Wednesday, May 09, 2012

From 4 to 16 ohms.

About as simple as rewiring gets.

For ease of installation I started to set my Weller WES50 soldering station on top of one of the speaker magnets. To my dismay I noticed the indicator LED was going bonkers, and having just recently lost a meter I was not optimistic when I pulled it out and saw a red indicator staring back at me. Temp was still up, so I pulled and switched the wires.

As it turns out, the magnetic field of the driver triggered the temperature lockout setting, which is of course reversible. Funny that feature has remain hidden to me for a decade.

3 comments:

MKULTRA said...

Why the impedance switch?

crochambeau said...

So I can stack more cabinets in parallel.

Roberta X said...

Weller irons -- the high-end ones -- use Curie-effect temperature control. A big magnetic field can override it, and keep the reed switch that runs the heater stuck ON.

Upside: you can buy tips with preset temperature. Downside: I don't think there's a second source. Also, they scratch easily and once the tinning is scratched, it's not easy to fix.