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How Do Half Stack Speaker Cabinets Work?

When most guitar players take up their instruments, they begin playing through combo amps – rigs that contain amp electronics and speakers in a single unit – because of price concerns and convenience. Once players begin gigging with a band, many upgrade to amps with the power needed to play rooms and compete with the drums. Many opt for half-stack setups, which combine two pieces: a head unit that contains a preamp to shape sound and an amp, and a cabinet, which in a half-stack setup, contains four 12-inch speakers. Many first-time half-stack players have difficulty understanding the subtleties of their new amps, so setting up speaker cabinets and heads to work properly can be confusing at first.

Things You'll Need

  • Amp head unit
  • Half-stack speaker cabinet
  • Speaker cable
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Instructions

    • 1

      Select an amp head that suits your needs. Each manufacturer’s equipment creates different sounds, so shop around for a head that creates the tone you need for your music. Solid-state amp heads are typically less expensive than vintage-style tube amps, though they are much less powerful on a watt-per-watt basis than vintage gear. Many rock players choose heads for their ability to provide effects such as reverb and distortion as well as their clean tone.

    • 2

      Connect the head to the speaker cabinet using a speaker cable, from the speaker outport on the head’s back to the quarter-inch input on the back of the speaker cabinet. This cable provides the cabinet with the processed audio signal from your instrument, as well as the electricity that powers the cabinet in the same way that speaker cable in a component stereo system powers home speakers.

    • 3

      Select the ground option if the head operates in grounded or ungrounded modes. In most modern wiring situations, you will select the grounded option. If you experience a mild shock from a microphone or when touching your guitar strings when playing, it is likely that your ground setting needs to be adjusted.

    • 4

      Connect an instrument to the amp head using a standard instrument cable, routing its signal through any external effects units, such as pedals or preamp units. Instruments draw a small amount of power from the amp through cables to operate their pickups, but send a very weak signal to the head, which needs to be processed and amplified by the head unit.

    • 5

      Turn the amp’s power unit on. If it is a tube amp, turn the main power unit on first and allow the tubes a few seconds to warm up before switching from standby to full power using the standby switch.

    • 6

      Play your instrument. It transfers its signal to the head unit, which shapes its sound using onboard circuitry, and then amplifies the signal before sending it to the speaker cabinet. The half-stack cabinet receives the signal, as well as power – the amount of which is controlled by the head’s volume control – and translates the signal from electric current to physical sound using magnets in its speakers to push speaker diaphragms, creating soundwaves.

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