# Help with running one amp into another



## JimiGuy7 (Jan 10, 2008)

I have fallen in love with my Orange Micro Terror. I really want to hook it up to my Mesa Boogie 20/20 and see what it sounds like with a tube power section but will not do so without being told how to do it properly. The Micro Terror only has a speaker out and a headphone out, thats it. Is there a way I can hook them up and use the Mesa 20/20 for power and the Micro as the preamp? I really want to try this, and would appreciate any advice on how I can go about it.


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## buckaroobanzai (Feb 2, 2006)

JimiGuy7 said:


> I have fallen in love with my Orange Micro Terror. I really want to hook it up to my Mesa Boogie 20/20 and see what it sounds like with a tube power section but will not do so without being told how to do it properly. The Micro Terror only has a speaker out and a headphone out, thats it. Is there a way I can hook them up and use the Mesa 20/20 for power and the Micro as the preamp? I really want to try this, and would appreciate any advice on how I can go about it.


You need a direct box that taps the speaker outputs of the Orange and splits off a low-level signal for the second amp. This is assuming your Mesa has a power-amp input or line-level input.

Cheap route: Behringer Ultra-G

Expensive route: Radial Engineering JDX

There may be other devices that do the same thing.


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## allanr (Jan 11, 2012)

i tried running my roland micro cube into my Peavey VK112 a while ago.

1) headphone jack to effects loop. worked great. would be great for in-home practice, possibly recording. volume seemed weak though.
2) headphone jack into instrument input. worked ok. nothing bad happened to either device. tone quality a bit muddy. not usable for gigging or recording.


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## jimihendrix (Jun 27, 2009)

Here is an article on daisy chaining two amps....

http://psg.com/~dlamkins/lamkins-guitar/music/article/multi-amp-pitfalls

The comments section of this video tell different ways to daisy chain amps..

[video=youtube;J5vaMbr4Zw8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5vaMbr4Zw8[/video]


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## GTmaker (Apr 24, 2006)

JimiGuy7 said:


> I have fallen in love with my Orange Micro Terror. I really want to hook it up to my Mesa Boogie 20/20 and see what it sounds like with a tube power section but will not do so without being told how to do it properly. The Micro Terror only has a speaker out and a headphone out, thats it. Is there a way I can hook them up and use the Mesa 20/20 for power and the Micro as the preamp? I really want to try this, and would appreciate any advice on how I can go about it.


MAybe I'm missing something but the logical solution to me is to get the headphone out signal going into the Mesa head.
All thats realy needed is the right cable. Probably a 1/8" jack to a quarter inch jack. These are common.


G.


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## JimiGuy7 (Jan 10, 2008)

GTmaker said:


> MAybe I'm missing something but the logical solution to me is to get the headphone out signal going into the Mesa head.
> All thats realy needed is the right cable. Probably a 1/8" jack to a quarter inch jack. These are common.
> 
> 
> G.


Ya, that is what I am doing. To be clear though, the Mesa is not a head. It is a 20/20 power amp. I want to rack mount this little Micro Terror, but the headphone jack is in the front, which just doesn't look good to my eyes with cables all over the place in the front of my rack, plus it makes it hard when I want to fill my rack up. I wish I could figure out a cost effective way to run the cable out of the speaker jack into my Mesa. I have some more research to do I guess.


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## JimiGuy7 (Jan 10, 2008)

I did some research and am now wondering. I was looking at buying a BITMO attenuator, running the MT through it and running out of the lineout of the BITMO into the input of my Mesa 20/20 power amp. Does anyone see an issue with this?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

There are two issues to grapple with: impedance matching, and level matchng. Ideally, a preamp out on the Micro-terror would take care of both. Unfortunately, the MT provides oly headphone and speaker outs. Since it is a tube preamp, solid-state power-stage amp, the headphone out will not necessarily deliver the best representation of a tube preamp into a tube power amp (the 20/20). That said, you likely shouldn't have anything to worry about running your headphone out into the 20/20. Just make sure you start out with the 20/20's input attenuator turned all the way down, and inch it up slowly.

I can't find a schematic for the 20/20, but I found one for the 50/50, and assume that some aspects lie in common between the two. The 50/50 has a 250k attenuator pot on the input. That should drop the headphone output from the MT down enough to do the job.

If anyone has a schematic of the Micro-Terror, I could advise on how to provide a proper preamp out.


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