• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Noiseless speaker switching, multiple amps - requesting brainstorming

First, this is very similar to this thread , but I think it's different enough I'm starting a new thread.

I'd appreciate getting constructive ideas on the following:

My goal is to set up the ability to tie any of my valve guitar amps (10 at the moment) in my arsenal to any speaker cabinet (5 at the moment) in my studio. The real world analog is the ability to go to a stereo store and be able to try out different combinations of receivers and speakers, but I want to do it for my guitar setup.

It:
  • shouldn't pop (which I think leaves out mechanical/relay switching?),
  • should break-before-make (I assume),
  • should swap in dummy loads for the amps not currently hooked to a speaker

I'd guess none of the mixing-board targeted solid state audio matrix switches would work in this application, but I'd love to be told I'm wrong.

And given that...

What ideas can this group share? Cost isn't much of a restriction, but I don't want to end up with something as ungainly as a fanned-out array of off-the-shelf 1:4 selector switches.

Seems like I should be able to do a old-style telephone plug board sort of thing...
 
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For valve you want make before break: amp never left without a load. Low impedance better than open circuit output.

Picture your 5 speakers wired in series, a switch/relay contact across each speaker shorting it out except the one speaker in use where its switch would be open.
Then you have to switch amplifiers and dummy loads.

I don't know much so can only suggest relays and an Arduino to control them.
Assuming you will switch when quiet then the relays would not be breaking high current.
The Arduino would control the logic of connecting speaker to amp before disconnecting dummy load.

I guess you would need to switch both poles of the amp output to the speaker.