Speaker Wire ---> TS end??

[bmsander]

Today was a "new toy landing in your lap" day. My boss gave me an old 2 tier Genie organ. Nothing special, but it does make some cool noises.

Here's my question ----

It looks like the old 12" speaker that came with it is long gone. Whoever had it last wired up what looks like an old boom box speaker to the clips of the old speaker wires. Ideally, I'd like to be able to just plug it into my mixer, so I'm thinking about cutting up an old guitar cable and wiring it up that way.

Is this possible? The technical side of this stuff kind of eludes me. Anybody have any tips or has anyone ever done this before?


brett

[dynomike]

Soldering a 1/4" TS jack onto speaker wire is totally feasible. Lots of speaker wire for older stage monitors and pa stuff uses that.

However, plugging a SPEAKER LEVEL signal into your mixer is not right...

The impedance is way off. (speaker 4-16 ohms vs. line level 10 kOhms?)
The level is most likely going to overload your pres big time.

So, if you have a direct box with good pads (I use a behringer ultra di that has 2 -20db pads, so you can pad up to -40db) just plug your new quarter inch speaker cable into there, and xlr out of there into your mixer.

Solves the impedance problems (kind of) and definately will attenuate the level enough to keep it clean.

By the way, those behringer boxes (di100 or something like that) are wicked cheap.

Mike

[Professor]

True enough about the using a DI-box or something similar to knock the speaker level down. Some boxes even have a switch or setting for 'speaker input', I know that my Stewart active DI boxes have them, and so do the Avalon U5 DIs in the school studio.
You could also try diggin back a little further up the signal path to catch the signal before the power amplifier. That might be hard to do if you're non-technical, or it might be surprisingly easy if it is in a separate housing within the organ. Then you'd have a line level output that could go directly to the mixer.

-J

[bmsander]

thanks guys!

Man, this board is the shit!!

brett

[psychicoctopus]

You could also try diggin back a little further up the signal path to catch the signal before the power amplifier. That might be hard to do if you're non-technical, or it might be surprisingly easy if it is in a separate housing within the organ.

Be careful. Don't electrocute yourself!

If it's a vacuum-tube organ, the power amp is probably in a separate chassis with a line-level input, like Professor mentioned. That would be relatively easy to wire up as a line-out.

If it's solid state, you're probably going to have to poke around for a while, tracing backward from the speaker connections. Use a crappy boombox or mixer that you don't mind damaging. Cut one end off of a 1/4" or RCA patch cable, and attach an alligator clip to the shield. extend the other conductor with a piece of insulated wire, bare for about 1 cm on the end - this is your probe... clip the alligator clip to the organ's ground. now play the organ while probing the PCB until till you hear it and it sounds right.

Don't do this with a tube organ.
Don't do this if you aren't familiar with power supplies - what they look like, what not to touch, etc...
Don't electrocute yourself.