Ok, I'm thinking of picking up a small practise combo for use at Uni. I'd also like to slave it into my Fireball once in a while. How exactly can I do this? The combo has a line out, but not an FX loop, I think. Do I just run a cable from this to the Fireballs FX Loop Return?

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Correct, an FX loop should be a line-level loop anyway. You'll have no problems connecting it up like that.

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Ok, thanks man, I'm guessing its fine to use a regular guitar cable for that, as the line-level is quite low, correct?

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you got it

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If what you want to do is hear your small combo through the cab, why not just hook up the speaker out on the combo directly to the cab? You wouldn't be wasting your tubes that way. Unless you actually want to amplify your combo amp to really high volumes, which is sort of a waste, having a good tube amp to do that with and all.

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Yeah I know man. I figured that it might come in handy if a preamp tube went bust during a gig and I didn't have time to change it (thinking of getting back into a band) or if like what happened to me in the summer, something blows in the preamp but the power section still works (crappy Engl ) . But yeah, I'll probably just run it through the cab for the most part, or maybe change the internal speaker.

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That is nothing to worry about man... preamp tubes will be the LAST thing that end up dying out on your amp. Good pre tubes(get rid of all the stock ones! they didn't last 8 months for me) last for years without needing a change, I'd be more worried about power tubes dying out in a gig situation, not only because it's more likely but because they're much harder to replace quickly.

You could just keep the back part of your fireball loosely unscrewed(you only need like 2/3 screws to hold the flap in place), so you can quickly open it up and pop in a new tube if that ever happened. Just keep a rag handy to yank it out so you don't burn yourself!

Btw a better speaker in the combo won't really give it any noticeable volume change, unless it's lower ohmage, or a bigger size speaker(s) (ie: 12 inch instead of 10). You'd get the most volume out of it running it into bigger cabs with more than one speaker.

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Just a tip. Use a balanced cable for line level stuff and not an unbalanced guitar instrument cable between amps.

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Only if both ends of the connection has balanced input/output, otherwise it won't work. Unfortunately most guitar stuff-especially amps- don't have balanced connections, i don't understand why; it's not difficult to implement, and it'd sort out loads of noise issues too.

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