Flextone Manual Rev E; bookfile Page 44 Tuesday, September 8, 1998 10:31 AM

InsideYour Head: DIRECT OUTPUTS

if you crank up the HD’s Master Volume you don’t blow Mr. Sound Man away since the direct outs are independent of Master Volume. Do whatever you would do with a microphone output in your recording or live setup – run into your preamp and then to tape. Or plug into the mic snake at the club to feed a couple of the house PA’s mic inputs. You’ll get the sound of microphones in front of your cabinet, but with the added advantage of no feedback, perfect tone at any cabinet volume (including silence), and a simple setup that sounds great no matter what sound disasters the room you’re playing or recording in might have. When the Flextone HD is turned on, the direct outs can put out a load pop; be sure to lower your monitor levels

– and tell the person running the sound board to lower theirs!

TAKE A LOAD OFF

Running the Flextone HD without a load (that means without speakers attached) is no problem (this is something you don’t want to do with a tube-based amplifier). You do not need to have speakers connected to the amplifier in order to use the balanced Direct Outputs. So, for instance, you

 

can run without speakers for recording situations when you don’t need to drive a

7•6

cabinet, or live direct-to-the-house setups where you don’t need the HD to drive any

speaker cabinets on-stage.

MONO/STEREO DETAIL

When using only the Left/Mono speaker output, the effects will be switched to mono. This also effects the Direct Outputs – they switch to mono, too (meaning the exact same thing comes out both jacks). If both left and right speaker outputs are in use, or neither are connected, the effects and direct outputs will be in stereo. Which leads us to a handy tip: to get stereo direct outputs or effect send while running a mono cabinet setup, plug an extra 1/4" ‘dummy cable’ (it doesn’t have to plug into anything else) into the right speaker output from the HD to force the HD to run stereo.

FEELING UNBALANCED?

When running the Flextone HD’s Direct Outputs into unbalanced line inputs, use a cable that has a female XLR connector on the HD side, and a 1/4" mono (tip-sleeve, but no ring) connector on the line input side. For the XLR connector, leave pin 3 not connected, and wire pin 2 of the XLR connector to the tip of the 1/4" connector, with pin 1 of the XLR connector wired to the sleeve (fortunately, this is the standard wiring configuration for off-the-shelf XLR to 1/4" adapters).

Page 44
Image 44
Line 6 Flextone Cab 212S user manual Take a Load OFF, MONO/STEREO Detail, Feeling UNBALANCED?