Plug and Play Jack Plate Replacement

Maybe you have a guitar cab with just a single input, but you want to be able to switch to 4Ω instead of just the 16Ω it’s wired to. Maybe you want to run your speakers in stereo. Maybe you just hate those stupid fucking bullshit plastic Marshall switchable stereo jack plates that constantly break. If any of this applies to you, please consider the Plug and Play jack plate as a replacement.

Full disclosure: I have nothing to disclose. This was bought and I installed it. As far as I can tell, it’s made by Amplified Parts, a webstore I use frequently to purchase tubes and parts. This is an all purpose jack plate made of durable metal with no stupid switches that break. Installing one is easy.

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With all the emphasis on amplifiers, pedals, cabinets, the humble speaker is oft forgotten. It’s the final destination for your signal and it’s the only thing you actually hear. What’s in your cabinet? If your speakers are crap, who cares that your amp is hand-wired? It’ll still sound like crap. For this discussion, what if it’s broken? Can you tell? The most common injury to a speaker will not necessarily stop it from working, but it won’t work well. When yer speaker cone rips, your tone cannot.

The first time I employed the following fix, I was on the road with my friend Christy. One night, we noticed her guitar sounded terrible. Upon inspection, the sound person had mic’ed a G12T-75 speaker in her cabinet that had a hole in the cone. Three other speakers had been somewhat masking the bad one, but that terrible sound had been coming out all along. We fixed it using an old roadie trick invented back before Guitar Centers were on every corner. Now that Guitar Centers don’t even carry guitar speakers, this old roadie trick is handy again.

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