can i connect my cabinet with the bass head through the female xlr out?

[yoroichi]

Hey everyone!

I was at this studio the other day and the cabinet there only had an xlr male output in order to be connected to a bass head.

I had brought my own bass head a hartke ha2500 which is usually connected to cabinets through a 1/4 jack.

But the ha2500 has an xlr female output at the back.

The owner of the studio advised me not to connect the head and the cabinet through the xlr outputs because it might damage my bass head.

Is there any truth to this?

And also if it is true can i just convert the male xlr to a simple 1/4 jack and use it normally with my bass head>?

thanks in advance

[impactwrench]

Your amp head wont send power through the XLR, thats probably a DI for running to the PA board. Will it kill your amp to run it without a cab on the 1/4" jack? I dont know. Some solid state amps will be fine, most tube amps will be wrecked. I probably wouldnt try it.

As for the cabinet at the studio, is it already powered? IT would probably need a separate cord that you'd plug into a wall.

[praisegig]

My HA2500 has only 1/4" speaker jacks on the back. Are you sure it is an XLR? It may be Speakons or maybe someone modded it. Or really old

[elgecko]

XLR on a cabinet?

Are you sure it wasn't one of these?

[sawzalot]

Likely it was a Speakon connector, or it was a powered cabinet.

[will33]

I used to have a pair of carvin cabs and matching head that had 1/4" and xlr jacks on the head and cabs to connect them. The package even came with a pair of xlr speaker cables. Wierd now, didn't know it at the time, just used it that way with no issues. I now assume the xlr was really 2 conductor but I really don't know.

It was the pb500 head and 210 and 115 cabs as seen on this link. Great amp, the cabs....meh.

The Carvin Museum - 1993 Bass Amps

[elgecko]

Originally Posted by will33

I used to have a pair of carvin cabs and matching head that had 1/4" and xlr jacks on the head and cabs to connect them. The package even came with a pair of xlr speaker cables. Wierd now, didn't know it at the time, just used it that way with no issues. I now assume the xlr was really 2 conductor but I really don't know.

It was the pb500 head and 210 and 115 cabs as seen on this link. Great amp, the cabs....meh.

The Carvin Museum - 1993 Bass Amps

Bizarre! I had a PB500, mine had 1/4" and banana plug outs.

[T-Bird]

Hi.


Youngsters, there was a time before Speakon, even though You probably weren't around to witness it.

XLR was an improvement over 1/4" phone, but the speaker XLR was doomed from the get-go, so the "regular" one was pretty widely used if there was no banana-jacks.

Unless modded, no recent MI amps have XLR speaker outs. Not that I know of anyway.

Regards
Sam

[TC2112]

Did the cab have a plate type power amp on it? Did it have a volume knob or could it be plugged in?

It may have been a powered cab. If so, the XLR out from your head would have sent a line level to it and worked just fine

[Son of Bovril]

Some of the old trace cabs and heads used to use xlr jacks for the speakers... not sure why exactly? I would imagine an xlr to 1/4" turnaround should do the trick just fine...

[beans-on-toast]

Originally Posted by yoroichi

The owner of the studio advised me not to connect the head and the cabinet through the xlr outputs because it might damage my bass head. Is there any truth to this?

According to the manual, in the block diagram there is an XLR for the pre-amp output but not the power amp's speaker out. A pre-amp out can't be connected directly to a normal speaker cab. It wouldn't have enough power to drive it. The HA2500 has 1/4" jacks for the speaker out and the effects loop.

The problem with XLR speaker connectors is that there isn't a standard for how they should be wired. If a wired cable comes with an amp and cab, then it is safe to use but you can't just take any XLR cable and connect the two. The wiring may not be correct. Also, you can't use a shielded mic cable to connect your amp and cab. It needs to be constructed with speaker wire. Maybe this is what the studio owner was saying.

Older Ampeg cabs had a Switchcraft C4M connector that looked like an 3-pin XLR but it had 4 pins. On these cabs pin-1 was connected to the speaker (+), pin-4 was connected to speaker (-). To build a converter cable, on the 1/4" plug, speaker (+) is connected to the tip, speaker (-) is connected to the sleeve.

If the cab had a 3-pin XLR connector, you would have to know how it is wired before building a converter cable.

[will33]

Originally Posted by elgecko

Bizarre! I had a PB500, mine had 1/4" and banana plug outs.

I bought that rig as a package new in 1993. Could've been sitting in the warehouse for a year I guess as nothing really changed on those models during that time but it was brand new and that's how it worked.

The xlr really is jist a plug/locking mechanism. You could easily put them on the end of 2 conductor speaker wire. There was no such thing as speakon then. OP, if your cab is this way you'd want to get an adapter or make up a speaker cable for it, mic cord uses fairly thin guage wire for speaker level power.

[will33]

Originally Posted by beans-on-toast

Normally the HA2500 just has 1/4" jacks, both for the speaker out and the effects loop.

The problem with XLR speaker connectors is that there isn't a standard for how they should be wired. If a wired cable comes with an amp and cab, then it is safe to use but you can't just take any XLR cable and connect the two. The wiring may not be correct. Also, you can't use a shielded mic cable to connect your amp and cab. It needs to be constructed with speaker wire. Maybe this is what the studio owner was saying.

Older Ampeg cabs had a Switchcraft C4M connector that looked like an 3-pin XLR but it had 4 pins. On these cabs pin-1 was connected to the speaker (+), pin-4 was connected to speaker (-). To build a converter cable, on the 1/4" plug, speaker (+) is connected to the tip, speaker (-) is connected to the sleeve.

If the cab had a 3-pin XLR connector, you would have to know how it is wired before building a converter cable.

Good points here. The only real standard pin connection for those plugs is for 3 wire balanced cable like a mic cord. You'd have to open the cab and see what's connected to what.

[yoroichi]

Thanx for all the replies im still kinda confused but im starting to wonder what the plugs actually are so im getting you pictures :0!!

I am a newbie at this and thanks for helping !


this is the back of my ha2500

i will get you a pic of the cable from the studio -.-

[will33]

The xlr on the back of the amp is your DI for plugging in a mixing board like a microphone, it won't drive a speaker. Some older speakers used xlr plugs but it's not the same thing, just looks the same.

[yoroichi]

so what if the cabinet is self powered ;d (thats what the studio guy said i think that it is self powered and it might daamge my amp)

i am assuming a signal from my amp will go through and since it is self power it will work?

[will33]

If it is indeed a powered cab, make sure first, it should take a 1/4" input from your effects send, line out, or preamp out labeled jacks. Some are all self contained powered speakers with a preamp also built in. If that's the case, it should have a volume knob and probably bass and treble knobs as well and the xlr would be for plugging in a microphone. Get some pics, make and model numbers or something off of it, or have somebody there who knows find out exactly what it is first so you don't damage anything hooking stuff up wrong.

[JTE]

The XLR on the Hartke amp is a direct out and sends a signal before the power amp so it won't drive a typical passive speaker. Some speaker cabinets in the past did indeed use XLR connectors, notably Ampegs with an XLR four or five pin (I've forgotten) connector. They used this in order to prevent the cable from coming unplugged like 1/4" phone plugs can, and they didn't use a standard A3 connector so that you couldn't just plug a microphone cable in. Plus, it made actually FINDING one of those plugs in an emergency pretty much impossible...

If the speaker in the studio is a powered speaker, the XLR on it is most likely the input and the DI from you amp would work fine. However, some powered PA speakers have both male and female XLR so you can daisy-chain speakers together. If the XLR was an OUTPUT instead of an input you do run the risk of damaging your amp by plugging in there.

I'm frankly surprised that a studio person didn't know their gear well enough to know what they had and how to hook it up, but that's a whole other issue. BTW, running your Hartke without a speaker load is fine. Solid-state amps can run into an infinite impedance load (open circuit) without any problem. No speakers isn't zero ohms, it's infinite ohms. A dead short is zero ohms. And you don't want to go BELOW minimum impedance on a solid state amp, but you can go into a higher load.

John

[yoroichi]

[/quote] I'm frankly surprised that a studio person didn't know their gear well enough to know what they had and how to hook it up, but that's a whole other issue. BTW, running your Hartke without a speaker load is fine. Solid-state amps can run into an infinite impedance load (open circuit) without any problem. No speakers isn't zero ohms, it's infinite ohms. A dead short is zero ohms. And you don't want to go BELOW minimum impedance on a solid state amp, but you can go into a higher load.

John[/quote]

Well i come from greece and ppl are quite dim regarding technical stuff,like me :P

and u lost me regarding the speaker load and stuff can you explain it maybe a bit plainer -.0. if i understand correctly you mean that if i do connect to the xlr my amp is working at infinite ohms?

Also,what if i convert that xlr to a 1/4 pin and then jack it in the normal rca output of my amp?

[bolophonic]

What about a photo of the cabinet in question?