Wire Jack Parallel With Speaker

[Yoa01]

Hi all,

So a while ago my little Korg monotron's output jack stopped functioning properly. But, I figured that since the built-in speaker still works, and I like the sounds that that cheap little speaker can make, I could wire a mono jack in parallel with the speaker.

My question to you is is there anything special to consider when doing this (adding resistors, etc.)? If I can't wire a jack in parallel, I could measure the response of the speaker and set up an EQ to match it, so it's not a huge issue if I can't do it.

 

[GreenGiant]

the issue you may run into is that the voltage/wattage is wrong for what youre trying to the speaker output.
You also want to get one of the switching output jacks, that way the speaker will be off when you use the output

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

If it already had an output jack, I would try to fix that. It will have a nice clean signal.

You can connect across the speaker, but the device you plug into it won't get the sound that you hear from the speaker. The sound of the internal speaker will be coloured because of the speaker size, the enclosure (the Monotron's case) size, shape and material, etc, but the signal fed to the speaker will not. It will be similar to the signal that was originally brought to the line output connector, but will probably have more distortion.

 

[Yoa01]

I've tried fixing the output jack. They used this wierd jack that breaks easily, you can't really repair, and is hard to find; hence, I want to do this

I'm thinking of using that switched jack idea so I can have both clean output and speaker output. How would it be distorted? And by that do you mean Total Harmonic Distortion, noise, or actual clipping?

 

[KrisBlueNZ]

It depends on the quality of the speaker amplifier in the instrument. It could have crossover distortion, and possibly clipping I guess. It will also be high-pass filtered to remove the low frequencies that the internal speaker cannot reproduce. This filtering may be as simple as a capacitor between the the amplifier output and the speaker; its interaction with the speaker impedance forms a high-pass filter.

If the original jack connector and position can't be reused, you'll need to add a new jack, obviously. But I recommend that you connect it to the clean, line-level signal instead of one derived from the speaker wires.

 

[Yoa01]

Alrighty, I take it apart and see what I can do. Thanks!