Head phone question

[Skip Keane]

Hi Guys,
Well I have a little trouble I would like to use headphones with my Sho Bud steel (new wife). My question is "How do I set it up, I'm runnning through a vintage ampeg tube amp. Does anyone know which headphone are the best?
thanks,
Skip

[Lloyd Karenke]

Skip...I don't know which headphones are the best but I use AKG K66 Headphones from zZounds for $39.95...they produce a good bass,mids and highs. You can push them without distortion if you like things loud. I use them for home studio work.
Lloyd
P.S...talk to Ken Fox on how to set things up...here on the forum (electronics)...he's good!

[David Doggett]

Skip, most any headphone will work. But less expensive ones will have poor bass response and sound tinny. The more expensive ones will have bass response down to 5 or 10 hz. You can't hear that low, and there are no notes down there, but that makes it more likely the bass response is good in the range you will be listening to. Most headphones have excessive response for the highs, the expensive ones moreso (after all, you are basically listening through a pair of tweeters). You will probably want to turn the highs down and the bass all the way up.

Believe it or not, you may be able to plug headphones right into your amp's speaker jack. You just have to be sure the impedance matches for the amp and headphones, the same as with any speaker. It's okay for the headphone impedance to be higher than the amp's, but not vice versus. As long as the impedance is properly matched, the amp will not be hurt, but of course the amp can probably blow the headphone speakers - but will likely blow your ears first. If your amp does not have a speaker jack, you may have to splice the speaker wire and add a jack. The problem is that your amp is mono, and so you will hear in only one side of the headphones, unless you get a mono to stereo adaptor at Radio Shack.

[Jerry Tillman]

Skip,I don,t know you or your new wife but I know about sound.I suggest you get rid of your wife and skip the head phones all together.Just turn the amp up to a point that you can hardly stand to be in the same room while you are playing.I seem to get good tones this way.Thanks lakeshrk.

[David L. Donald]

The Sony MDR-7506 sound real good, I have even mixed with them.

There are many small practice headphone preamps out there for short bucks.

Spend more on the cans, you well enevr regret that in the long run.

And then get a simple little amp with instrument input and RCA inputs to mix in some outside tracks like a CD or cassette.
All it needs is a volume for each source ; steel and music. But if you find one with simple tone controls that's good too.

[Jay Fagerlie]

Mr.Doggett, please don't take this wrong, I'm just buttin' in a little.....the point you made about impedance matchig is correct but backwards, never go above the rated impedance, but going below is ok. Here's an example: Plugging a 4 ohm cabinet into an 8 ohm output jack is ok, but plugging an 8 ohm cabinet into a 4 ohm jack is not, and here's why:The output section wants to see it's rated impedance and seeing a lower impedance is ok because the speaker will just 'pull' more current that it would if it was matched...up to the rated output of the amp. Although this may not be the best sound, it will not harm your amp
However
If a higher impedance than is expected is used, the tubes need that impedance that isn't there, and the result will be a standing wave (remember CB's??? same principle) that has to dissapate that energy somewhere, usually taking out the tubes or (gasp) the output transformer. This is why almost all Fender tube amps have a switching jack and resistor across the secondary of the output transformer-so if is powered up with no speaker, you have a chance to power it down and connect one before it self destructs.

Jay
Hopefully, no toes were harmed during the making of this reply

[Darvin Willhoite]

I believe Mr. Doggett is right on this one, it is OK to go with a higher impedance speaker than the amp output, but not lower. It just reduces the output power of the amp in most cases. I learned this lesson the hard way several years ago, I fried the output stage of an 8 ohm rated amp with a 4 ohm speaker.

------------------
Darvin Willhoite
Riva Ridge Recording


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Darvin Willhoite on 24 February 2004 at 01:58 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Paul Osbty]

Factory Headphone jacks are actually pretty simple. On many amplifiers, the jack is just in parallele with the speakers.

What is done, however, is to have series resistors to each earpiece. On a 20W/channel amp I had the resistors were 180 ohms/ 1/4 Watt.

For this mono amp, I would probably try two 1k ohm resistors to each earpiece. This resistance value can be adjusted for headphone volume when the amp's volume knob is set at a given volume level.

I would also try a "switching" 1/4 inch jack. This will turn off the speaker when headpones are used.

The switch in these jacks, however, must pass the speaker current when the headphones are not used. This may or may not work well. Otherwise, a high-current ON/OFF switch for the speaker and the series-resistance jack for the headphones would be my approach.

[Jay Fagerlie]

Running a tube amp into an open is even worse than running it into a speaker that is higher impedance than specified . Tube amps were designed to run into a load. Period. Solid state amps don't care about open output loads, that's why you always see headphone jacks that disconnect speakers on SS amps, but never on a tube amp.
Really, I'm not kidding here, you run the chance of destroying your amp.
Jay

[Ken Fox]

Jay is right about the chance of blowing an output transformer on a tube amp with an open circuit. We had a real good discussion about headphones and such, check this one:
http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum11/HTML/004895.html