SOT: A bit confusing...

[AunShui]

I was at my friends house at the beginging of last week, and we were trying to rig up his hartke bass half stack to play an ipod (we wanted to listen to music and a boombox wasnt gonna cut it).

 

Anyway, we couldnt get it to play, and his dad (professional soundman and bassist for years) came out to sprinkle his magic dust on it and make it work.

 

One thing that he did caught me completley off guard, and so did the lack of effect becuase of it.

 

Basically, while the amp was on (this is a solid state power amp btw) he unplugged the speaker and left it like this for abotu 5 minutes while searching for a good speaker cable (the problem).

 

The amp has no standby as far as i know, but it had no load on it for awhile, and didnt do any sort of exploding/burning/dieing that ive been told happens when an amp lacks a load.

 

Does the "it always needs a speaker" rule apply only to tube heads, or is this hartke just special among SS amps?

[AunShui]

Bump FTW!

[oggy]

Originally posted by AunShui Does the "it always needs a speaker" rule apply only to tube heads,

 

 

Yes. Goes for tube combos too.

 

An attenuator well work as a load too. You just can't have no load at all.

[AunShui]

I once heard a story about someone taking a marshall AVT and plugging it into his brothers hartke head; the hartke was fine but the AVT apparently burn out like the classic "no speaker" story.

Now, the AVT has one tube in the preamp and an entireley SS power section. Why would it burn out?