Audiophile grade amp switch box?

[Dean De Furia]

Does anyone make a switch box to allow switching between 3 different amps and one pair of speakers? I can't seem to find any!

[cwon]

Can you use a switchbox designed for one amp and three different pairs of speakers, and then just wire it in reverse?

[Dean De Furia]

Good Question. Anyone?

[Steve Hoffman]

Why do you need to do this?

An amp has to have a full speaker load connected to it or it will friggin' explode.

[Dean De Furia]

Steve, I lucky enough to have 3 tube amps that I built a rack for that I would like to connect to the same pair of speakers (Focus) so I don't have to swap cables around.

[Sckott]

Why not find better, faster ways to connect the cables like Bananna plugs and such.

A selector is not the way. If you give a switchbox the load of the amps with no speakers, it's not a good thing. If you don't have all of the amps on at once, then there's no reason for the switchbox.

Never give an amp something to do and tell it to HALT. That's abuse.

Set up a sensible way of connecting cables across the amps, so you can plug in and "go".

Also, never leave on a tube amp just to idle. Give it something to do, or leave it off. Respect thy tubes.

[Dean De Furia]

Sckott,
It's not that they will all be on at once. I just want to be able to flip a switch when I first walk over to the rack to choose an amp that matches the type of music I'll be listening to (Dean Martin on the Mac, rock 'n roll on the Citation etc..).

[BeatleFred]

Just like there may be a guitar enthusiast who owns several guitars in his collection, I dont think it would be unusual that likewise, a hi fi enthusiast would have a whole bunch of audio gear (like me, for example).

So, what do you do if you have a whole collection of receivers and amps and you would like to use them all? Its a pain to have to keep moving the output cables of your cd player (and you may have several of those too) every time to you wanted to select a particular amp or receiver. And you also need to move the connection of the speaker cables every time you chose a differnt amp/receiver you wanted to use in your collection, right?

Well, there are companies that makes switchboxes- Niles is one, and you can check the various models they have on their website or see whats available on Ebay.

You can even use a Sansui AX-7 or DBX Route Selector to connect amps to and switch between them- though with these models you would still have to move the speaker cable connections to each different amp you would use at any given time as they have no speaker terminal connections in the back.


Well, has anyone here ever heard of Audio Authority? They make switching devices that can switch up to 16 (!) different hi fi components- thats right- you can hook up 16 amps, 16 cd players, 16 speakers, etc... and switch any one to any other in whatever combination you desire. To buy them new, they sell for about $ 400 ea. I bought my 3 piece unit (amp, speaker and line level (cd, tape deck) switcher thats cascaded together via a ribbon cable for only $150 on Ebay. To buy those 3 pieces new from AA would be about $1200. So check Ebay for some good deals!

[Clay]

A patch bay with custom Grover cables may do the trick.
You could also have all the amps wired with speaker wires and use quick connect plugs on the speakers.

I would like to do some AB comparisons on my various equipment, yet my sprawling system is confined to the den and I just don't have much room for all the stuff or to move around to do the hook ups.

[sgraham]

I think this is a bad idea, particularly for an audiophile rig. You want the lowest possible impedence between your amp and speakers for maximum power transfer and minimum disturbance, and I think you'll have a hard time coming up with a switch that won't cause degredation. "Speaker switches" are notorious for getting flakey after a while.

Also, as Steve suggests, tube amps are often unhappy running without a load connected.