Install guitar speaker

Analyzing every aspect of your signal chain is a common pastime of many tone-hungry guitarists. At the very end of the line, however, is a component that guitarists and bassists often overlook as a means of improving or altering tone—speakers. And the fact that speakers are swapped out far less than pickups, pedals, and complete amps is rather odd, considering that the speaker is the final component that physically creates our tone. Here we aim to help change that. Depending on the number of speakers and intended use, speaker swapping can require an understanding of phasing and impedance, as well as the relationship between series and parallel wiring.

To view the wiring diagram for this project, visit premierguitar. Nice price. Great range in simple controls. Sweet preamp sounds. Great capacity for high-end detail. Keeley Compressor Mini robertkeeley. I fall in and out of love with compressors all the time.

From one night to another, I might be down on my knees, thanking my comp for saving my life and my sloppy picking performance. The morning after is always awkward.

It may not be the most extreme compressor in the world or the most versatile. But it walks the razor-thin line between transparent and potent with aplomb and sounds alive without being overbearing or oppressive.

Thankfully, he has a knack for knowing how to set those parameters just right. Keeley also designed the circuit to be especially lively for a comp with so few controls. For one thing, the Compressor Mini uses parallel compression, which allows dry signal to pass before summing at the output, adding detail and presence to softer playing while louder transients are squished more aggressively. The pedal sounds more balanced and alive for its inclusion.

The Compressor Mini, however, is almost startlingly quiet. Even at the highest preamp gain and threshold levels, the Keeley adds little perceptible hiss. The low noise floor makes it easier to use the level control aggressively, and at minimum threshold levels, the Keeley is a great near-clean boost. And there are lots of near-clean boost colors that add meat to jangly tones without sullying the chime. Rickenbacker and Telecaster players take note!

Humbucker players, too, will enjoy the extra headroom in the level control. Most settings north of noon lend a fat but tasteful bump in the low-mid zone that make the preamp sound extra sweet, muscular, and growly. The compression effect itself is a delight. And in spite of the extra top end generated by the tone-recovery circuit and parallel compression scheme, you still hear perceptible squish. The extra weight and warm sustain that even modest level and compression threshold levels add to thin first-string output is significant.

And it does a cracking job of highlighting string detail in complex chords. For lots of players in many musical situations, such qualities will be well worth any tradeoff in dynamics. The preamp alone sounds lovely and generates killer boost tones. In traditional pedal-compression settings, like country picking and Byrds-style jangle, it excels. And its low noise floor makes it an ideal pairing for high-gain pedals in need of smoothing or busy pedalboards with lots of noisy gain stages.

At just 20 bucks less than the Compressor Plus, some players may want to pop for the bigger, more feature-rich alternative. Rig Rundowns. Riff Rundowns. Why I Built This. The Big 5. Runnin' With The Dweezil. Wong Notes. Rig Rundown Podcast. Bass Gear. Gear Awards. Gear Review Inquiry. First Looks. This will lend extra punch and definition to overdrive coming from the amplifier itself, or drive from pedals, rather than mushing out.

Another consideration is the type of cabinet you have. Closed-back like a Marshall 4x12 cab? Or an open- or partially open-back, such as my Fender used here or a Vox AC30? These closed-back cabs control the speakers by reducing the air pressure at the back of the speaker. This, in turn, softens harsh top end and increases bass response - think Jimi Hendrix, Paul Kossoff or early Pete Townshend.

Open-back cabinets and combos suit lower-powered speakers such as the Alnico Blue and Golds by Celestion, or the US-made Jensen range of speakers. A quick note on terminology first Usually, the heavier the magnet the higher the power handling and so forth, but again let your ears be the final judge. Speaker impedances are also a consideration; most valve amplifiers have impedance selectors on them. The easiest thing to do is replace like with like. The three common impedances are four, eight and 16 ohms.

Most valve amplifiers have impedance selectors on them. These values denote the speaker resistance and, like any resistor, they can be wired in such ways as to change the overall impedance. Single speakers are simple to wire: just attach negative to negative, positive to positive. Series and Parallel are the common wiring methods. Series means you wire the positive output of the amp to the positive of the first speaker, then link from the negative of that speaker to the positive of the second speaker, and then from the negative of that speaker back to the negative of the speaker output.

This sounds hugely complicated but in practice is very simple. Wiring in series doubles the impedance of one speaker, so 2x 8-ohm speakers, for example, become 1x ohm load. Parallel means that you simply link both speakers together: the positive of the amp goes to the positives of both speakers, and the negative of the amp goes to both the negatives of both the speakers.

This parallel wiring halves the total speaker impedance. So, 2x 8-ohm speakers will become a 4-ohm load. This means two pairs of speakers are wired in series and then both pairs are linked together in parallel.

I remember the first time I re-wired one of these monsters - my eyes nearly popped out on comedy springs: there were wires literally everywhere! However, I persevered and worked out exactly what was going on. From that point on nothing was as tricky as it once seemed.

If you decide to try to fit a used or vintage speaker in your amplifier, then there are a few things you should do to confirm its functionality beforehand.

Firstly, examine the speaker for any tears or holes. There should be none. If there are any, these will cause the speaker to sound bad and possibly tear more and then fail altogether. The next thing to look for are the small linking wires from the tags to the speaker cone. These should be perfect and not broken or damaged. Lastly, lie the speaker on its magnet and very carefully place your hands on the cone itself. Try gently moving the cone in and out, carefully feeling for any scraping or resistance between the voice coil and magnet as you do so.

If it moves smoothly and freely, hopefully you should have a good speaker. For replacing the speaker itself, you will need a good soldering iron or solder station, between 25 and 40 watts will be perfect.

You will need some solder; lead-free is the norm these days, but I do still like the oldschool lead solder. Now, lie your amplifier or cabinet on its face and remove any back panels and so on that may be in the way. On my own amplifier, I found it much easier to also remove the reverb tray from the bottom part of the amplifier.

This made for much easier access to the lower speaker nuts. My amplifier has a separate plugged-in speaker cable, so it was a simple unplug job. With a hard-wired speaker output that some amps have, we would have to unsolder the two wires from the speaker - taking notice of which is positive and negative. Next, unscrew the four or eight screws, nuts or bolts holding the speaker in, being careful not to drop these into the speaker or, worse, into the amp itself , never to be seen again!

You should then be able to lift the speaker out of the amp. If your speaker cable was a plug-in job then now is the best time to re-solder it onto the new speaker. Fit the speaker back into the cabinet and start to screw or bolt it back down. At this point I must stress, as I have done before, please do not over-tighten the speaker bolts.

On a pressed-chassis speaker it can be very easy to bend it out of true, and this can cause speaker distortion and odd overtones. A simple rule is get it finger-tight and then go a quarter-turn more.

Then you can get cranked and listen to your new baby sing. Every new speaker will have a break-in period, so give it time to soften up and it will get better every time you play. At this point you should be pretty happy with yourself, as I was after my first rewire of the big old monster Marshall. Read on to see how our group of inch speakers, all built to different power ratings with different musical applications in mind, changed the sound and feel of our test amp when we fitted them, one after the other, into the same Deluxe Reverb….