Turn your Mesa/Boogie mono cabinets into stereo; great for other brands too!
Many 2x12 and 4x12 speaker cabinets are wired for monaural operation, but if you're one of the many guitar players with a stereo rig, this sometimes limits your options when you only want to bring a single cabinet to the gig.
Romanian manufacturer BECOS has created fantastic replacement jack plates that converts your beloved 2x12 or 4x12 cabinet from mono-only to stereo-or-mono operation at the flip of a switch!
These jack plates were specifically engineered to match the physical dimensions of the jack plates that come in Mesa/Boogie Rectifier and Roadster series cabinets, and we installed one of these plates into a 2x12 Rectifier Horizontal cabinet perfectly in less than ten minutes, most of which was spent just locating our screwdriver and wire cutters.
Speaker jack plates tend to be somewhat universal in their dimensions, so there’s certainly a chance that these plates should install easily into other manufacturers speaker cabinets without the need for any modifications (like cutting out the opening on the rear of the cabinet to accommodate a different-sized plate). The dimensions of the plate are 112 mm x 102 mm (also, we’ve included a diagram at the end of this review containing all the measurements you’ll need if you are a cabinet builder). Note that theses jack plates were designed for use with cabinets that have either two 16-ohm, 60-Watt speakers or four 8-ohm, 60-Watt speakers.
The BECOS jack plates are precision manufactured using premium components. There are ¼” TRS Neutrik connectors for the input and outputs, and a heavy-duty metal switch for selecting between Mono or Stereo operation.
Installation couldn’t be any easier – no soldering required! First, we unscrewed the Mesa/Boogie jack plate from the rear of our Rectifier cabinet. Making note of which wires were the positive and negative leads from each speaker, we cut the wires near the soldered end at the jack plate to remove it and then spliced approximately ¼” of the sheath to expose some bare wire.
The BECOS plate uses thoughtfully designed screw post terminals to attach the speaker wires. We just slid the exposed end of the speaker wires into the corresponding (labeled) terminals, tightened the set screws with a small screwdriver, and then attached the plate to the back of our speaker cabinet. The fit was truly identical to Mesa/Boogie’s jack plate.
Although we didn’t install it, we also examined the 4x12 jack plate (our Rectifier 4x12 cabinet was wired for Mono or Stereo operation from the factory). This jack plate is nearly identical to the 2x12 plate, but features twice as many speaker contacts. Additionally, BECOS is preparing an alternate version of the 2x12 jack plate that includes a speaker output jack to daisy chain an additional cabinet.
A few other nice touches: BECOS label the jacks with proper Ohm ratings based on Mono or Stereo use, and they provide space on a scribble strip on the plate to record your speaker cabinet’s serial number (since it was etched onto the Mesa/Boogie plate that we removed).
Tip: If you use this plate with another manufacturer’s speaker cabinet, the ohm ratings might be different, in which case you should make a correction on the plate for easy future reference.
Operationally, the switch worked perfectly! There was no difference in tone whatsoever from the installation of this jack plate, and we now gained the ability to run our 2x12 cabinet in stereo with various stereo guitar rigs of ours.
If you play a stereo setup, and especially if you play Mesa/Boogie Rectifier cabinets, this product is a no-brainer. And of course if you’re building your own custom speaker cabinet, you won’t go wrong with the BECOS jack plate. Priced at only 29,75 Euros (approximately $40.00 USD), and 34,50 Euros ($45) for the 4x12 jack plate, this simple upgrade is easily worth the small investment.
