Tuesday, February 2, 2010

2-pin to 3-pin

Friends have been asking me how tedious/ technical it is to convert a 2-pin plug to a 3-pin version. Does one need to be an electrician to carry out this make-over? Of course not. To kick it off, just purchase a 3-pin plug head from a hardware store, preferably with a wire colour code attached so you can refer to it along the way. Snip off your default 2-pin amplifier power plug head & you're doing fine.

I used the above tools to help me get the job done:
  1. Wire cutter- some of us are using this to snip off our excess string length when re-stringing our guitars.
  2. Flat head screw driver. Your test-pens can double as one, too.
  3. Cross head screw driver.
  4. Wire stripper- you need to expose the wire bits (about 0.3cm worth) from its colour coat & screw them under the respective plug pins; this is the proper tool for the job. Experts like Master BEEZ employs his wire cutter as a stripper as well but let's not get into that here...
Still with me? Refer to the colour code reference & screw each wire under the respective plug pins.

Ta-da! Work done, make sure you attach the plug head cover. Why do we go through this trouble? Well, you can still use the default 2-pin version but please learn to live with the background hum once drive/distortion are in use. Some of us find this excessively annoying especially so when you have some recordings involved. As for me, I prefer listening to my gear, not the hum. Are you still in doubt? Then I strongly suggest you do not try this yourself & fry your amp along the way due to bad attachmets. Ask someone else to do it for you. Buy him coffee for the job if you have to. You can afford decent equipment, no excuse for not affording good coffee...

6 comments:

Joshie said...

Hi, I have just started a new blog about guitars at www.usedguitarsguru.com and was wondering if you are interested in doing a link swap. This would be of benefit to both of us. If you are interested please email me at josh@usedguitarsguru.com

Regards,

Josh

reuel said...

hey sub. do all amps with 2 pin plugs come with 3 wires inside?? if not how do i earth it??

subversion.sg said...

not all. most amps with detachable power cords feature a 3-pin attachment at the other other end (despite featuring a 2-pin plug head), that's how we check :-)

reuel said...

detachable power cords?? as in??

subversion.sg said...

as in one which can be removed from the amp at the tail end, similar to what one uses for the computer's CPU.

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