SWR 350 with slave power

[Denny Coon]

Hey guys, I have a friend with an SWR 350. Hes running it through an Ampeg 8x10 and it goes w/out saying its just not enough power. I read the owners manual for it and the way I understand it you can slave another power amp to this by plugging into the send. I want to make sure I'm right on this and does that give you the power of both amps combined or does the power of the auxillary amp just overide the power amp section of the head itself? If anyone has tried this or knows any info would be much appreciated. Thank you

[anderbass]

Originally Posted by Denny Coon

or does the power of the auxillary amp just overide the power amp section of the head itself? If anyone has tried this or knows any info would be much appreciated. Thank you

I gigged an older SWR Bassic-350 head for a decade.

When you wanna use an external power amp like your talking here, you'd simply patch a short 1/4" guitar cord from your Bass350 Effects-Send output jack to the external poweramps input jack. When doing this, your bypassing the SWR's internal poweramp and only using its preamp section, tone and volume knobs.

Doing this is completely safe for the SWR because solid-state poweramps can be operated w/o a speaker-load connected with no danger of damage, unlike Tube poweramp sections.

Your speakers would typically just be connected to the External poweramp only. Although if a secondary cab was desired, it could be connected to the SWR speaker output jacks so both poweramps would drive their own cabs simultaneously.

One more thing people dont seem to realise SWR models like your Buddy's:

You've gotta crank the preamp knob way up to get max volume.

Also leave the Aural Enhancer knob set to around 2 o'clock.

Also: The Master volume knobs calibration is a bit different on these SWR models. At a 3/4 Master knob setting, Its only running at half volume. So tell him to not be afraid to use that last 1/4 of a turn when more volume is needed. Crank it up man!!!

[Denny Coon]

Thats very helpful. I will let him know and thanks for your time.

[IvanMike]

uh, I've been slaving out my SWR electric blue for over a decade.

It does not disable your internal poweramp so you can still run speakers off of the 350

IIRC, the 350 doesn't have a line out so yes, the effects send is the only way you have to send a preamp signal out of the head to a poweramp - this works fine.

also, you don't need to "crank" the gain any more than you normally do. As always, the gain on your 350 should be set just under clipping (or where the compressor kicks in if it has one)

finally, set the aural enhancer anywhere you like. It has ZERO to do with the power of the signal coming out of your effects send. 2 o clock is WAAAY too much in most cases. The aural enhancer cuts mids like crazy and sounds neat until you try to be heard in a band. Most veterans of the SWR amp use it at 9 o clock or even farther left towards off.