Home Forums Guitar Discussion Guitar unplugging guitar before shutting off amp?

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  • #22302
    guitarguy
    Participant

    i heared that its bad for your amp if you unplug the patch cord from your guitar before shutting off your amp. how could it be bad? and what can it do to your amp?

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    • #73602
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Yesish. Dropping the vol on your guitar has no really useful effect. However, a quick flip of the vol on the amp to zero before yanking out the jack is all you need to do, IMHO.

    • #73614
      lee_UK
      Participant

      Recycled paper clips and yoghurt cartons, i had to laugh at that one, you do come up with some great one liners, so to sum it up, if you pull the plug from your guitar at low-mid volumes, then apart from a few spilt pints and looks of disgust from the audience, all will be ok with the speakers? but higher volumes runs the risk (who remembers ‘run the risk’ with peter duncan?) of a possible speaker meltdown?

    • #73643
      1bassleft
      Participant

      I threw the cab’s Fanes into a skip when I replaced them with ali cones (ouch, eBay, d’oh!) so I’m not a vintage-sniffer 🙂

      I haven’t exactly done a paper search, but it’s generally accepted that speaker drivers have a useable range (say, 50 – 15,000Hz). If a low frequency noise (the ‘dur’) is put out at high volume, then the cones have to move a lot. If the vol exceeds the handling, the sine wave (‘conehead’ shape) becomes more square. Speakers really don’t like being told to do these kind of press-ups.

      HST, unplugging your guitar lead can be made worse by the rubbishy jack and general wiring standard of a built-to-price guitar. In my ltd exp, a Switchcraft jack snaps back into place like a marine on inspection. By contrast, Korean jack sockets are made of recycled paper clips with a bit of old yoghurt carton added to keep the metal cost down.

      When I was testing and changing preamp tubes on the Laney, I got lazy and (deep breath) started yanking the lead from channels 1-6 without touching the volume. I didn’t notice a moment’s ‘dur’. I don’t want to sound all “stuff made west of the Elbe river pre 1970 is best” type, but I do think there’s something in the idea that better components (costing a few bucks – blame the beancounters) solve a lot of problems.

    • #73718
      lee_UK
      Participant

      im still not convinced its damages speakers, has it been scientificaly proved or is it just the Alnico silver bulldog polishing and fluffing set that say its bad to unplug while switched on?

    • #73598
      1bassleft
      Participant

      That’ll be vocalists. The engineers have learned “One, two” but the vocalists are still “working towards that level” as we say in the special needs department.

      Ducking for cover… 😛

    • #73695
      glw
      Participant

      Yeah, it’s also bad for a microphone to test it by tapping on it when it’s plugged it, but people still do it.

    • #73669
      guitarguy
      Participant

      well what can it do to the speakers after time?
      ________

    • #73672
      Michael
      Participant

      Well… I wont because I’m not as flexible as yourself. Must be all that tennis 😛

    • #73686
      1bassleft
      Participant

      Phew – 😀 . I wondered just how far “The Office” had spread as a TV show. Could’ve been a bad simile, but I got away with it. Don’t try it for yourself, though.

    • #73637
      Michael
      Participant

      😆 ah the dance bit cracked me up.

    • #73661
      1bassleft
      Participant

      I bet a lot of people have done this. Getting no, or a crackly, output you yank out the jack from the guitar and tap your thumb on the tip a couple of times. That “dur dur dur” noise comes from you grounding out the tip – quite OK at low volumes but a bit unpopular at gig levels.

      I’ve done something I reckon most haven’t, and I wouldn’t recommend it. Getting no “dur dur”, I wondered if my amp-cab cable was duff. Innocent teenager that I was, I pulled the jack out of the speaker cab and thumbed it. Now, this is a bad idea for the amp anyway. The output impedance has gone from a nice 8ohms to something like infinity and the tubes and output transformer work like burgery to make up the difference. Much amp-smoking if left too long.

      More importantly, I wasn’t touching the tip of a passive cable carrying no current. I’d stuck my thumb onto the tip of a lead carrying all the horses of a 100W valve amp, expected to turn around some pretty big speaker magnets. The rest of the band looked on, bemused, as I did a high-speed version of Ricky Gervais’ dance from “The Office”. I finally managed to fling the cable out of my grip and, a few seconds later, stop my arm flapping 😳

      In any case, what made me think I’d get a “dur” noise when I’d disconnected the speakers? 🙄

    • #73616
      Tim
      Participant

      The best thing is to do this on stage at a gig, all the tech guys in the audience flinch, then you can avoid them after the gig, although you find you have to avoid them as they all come up and say: “You should always turn off your…’
      But yes when you’re cranked up it certainly sounds unhealthy for your, or the venues, speakers.

    • #73658
      1bassleft
      Participant

      GeeGee, bear in mind I’m not an elecspurt. What little I do know revolves around sniffing Mullards 🙂 . Any IEEE type looking in would do everyone a favour if they chimed to contradict me…

      AFAIK, you’re right in that pulling the jack from your git doesn’t worry the amp; it’s your speakers you are risking. The tip of your jack sends the ‘hot’ signal and the sleeve goes to ground. By pulling the jack out, you momentarily reverse this. Correct me if I’m wrong, solder-monkeys, but the guitar’s passive circuit means that the amp does a “so what”, but amplifies a brief, high amplitude, low frequency “dur” noise.

      This goes straight to the speakers and, if there’s one thing they don’t like, it’s a low frequency square wave. Much shredding of cone from the rubbery surround bit, and subsequent farty noises.

      I don’t switch off the amp before pulling my 1/4″ ( 😯 ) but I do roll the amp vol back to zero. Keeps the speaker sane (flicking to standby has the same effect). The preamp gets, and amplifies, that “dur” but the speakers receive Butkus and all is happy. At least, that’s what I go by. Any other ops?

    • #73484
      guitarguy
      Participant

      yea, i heared it was bad for the speakers
      ________

    • #73451
      lee_UK
      Participant

      I do it all the time, never had a an amp give up on me, is it bad? a buzz and click, sounds horrible when you do it but i never knew it was bad for the amp, one tip on amps, if you own a Valve amp switch it off and allow it to cool off for a while before moving, when the output valves a red hot they can be very fragile and clanking the amp around can damage them, look out for that all you Mullard rubbing virtuoso’s. I always switch my amp off after a gig or rehearsal, and then pack everything away and load up my car and then go get the amp.

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