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L.E.D.s in a mesa walkabout?


Phil-osopher10
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[quote name='Phil-osopher10' post='1126613' date='Feb 14 2011, 01:12 AM']I was wondering if It is possible to light up my walkabout head with a few red leds just for banter. Is there anyway of doing this easily? Is it just a case of gettin a few leds and a battery and just whip it in or would it be better to tap into the power supply of the amp?[/quote]

Hanging stuff that wasn't designed to be there off of an amp power supply probably isn't the best thing in the world to be doing. :)
An LED requires a DC voltage to operate which means tracking down a point on the circuit board to make a connection after rectification (the output from the transformer is AC). Once you have found that point, you need to know the DC voltage so you can work out how many LEDs you need to wire, in series, to stop them blowing (bog standard LEDs only handle low voltages).
Even if you got all of that sorted out, you'll be drawing current from the circuit that might be needed elsewhere in the amp.

I'd stick to batteries (or a little plug in DC power supply?) if I were you. :)

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With the disclaimer that I don't even pretent to understand how it was done :-

I built a 2x10 combo for a customer a couple of years ago using his Randall head. The cab had a slot port. I got a local boffin mate of mine to rig up two strips of volume sensitive LEDs behind the port so, starting from the middle and radiating outwards they give increasingly bright light depeding on volume and playing dynamics. They are powered directly off the speaker terminals (apparently there is sufficient voltage to do this)It took him a couple of hours to work out the circuit and a couple more to fit it up and tune it.

There have been no ill effects as far as I'm aware, it is still working and, I have to say, looks quite cool behind an angry metal/funk band.

Don't know if this helps at all.

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