How will I know??

BloodRose

Professional Scapegoat
Figured Id rather have my eyelids ripped off than quote Whitney, but... Any how.. I have an Avatar 2x12 cab.. How can I tell if its wired in series or parallel?
 
Re: How will I know??

Also this:

If the impedance of the cabinet is twice that of one of the speakers, they are in series.

If the impedance of the cabinet is half that of one of the speakers, they are in parallel.
 
Re: How will I know??

Is it an 8 ohm or 16 ohm cab? If it is an 8 ohm, it is probably 2 - 16 ohm speakers in parallel, if it is 16 ohm, it is probably 2 - 8 ohm speakers in series. But again, best to look.

An 8 ohm could be 2 - 4 ohm speakers in series, but 4 ohm guitar speakers aren't used as much as 8 or 16.
 
Re: How will I know??

Cab is 8 OHM. cracked it open today and both the speakers are Celestion G12T-75s in it. both rated 16OHM. The wiring is diff than either of the diagrams above. there are no wires from speaker to speaker. The cab has 2 inputs. There are small wires that go from input to input and then a long wire that goes from one input to one speaker and another that goes from the other input to the other speaker. So, it almost looks like each input drives one speaker, except for the small wires that connect the inputs
 
Re: How will I know??

Is one of the inputs marked "Mono"?
 
Re: How will I know??

no, they are not marked any certain way. And as I said, there is a wire that connects the two jacks together, so looks like either/or
 
Re: How will I know??

Parallel ... And both jacks are parallel also. If you Daisy chain another 8 ohm cab, it'll be 4 ohm total load.
 
Re: How will I know??

... And, If you snip the wires between the 2 jacks, you'll have a stereo cab with 2x16 Ohm connections. That was the intention of wiring it in such a way. One snip and you have a stereo cab.
 
Re: How will I know??

the way this one is wired, if I snip the wires between the jacks, one jack will operate one speaker and the other jack, the other speaker. The ONLY thing that connects them together is the wire tween the jacks
 
Re: How will I know??

That's exactly what skydogg was saying, you can use both speakers independently, which is what a stereo cabinet is.

You could also get creative and wire in a switch or switching jack for stereo (2X 16 ohm) or mono (8 ohm) operation.
 
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Re: How will I know??

oh, ok.. Im still pretty noob at speakers/speaker loads and such. Cant see where Id want to split em and run separate unless I was playing with someone else and we were going to share my cab. Or is there some cool benefit Im missing? Not to nit pick, but for the record, Id have to snip 2 wires. There are 2 wires from jack to jack. one on each side of the jacks.

hmmm.. just thought of something cool. If I have a pedal, like say a chorus with dual outs, I could run one to each speaker, couldnt I? awesome...
 
Re: How will I know??

Well, if you had an amp with a stereo output, you could run it stereo out through the one cab.
You would only have to snip one wire and install a switch on it.

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk
 
Re: How will I know??

Two wires join the jacks, not one. If he only has to snip one wire, which one? The Blue one with the Yellow stripe or the Yellow one with the Blue stripe? :P
 
Re: How will I know??

It shouldn't matter. Snipping either one would break the circuit.

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Re: How will I know??

Probably want to snip the + wire, if you were using a stereo power amp or even if you are using 2 separate amps, -/gnd sides are probably all tied together or connect together through AC chassis ground. Safest just to cut both. FWIW, the + wire is the one connected to the tip.

BR, yeah, that is the idea, running stereo requires 2 separate circuits, but you'll need 2 power amps, or a stereo power amp to do it, a pedal won't cut it, and if you hook the speaker out to the pedal in, there will probably be smoke coming from the pedal shortly. IMHO, running stereo from one cab, especially a 2 - 12 cab, doesn't really do much because there is no real separation. At one point many moons ago, I had a stereo rig with two 2-12 Avatar cabinets that sounded amazing, but when you got to clubs they were usually running mono anyway.

This is a side track from your original question, your speakers are in parallel. Basically if 2 speakers are in series you add their impedance together, R1 + R2 + R... = Rtotal
If they are in parallel the total is the reciprocal of the total of the reciprocals of the individual impedances or Rtotal = 1/(1/R1 + 1/R2 + 1/R...), that looks complicated, the good news is with speakers, since they should be the same impedance, 2 speakers in parallel is basically 1/2 of each speaker, 2X 16 ohm speakers in parallel is an 8 ohm total impedance, 2X 8 ohm speakers is a 4 ohm total impedance.
 
Re: How will I know??

Definitely cut both wires. You don't want to connect the grounds of two random amplifiers together. Speaker (-) isn't always ground.
 
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