Safe way to disconnect speakers from a live amp

[buggyboy]

I guess what I'm after here is the physics or electronics behind this. It "feels" wrong to short the + and - speaker lines. Like having a speaker with zero resistance.

The amps that can handle this without going boom probably have some monitoring circuit that sees the drop in resistance and flips off the output (or something like that).

In other connectors, like a banana plug, the contacts never short...they just open. but again, I could see how going to infinite resistance could be damaging to an amp. but the same sorts of monitoring circuits might well prevent damage.

But do the amp manuals say in their feature list " 20 amp output-safe(tm) protection circuitry" or some such that you can decode and tell that hot plugging won't damage the amp?

In other words... how do you tell which amps hot plugging is "not recommended, but ok in practice" and which it is "will burn amp to crisp"?

Thanks for the dialog... it may be confusing at times, but it's the only way I know to get better at stuff.

[I'm headed out of town Friday morning, so I won't be able to reply back here till about next Wednesday.]

[tropicalfish]

If it's not a tube amp, and it's not a 1/4" connector, hot plugging with the proper impedance won't burn the amp to a crisp.





EDIT: mini-disclaimer, sort of: Unless your amp really sucks. Name brand amps like Crown, QSC, Peavy, EV, etc, should take it without a problem.