty, whichever corner, and beyond the Scots border plus Ireland too. Home of my ancestors.

[Cantplay]

Yes, you can use clips.

Don't let them touch each other, or come free while the amp is on.

John

[NickC]

Peavey 158 Manual states:

Rated Power & Load:
15W RMS into 4 ohms

Power At Clipping (Typically):
5% THD, 1Khz
120 V AC line
15W RMS into 4 ohms

Total Harmonic Distortion:
Less than 0.5%, 100mW to 10 Watts RMS,
60Hz to 10KHz, 4 ohms, (typically below 0.2%)

It's anyone's guess what kind of clipping it's capable of, if turned all the way up. No guarantees it couldn't fry a speaker rated for over twice the power, but it's probably okay.

http://assets.peavey.com/literature/man ... 301898.pdf

[Structo]

WTF?

[xtian]

Tom, did you check the video? Non-Newtonian liquids ROCK!

[ampgeek]

Cool video!

Now...who is going to step up to the plate and do a shear-rate distribution model on that little system?!?!

Cheers,
Dave O.

[catwarrior]

Thanks all, for the advice

It worked fine in the end. It's a friends amp which I borrowed so just didn't want to blow it!

[Structo]

Hey catwarrior,

I hope you stick around on this forum.
You can learn a lot and possibly enough to build your own tube amp.

Personally, I don't think I would be confident enough about clips on the speaker terminals because they don't make enough contact to the terminals.
It will probably work fine but part of a electronic tech's job is to ensure that whatever is done is competent and follows common guidelines.