Da5
With the DA5 Vox portable ac/dc amp you could easily hook up a male quarter inch jack to the speaker wires coming from the speaker and a female quarter inch jack to the wires going TO the speaker about half way between the outlet from the amp part and the speaker.
This way one could easily unhook the speaker from the amp by unplugging the jacks and plugging a male/male quarter inch jack into the female jack coming FROM the amp section and run the SPEAKER wire to the desired cabinet; matching the impedance in ohms to the same ohms as the speaker in the DA5. You could use a single twelve inch cabinet, a two twelve inch speaker cab, or even a four twelve inch speaker cabinet half stack cabinet, AS LONG as the impedance AT THE INPUT JACK of the cabinet chosen is the same impedance as the DA5 speaker impedance.
I do this with my amps that have speaker out jacks like my Delta Blues which I run at 16 ohms to my Epi four twelve inch speaker Southern California cabinet and I get to have all five speakers working in this case. With the DA5 the internal speaker would be necessarily disconnected but I bet it would sound nice.
The speaker impedance on my DA5 is 8 ohms. I would recommend matching the ohmage exactly. I think there is a variance rule you can use though. Some of the experts here will know the exact tolerance you can use.
I am going to hook my DA5 up to the speaker input of my Hot Rod Deluxe which is 8 ohms and see how that Jensen P12N sounds. My guess is that it will sound incredible, knowing how good the DA5 sounds already and how good the HRDx sounds.
Hope this idea is found to be interesting to someone.
Also, some of the experts might know which brand of jack would be best to use. A jack that unscrews and then screws back on after you soldered the wires would probably be best.
Another important note is to be sure that you don't reverse the hot and the ground wires on the jacks because it will still run the speaker but you will have out of polarity sound which does not sound as good as sound that is in polarity. This means to make sure you solder the hot wires or ground wires on the male and female jacks to the same connection on the jack. The hot should go to the quarter inch related connection and the ground to the grounding part of the jack.
Maybe someone else can better explain which of the connections on the jack is the ground better than I can. Properly polarized wires to speakers will make them sound better. Might be a good idea to check your stereo speakers at home to make sure they are properly polarized at the amp and speakers. It'll sound so much better. The speakers won't be trying to cancel themselves out like they will if they are not polarized the same. This means in simple terms that the red wire on the amp should go to the red terminal on the speaker; or the ribbed wire on the speaker wire should go to the red terminals on the amp and speaker. There are other configurations but just make sure all the stereo speakers, surround, etc, sub, etc, follow the same color or ribbing pattern on the speaker wires.
A lot of people are not aware of this polarity thing and just hook up the speakers because they will work even if the polarity isn't right; but they won't sound anywhere near up to what their true potential is.
My long posts might be boring to some but might be useful to someone else. I hope they help out. I understand a lot about electronics from working on motorcycles for many years because the mechanics often times don't understand anything or very little about motorcycle electrical systems. I probably know more about motorcycle electrical systems than most "so called" motorcycle mechanics; but they know WAY more about working on the motors, transmissions, and mechanical things than I do, BY FAR. I bet a lot of us didn't know that about mechanics. It's true. But to save us all, most shops have at least ONE mechanic that really understands electrical systems very well and can help out the other ones, usually. Key word, usually. Much, oftentimes, to our dismay.
Good thing that most guitar techs know a lot about electronics and electrical systems. A lot of them may only have a limmitted knowledge of electronics, so for important or expensive equipment it is best to bring them to pro guitar and amp repair shops that have really EXPERT electronics techs working there. I go all the way to Harrisburg to a place I'm not advertizing called Downtown Sound. They do all the pro's equipment that they can't do themselves. If I had a Vox Valvetronix I would DEFINITELY take it to them to get fixed because valvetronix amps are SUPER complicated, especially the AD60VT and AD120VT (I think I have the models right, the blue classic looking valvetronix ones, more expensive than the "Chromies").
A lot of people might not know this and assume that the techs at the local stores are knowledgeable of working on complicated amps like these. Some are definitely knowledgeable enough to do the job but MANY do not have the knowledge to work on the new highly computerized amps that are becoming more commonplace these days, like the Line 6, Vypyrs, and other sophisticated moddelling amps.
All this discourse evolved out of a discussion on "mini amps". Some of these mini amps are highly sophisticated items, like the DA5. These are very, very complicated; even though they look simple when you look inside them. I soldered on my printed circuit board on my DA5 and it wasn't without a lot of worrying if I was going to mess it up, which would be SUPER easy to do. I did a good job and it solved my problem. Some techs would not even have had the ability to identify the problem and would have ordered a whole new printed circuit board.
I encourage you to experiment with some of your own repairs on inexpensive equipment and guitars. Get yourself a half way decent multimeter, analog with a needle or digital. Get a pencil type low wattage soldering iron and some 1mm rosin core solder, CONTAINING LEAD from Radio Shack, and some paste flux and a little brush for the flux. Get some needle nose pliers and a small exacto knife and some extra blades.
You will be surprised at how many repairs you can do with just these few tools. Jobs that you may have not been prepared to do before but that you could easily have done yourself.
I encourage you to learn how to do these things, with the implicit understanding that you will follow safety recommendations and search for safety ideas, ask questions, ask safety questions here, and be sure to work on the stuff when it is UNPLUGGED. Also know that there are capacitors in some of these things that store a "capacity" of energy and it can be discharged instantly if you touch it just right. This, in some cases, could be fatal or injurious to you. You have to be careful and rubber gloves and rubber insulated needle nose pliers are a good idea.
Sorry I had to get so long with this post but I think it was worth it, especially if people are thinking of hooking up external speakers where you have to install jacks to be able to do that. It's a great idea, but it takes you inside the amp sometimes; sometimes into areas that can potentially be dangerous.
It's rewarding and can be fun and you can find out the safety info that you need fairly easily. I would never suggest that you try to tackle a job that you think is above your head. Some simple things you can see are simple just by looking at them, like broken wires of connections and so forth. But with a Valvetronix I would hesitate to do much because you could destroy it instantly just by grounding something out accidentally. More simple amps do not pose the threat of ruining them quite as easily but these highly sophisticated and great new amps are super complicated and have incredible circuits in them, multiple voltages, all sorts of things that most of us can't even imagine. Leave them to the pros.
Duffy
...... haha, just thought i would say something
