speaker hookup question

[halsax]

I added a second pair of small bookshelf speakers to a buddy's technics reciever which is about a 35-45 watt system. When done I found out that although there were jacks for 4 spkrs and an A & B switch, he can only play one pair at a time. I'm wondering if theres any after market device that can remedy this. It was also suggested that I connect both sets to the same jacks (twist the two pos together and the two neg together and connect to their respective jacks).

thanks

[Mr Peabody]

If the receiver will not play both pairs of speakers at one time,then the manufacturer did not build the unit to have the juice for that. In this case I definitely would not recommend hooking both pair to one output. The receiver will see less impedance (load) and will most likely go into protection, if it has protection, if not.... poof! There are several speaker switch boxes on the market. I don't know if that will solve the problem. It might if it allowed both pair of speakers to play at the same time and somehow kept the impedance the same.

The lower the impedance your receiver sees the more current it needs to drive the speaker. Not many receivers have that capability. Some will allow you to play 2 pair of speakers by putting the A/B in series when both are on.

What exactly was your friend trying to accomplish? Maybe we can find a different solution. For instance, if this receiver has preamp outputs, which is doubtful from what you say, adding another amp would fix the problem. Either by using the receiver to drive one pair while the amp drove the other or if the amp was capable and had 2 sets of outputs, it could drive both pair alone.

[halsax]

thank you very much . I was hoping that since we're using small bookshelf spkrs (and the receiver should be designed to push standard floor size speakers) that I could use one of the methods you mention to push the 4 bookshelf spkrs

[StanleyMuso]

thank you very much . I was hoping that since we're using small bookshelf spkrs (and the receiver should be designed to push standard floor size speakers) that I could use one of the methods you mention to push the 4 bookshelf spkrs

Many book shelf speakers are actually much harder to drive than floor standers. If your not careful, you could blow this receiver up by trying to drive both at once, especially since it is so low powered in the first place.