Build Your Own Clone Message Board

So I assume that I buy an instrument cable to connect the chasis to the speaker. Any particular length? It will be placed in a combo cabinet with 10 inch speaker.

Also do I solder it to the speaker in a special way?

Also where do I buy the cable?

Connect the speaker to the chassis?

Do you mean connect the speaker to the amp’s output? If so, use speaker wire and NOT an instrument cable. Solder a ¼” plug to one end of the wire and some 1/4” (usually) disconnects to the other end to connect to the plus and minus tabs on the speaker.

Rib, you can go to Rat Shak and buy some speaker cable and they also have the connectors if you want to use tab connectors to attach to the speaker. I would jsut solder the wire onto the speaker terminals if it was me. They are easy enough to unsolder should you ever have to do this for some reason. The plug I don't know if they have. Length wise, that is up to you once you get it long enough form the amps output to the speaker of course.

And Stephen knows far more than me, but what little I do know do NOT use a guitar cable for your speaker cable.

just to agree with these guys, yeah do not use a guitar cable for speaker wire. your guitar cable is a thin signal wire surrounded by a weave of ground shielding. it is intended for low voltage signals. it will over heat if you try to pass power through it. speaker specific wire is two larger gauge insulated wires. like what was said, you can goto radio shack and pick up some speaker wire, or hell, use an old lamp cord if you want. also, any music store will have it, just go in and ask for a speaker cable, cut one end off and solder to your speaker. or make a jack, or spade terminals. that part is all up to your preference. i would solder if it were me.

Low current. Voltage doesn't particularly care about wire diameter, current does.

yeah, my bad

great. thanx.

Hmm...I've always just used an extra 1/4" cable I had laying around...never had any problems, but maybe I should switch?

yeah. if you think about how the electrons are traveling in the wire, it makes the most logical sense to have both wires the same. think about it as a radiator in your car. you have an inlet and an outlet, say its a hose of about 2.5 inches. you get a smooth even flow around the system. now take that system and replace your inlet with a 3/4 inch, and the outlet with say 50 coffee straws. as you would imagine the flow is not going to be laminar or even between the two, and your inlet flow rate (current) will be more than the 3/4 hose can carry. yeah, its a crude analogy, your car water system is 'direct current' since its flowing in one direction.. but you get a rough visual idea of whats going on.

i've seem people use instrument cables with a few hundred watts of PA gear, 100w 4x12's.. do i think a instrument cable will catch fire on your champ? no, but its the wrong tool for the job.

Hey Paul, I find I know next to little on this board with you guys but all I can say is all the internet reading I've done looking stuff up I have yet to read one time where someone said an instrument cable works just as well as speaker wire. I'm just going off what I've read a bunch of times. I don't know if it makes it right but I do know I've not read where anyone recommends it. Just my 2 micro farts.

Instrument cable is dangerous when used to hook up speakers. Don't do it.



Good description - bottom line using instruments cable can damage your amp and your speaker.

Thanks guys. I figured there had to be a difference but never thought much of it, as I've only recently even owned a head/cab combo. I've got some speaker cable kicking around that I'll build a new cable out of.

A few interesting googles on the subject:

http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2010/07/19/cables-101-instrument-vs-speaker-cables/

http://www.sweetwater.com/expert-center/techtips/d--02/01/2005

http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/3044/best-cable-to-connect-guitar-amp-to-speaker-cabinet

I just bought a combo amp speaker cable from eBay. That will probably be sufficient.

That'll do it!