Today's guitar project was inspired by my getting scolded by the sound guy for my excessive stage volume. I like to drive the amp & speaker cone hard for a nice warm tube tone, but even though my amp is only 22 watts, it can still easily get entirely too loud. This is my upright Mesa 2x12 cabinet which had 2 16 ohm cones wired in parallel connected to a single 8ohm input jack. I actually have 2 types of cones in there, one a Celestion Vintage 30, the other a Celestion G12T-75 which replaced one of the original Vintage 30s to give the cab a bit more "thump".
With a little bit of drilling and some craptastic soldering to install one extra input jack and a push-button toggle, I now have the ability to drive either cone all by itself depending on the input jack I use. The push button toggle allows me to engage both cones in parallel, regardless of which input jack. As long as I'm careful to not have the cones in parallel mode, I can even drive each cone independently by using both input jacks concurrently.
So now when I mic the cab, I can engage only the cone that is mic'd, allowing me to drive the amp a bit harder without pissing everyone off (as badly)!
![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sacvnQ5Vd68/U8nVEAREJpI/AAAAAAAAGro/DN2KQhMVLq4/w1028-h1371-no/IMG_20140718_182701.jpg)
![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q4e047C6Ax4/U8nVEPZ2TXI/AAAAAAAAGro/IrndySrMC1w/w1028-h1371-no/IMG_20140718_183530.jpg)
With a little bit of drilling and some craptastic soldering to install one extra input jack and a push-button toggle, I now have the ability to drive either cone all by itself depending on the input jack I use. The push button toggle allows me to engage both cones in parallel, regardless of which input jack. As long as I'm careful to not have the cones in parallel mode, I can even drive each cone independently by using both input jacks concurrently.
So now when I mic the cab, I can engage only the cone that is mic'd, allowing me to drive the amp a bit harder without pissing everyone off (as badly)!
![](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-sacvnQ5Vd68/U8nVEAREJpI/AAAAAAAAGro/DN2KQhMVLq4/w1028-h1371-no/IMG_20140718_182701.jpg)
![](https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-q4e047C6Ax4/U8nVEPZ2TXI/AAAAAAAAGro/IrndySrMC1w/w1028-h1371-no/IMG_20140718_183530.jpg)
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qsrPeLPc954/U8nVELbN1nI/AAAAAAAAGro/9S2zkS7PVQ8/w1028-h1371-no/IMG_20140718_183548.jpg)