Lood wrote
Firstly, I am totally illiterate regarding these so please explain as simple as possible:
I have a Phillipson PC6300 PA or amp, not sure how it is addressed, with two 150 watt speakers. These speakers consist of 2 speakers each - a tweeter (small one on top) and probably a bass speaker (big one at the bottom). Although they sound OK ish, I would like to think that a midrange speaker would have been good - giving that part that I'm missing in the sound quality.
According to someone else, a good quality sub-woofer or bass speaker should be able to handle the midrange frequencies.
My first question is whether I should in any way bother adding two midrange speakers or not. I only play at home - usually my keyboard and lately also my electric guitar. I'm not toally happy with the sound quality, but kept with it for about 20 years now.
Secondly, the amp has a "Phantom Power" switch. Please explain to me what exactly this is, does and how it works ???
The amp has 6 inputs - each with it's own treble, bass, reverb and volume knobbs. It also has a 6 channel slider type equaliser as well as master volume, reverb and monitoring knobbs.
I've played a guitar through it about two weeks ago for the first time. I don't know what the reverb is supposed to be or do, but in this amp it does nothing ☹ There is absolutely no change in the guitars' sound or anything, no matter where I set either the specific input's or the master reverb. Could this be a fault that I can have fixed?
Lastly, I saw a Classical amp in a music shop some time ago. Is this different to a normal electric guitar amp and aimed at electric nylon stringed guitar or what?
I'd appreciate any feedback and advice and pardon me for all the stupid questions :-[
Hey Lood,
I may have missed this but what guitar are you trying to play through the system?
Keira assumed an acoustic, which may well be the case, but if it is electric (as it seems to be stated above), it will never sound like a 'guitar amp' which is purposefully built for guitars esp. if you are looking getting it to 'overdrive' or 'distort', that and the speakers have alot to do with things.
Assuming it it IS for an acoustic guitar/pa set-up your 2 speaker set-up should be able to give a fairly 'full spectrum' picture, it most prob has a passive network that 'splits' the audio groups, one that each speaker handles, pretty typical of these all purpose amps, we call this a 'cross over network' in laymans terms.
The odds are the speakers themselves may not be THAT great, and hence you are not getting the tone you want, speakers come in all shapes and sizes and range from hundreds of rand to tens of thousands of rand, so it is all relative.
Keira has given a break down of 'Phantom Power', on a technical level Phantom Power was developed from George Neumann years ago to allow power to be sent from a microphone supply/console to power 'condenser' microphones. Nowdays the accepted voltage is +48V DC, normally sent down a pair of matched 6K8 resistors, down a balanced mic cable (either XLR or TRS).
IF a mic doesn't require it is down's see it, hence phantom power... part of this is done because dynamic/ribbon mics do not pass DC voltages (well you get DC gapped tranos, but that is rare thing), only allowing AC to pass.
The danger lies in accidentally plugging in a balanced line from a keyboard or other device when Phantom is one that DOESN'T use a transformer to block those dangerous voltages... it can lead to permanent damage tot he said device.
Good designs have a pair of DC blocking caps to prevent this... but I would play it safe and never connect gear directly your the mixer with Phantom on, and when on make sure you use a DI box to prevent any nasty mishaps.
RE Reverb, I doubt the amp has REVERB built in, 20-30 years ago consumer amps used the term REVERB instead of AUX which is more technically correct. Odds are you will see a jack that says REVERB IN/ and OUT or REVERB SEND and RETURN, this needs to be connected to a REVERB or effects processor and then you use the MASTER level to send the signal tot he processor and and the individual REVERB or AUX pots to send varying amounts of REVERB to the processor.
If you post some pictures of the amp it will make things a bit clearer.
Cheers
Matt
