The slave out

Orange Amps Technical Q&A's

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Bass Beast
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Post by Bass Beast » Tue Feb 15, 2005 6:02 pm

Hey dudes, I tried searching but am still in the dark. The slave output on the back of my OR120.

Can I take a cable from it and stick it into another bass amp? The bass amp has variable input gain and passive and active inputs what should I do?

Can I take a cable from it and plug it into the PA board? What do I need to tell the guy to do (like if its balanced etc)?

What cable would do, instrument or speaker?

Thanks for your patience!

Ali

fiveightandten
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Post by fiveightandten » Tue Feb 15, 2005 9:22 pm

The slave out is designed to run your amp into an Orange slave unit that they used to make back in the 70's. It's basically a power amp...the same thing as the OR-120, but no sort of tone controls or anything. It just had a volumes knob on the front. Very basic 4 EL-34 power amp.

You <i>can</i> use the slave out for other things though. It will have a line level signal though, and it's also after the EQ controls on the amp. So it would be prefereable to run it into some sort of "pre-amp in" or "line in" jack on another amp if that's what you want to do.

You can plug it into the input of an amp if you have a pad for active basses and keep the gain down. But keep in mind that you're going through 2 sets of tone controls.

The OR-120 pre-amp looks this (as far as tone controls and what order they're in):

inputs>>>>tone controls>>gain knob>>FAC knob>>slave out/echo loop>>HF drive knob

So if you put it into the input of another amp, it'll tack the signal chain of that amp into what you see above.

If you plug it into a "line in", "pre-amp in" or something like that, then you'll get the tone controls and pre-amp of the Orange running into 2 different power amps.

Hope that helps. Try it out, be careful to listen for any clipping so you don't fry the front end of an amp by plugging the slave out into an input.

Also...instrument cable will work fine.

-Nick
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Bass Beast
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Post by Bass Beast » Tue Feb 15, 2005 10:48 pm

Thats great cheers. So I guess the sound guys will know what to do with a line level output.

Cheers again

Ali

fiveightandten
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Post by fiveightandten » Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:10 pm

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Thats great cheers. So I guess the sound guys will know what to do with a line level output.

Cheers again

Ali


<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

No problem...just don't forget that the output will depend on the gain setting. So if you play at a venue and want them to put you into the board from the slave out jack (which isn't transformer isolated or balanced, BTW), you'll need to put your gain where you'd normally have it in order for them to get a good level for you.

It'll probably hum like a bitch though.

-Nick
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Andy H.
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Post by Andy H. » Wed Feb 16, 2005 8:10 am

Just make sure you are sending it to a fairly high impedance input - say 1M ohm. If needed an impedance matching DI box will help. If you send it to a low impedance input (most desks willbe ~ 50K ohm) you'll lose a lot of the internal signal on your Orange and likely drop to about 40 watts instead of 120.

Andy.
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bassdrop
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Post by bassdrop » Fri Feb 18, 2005 9:36 pm

You mentioned this power drop in a previous thread Andy. You lost me. Why would a mismatched impedance from the slave out to the board cause a drop in output to the speakers?

mmmmmm drop
mmmmmm drop

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fiveightandten
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Post by fiveightandten » Sat Feb 19, 2005 12:52 am

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
You mentioned this power drop in a previous thread Andy. You lost me. Why would a mismatched impedance from the slave out to the board cause a drop in output to the speakers?

mmmmmm drop
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

I'm gonna take a stab at this, one...though it's just a guess...

Because you're allowing another ground reference for the signal at the gain stage were the slave out jack is.

There's a ground reference there because of the grid load resistor for that gain stage. I believe it's 220K if I remember correctly, though don't quote me on that.

You'll loose some signal if you plug that slave out into anything that has an input where the reference to ground is through something less than 220K.

Again, just taking a guess here...we'll see what Andy has to say about it. Some of this stuff is over my head.

-Nick
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'71 GRO100 || '96 OR-80 || AD30 || '64 AC-50 || AC-30TBX || Hiwatt DR504 || HI-TONE HT30
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Andy H.
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Post by Andy H. » Sat Feb 19, 2005 11:14 am

Don't worry, some of this stuff was guesswork for me too until a few weeks ago when I asked my tech pal (John Phillips) about it:<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>(From an e-mail)
Slave output... looking at the circuit diagram, it’s a signal path access point just before the phase inverter, and is not buffered or even resistance-protected in any way. It’s driven from a 100K resistor, and then feeds a IM resistor at the input of the PI – both very high impedance. So if you connect it to a typical mixing desk input with an input impedance of around 50K, you will immediately drop the signal level to about 1/3, because the 100K is in series with it and the 1M (which is in parallel) is virtually irrelevant. You’d think that they would have fitted another resistor between the insert point and the jack to stop this... but this sort of concept wasn’t properly developed in the early 70s - the ‘echo send and return’ are extremely primitive too. An active DI box with a high input impedance (1M or higher) will mostly cure the problem.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

So basically the slave out is taken from the main signal between the pre and power amp stages. However if you run it into anything other then a high impedance input you'll actually lose most of the signal to the power section of the Orange!

This fits exactly with my experience of having a sound guy taking a line from the slave to a desk, (between my soundchecking and coming back onstage for the set - nice one!), and losing me most of my stage volume. I guessed at the time I was only getting about 40 odd watts worth through the cab, and I didn't appreciate that at all. As usual I was playing fretless bass and I really need to hear myself to stay in tune. All I could hear was a distant rumble around the hall. So he got promptly and unceremoniously unplugged! (He was one of these guys with a decent hall PA, but not a clue! The Orange plus my 4x10 cab was easily enough for the place...) <img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>

Andy.
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You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.

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