Maverick slave vs. speaker out oddity...

[jgharding]

Hi there,

I am new to the board, I hope you are all well,

I just bought my first Mesa, a Maverick 2x12. Something I didn't spot 'til I got it home was that the speakers weren't connected to any of the speaker outs, but to the slave, which is turned to maximum. This seems odd! I'm not sure I want to fire it up until I know if this is OK. Should I not just plug the speakers into the 8/16 slot? They are the original Celestion V30s

I hope you all can help set my mind at ease... here's a horrible blurry photo of what I'm describing...

 

[jgharding]

Clearly the speaker outputs would need loading if you were gonna just use the slave alone, I don't see any sign of there being any modification to fit a permanent load inside the amp. Perhaps the last time they used it they ran the main outputs to a cab, and the internal speakers were used as a slave... hmm, a puzzler...

I assume there's little danger of damaging the amp by plugging into the speaker output as normal, but I just wanted to see if anyone had seen a Mesa used in such a way before, since it appears that it was last used like this. It occurred to me that it must've been unloaded like so when I tried it out, briefly, I hope it's not sustained any damage...

 

[MrMarkIII]

I would not run the amp as pictured.
I would be surprised if there was any audible output at all in this configuration.
Fortunately, Mesas are hardy critters and will put up with much abuse.
You should plug the speaker cable into the 8 ohm jack where it belongs before operating.
Then go to the Mesa website and download the manual.

 

[jgharding]

Hi there, thanks for the reply, that's what I thought... Yeah I downloaded the manual already, that's why I thought this was odd, since I'm sure it was like this when I tried it out and was passing sound just fine. Perhaps I got lucky that it didn't blow it.

Thing is, I wouldn't know what I was looking at enough to know if it's been modified inside, but it has been modified to have a fan with a seperate power supply fitted in the back for cooling. The guy who sold it to me bought it second hand, and didn't fit the fan etc. so at some point someone using it obviously liked to tinker with their gear :?

Well, I'll give it a go playing in the normal configuration later!

 

[jgharding]

Yup, it works in the ordinary configuration. One of the power tubes does not light, so I assume it's gone. For some reason it only seems toaffects the dirty channel. Odd, cos I thought all four EL84s worked together all the time...

Looks like some of the preamp tubes are past it too.

This poor amp needs some TLC but it was a decent price! Time to fix it up!