Cheap way to improve your amps tone

Hello all,

While I was swapping out amp speakers I noticed the spade connectors that Fender uses are kind of loose at the speaker connections and the wire is a fairly small 18 gauge. Light bulb moment, on my Fender Mustang I V2, I de-soldered the wires from the output board and soldered 14 gauge wire to the board and soldered the other end to the speaker connections. Larger gauge wire equals less signal loss and resistance and the soldered connections also reduce resistance.. Think Monster cables to your stereo speakers instead of the stock wires. I did get a small loss in the lower tones but the mids and highs are crystal clear now, and I can always turn up the bass. Anyway, for the price of about 10 cents worth of solder and wire I got the same sound as a lower end speaker upgrade ($40 to $60). This is in no way as good as swapping in a top of the line or even mid dollar range speaker but it's cheap and easy.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on July 13, 2017 at 8:36pm

Makes perfect sense. What speaker did you swap in?

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Permalink Reply by JL on July 17, 2017 at 2:19am

Its hard to guage if the wire and solder did the trick, or the new speakers since both changes were made at the same time, but I would not have expected better wire and connections to reduce the low end...

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Permalink Reply by Jerry Timson on July 18, 2017 at 12:47pm

Sorry, I should have been clear. I ended up not swapping speakers, the vintage speaker I had sounded horrible so I left the original Fender speaker in with the heavier wire. The wire and soldered joints improved the original Fender sound. I do want to put in a Jensen or Weber alnico speaker at some time in the future.