running without a speaker?

[Pbassred]

Is damaging to run a solid state amp without a speaker connected. I was thinking of situationd where I might only need to run one side of a sterio amp. (obviously you never do this to a valve amp).

 

[Centauri]

Provided the amp does not use an output transformer (ie. VERY old or public address amp), then no problems.

It is only a problem for valve amps due to high induced back-emf in unloaded output transformer exceeding insulation breakdown of the transformer, valve socket or valve electrodes.

Cheers

 

[audioPT]

Some load never hurts the amp.

I prefer to use some kind of load as I can measure all the amp.

Make a 8 Ohm load using high power resistors.

I have my own dummy load, made from 2 blocks of 5 x 10Ohm/10W wired in series for 4 Ohm and 4 blocks for 8 Ohm.

 

[Solid Snake]

No problems, save yourself the trouble and your amp the grief and just forget about dummy loads.

 

[Jan Dupont]

Please note that some faults can only be detected with a load connected to the speaker outputs!!!

 

[audioPT]

No problems, save yourself the trouble and your amp the grief and just forget about dummy loads.

Why forget dummy loads??

I've explained the easyest one.

There are more complex dummys that react just like a speaker!

Agree??

regards,

Pedro Martins

 

[Jan Dupont]

Pedro

You took the words out of my mouth 😉

 

[john curl]

For some reason, there is confusion about loading power amps. In theory, all solid state amps can run without a load. With tube amps, the output transformer apparently reflects the load in some way to the amp, and this can cause problems. IF you are still concerned, just put a 100 ohm 2W resistor or even more across the output. It won't get too hot, but it will potentially damp the output stage, if that were at all necessary.

 

[TonyTecson]

boucherot cell

many ss amps that have these... so this becomes a load in case you don't connect any speakers to the output terminals...